Life Schooling

"In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus,"

(1 Thessalonians 5:18).

One of the great things about homeschooling is the opportunity to capture so many teaching moments--those times when life experiences are the best teachers. Think of it as the difference between "theory" and "practice." Things will often seem easy to implement "in theory" but are actually much harder when put into practice. Thus the beauty of all-day, hands-on teaching of our children.

Such a teaching moment manifested for us Saturday evening when a pickup truck plowed into the back of our van. We were stopped while waiting for the car two ahead of us to make a left turn. The truck came flying up behind us and hit us hard enough to open the inside cover of our moon roof and knock both side mirrors out of alignment.

I was driving because my husband had just finished working, and the kids and I decided to go to Lowe's with him since we hadn't seen him all day. We were all tired, and hot, and obviously having a car accident wasn't in our plans.

When the truck hit us, Sara (who was in the third-row passenger seat, where the impact was) immediately burst into tears and said, "Ow, my back hurts!" That obviously scared me.

Our children, as always, were watching us. How did we handle this? What words did we say, what actions did they see? What were we more concerned about--our safety or the condition of the car? I think we did a good job responding in a Christ-like manner. My husband's first words to the driver of the car that hit us were, "Are you okay?" I was (am) proud of him.

God tells us to give thanks for everything. I just finished reading Corrie Ten Boom's story, The Hiding Place, to my children. She inspired me by going through the depravity of the Nazi death camp that she was in, yet still being thankful to God for everything-- even the fleas in her barracks.

Homeschooling is often an imperfect mess. We are human, and we will fail as we attempt to teach things to our children. There will be gaps (just like in the public education system!), there will be tough subjects to teach, tough days to get through. But, if we remember to always thank God for every day, and each moment--no matter how stressful or inconvenient--we will teach our children about God's Sovereignty, which is more imporant than anything they'll ever learn from a textbook.