More Togetherness

One of my initial reasons for choosing to homeschool was solidified in my heart after a whirlwind spring, in which our family of five was constantly hurled in a multitude of directions — rarely finding us at the same place more than a couple hours per day.

Stepping on the fast track of activities, while all well and good, had a way of splintering our family foundation. At the same time, the influences of all these activities had a way of changing the direction of where we wanted to go as a family. We pulled back hard on the reins of our journey and took a hard look at how we wanted to influence our family for eternity.

Homeschooling is not an easy task. Anyone who has homeschooled in the past can tell you this. I went about the idea of it with great trepidation and much angst. Yet, God, in His wisdom knew exactly what our family needed.

Before we had children, my dh and I talked at great lengths about how we’d not be the typical taxi service for our children. We’d watched too many of our friends and my husband’s students eating meals on the way to sporting events, changing into uniforms in the back of the van while trying to find a place for the violin case, and seeing each other way too little for our liking.

Yet, before our oldest turned 10, we were already in the thick of activity-overload. It wasn’t so much the extra-curricular stuff. It was the combination of the soccer, the Bible study, the karate, the play group, the PTA, the church activities, the extra meeting here and there. It was all of it combined that made my head spin and spurred me to action–or inaction, so to speak.

You see, none of the items above in and of itself was bad. They all had their place on my calendar, and I was obediently trudging on my self-imposed hamster wheel. Yet, when I began to examine what these calendar items were doing to my family–I began to see them as precious moment stealers. Because we were rushed here, there and everywhere at all hours–we were rarely home to enjoy one another’s company and the little idiosyncracies that make us special to each other.

As I think of that last comment, I can’t help but think of what emerged this summer as we began scaling back our activity level. As is the norm for many Americans, we’d gotten into the habit of rarely sitting down to dinner together. We were too busy. Yet, this summer we had dinner as a family pretty consistently. As a result, my five-year-old son spent several weeks telling us an imaginary story about himself, his wife, his family and how they survived a multiple disaster– complete with chapters and an ability to remember right where he was in the story from meal time to meal time. We began to see a side of our son that we’d not had the time to examine prior to this. What a treasure! He is quite the storyteller. Who knows, maybe he’ll want to write those stories down some day!

Anyway, though I approached the idea of homeschooling with trepidation, fear and a little remorse for the “freedom” I was losing by keeping everyone at home, I am thrilled at the surprises God has been tossing my way when I least expect it. I am convinced that following His will, even with knees knocking from the fear of the unknown is preferable any day to the disobedience of being outside of His will for a minute.

Now, we choose to have everyone at home. Our school meetings are also family meetings. We have everyone swimming at the same place at the same time to avoid the constant run-around for different activities, and we enjoy spending more time together, finding out who God has created each of us to be. We tell our kids all the time that they were put in our family for a specific reason, and now we have the time to discover it.