Let’s talk about my life up North for a moment.
It was G-R-E-A-T. I had a great suburban ranch-style house, happy children, great church, great fellowship, great weather along with numerous shopping trips to the mall to clothe me in name brand clothing and surround me with beautiful things for my home. Have I mentioned how GREAT my life was? *grin*
A typical week went like this…
I woke up around 9-10am. My husband had already gotten my oldest off to school which was at our church, which was 5 mins down the street. My other daughter was a night owl so slept in very late. We would wake up..she would play and watch TV, etc. I would have a friend, or neighbor over for coffee and bagles…(Most of my church family lived in our subdivision. (How cool was that!!) We would visit for a couple hours and then I would play a bit with my daughter, put her to nap.. then either, scrapbook,list stuff on ebay, or watch TV until my oldest got home from school. I cleaned at night while everyone was asleep and it was quiet. I did not do much cooking at all. We were always going out or ordering in…In fact I had no idea how to even make a loaf of bread or make a cake from scratch!! *blush*
How wretched was I? LOL
This would be a Monday-Thursday of how my days went. On Fridays..I would do basically the same, except at night after my husband came home from work, I’d order Pizzas and then have one of my friends pick me up with her oldest daughter and we would all go shopping till the mall closed. Sometimes my daughters came and sometimes my friends’ daughter would want to stay at our house and play with them. It varied! Life was good! Or so I thought…
Saturdays-I was up early, that friend whom I went shopping with the prior evening, would pick me up by 7am to go yard sailing. We yard sailed till about 1pm. We had lunch out. Sometimes my kids would come and sometimes they would want to sleep in and go swimming when they woke up..(We had a great big pool in our back yard.) They had friends over all the time to swim and they were always having slumber parties. I was known as the “Queen of parties” at our church, Always making a huge production for the kids birthday parties and having Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter slumber parties too.)
Getting back to Saturdays-
I would arrive home and several things might have took place..Dh would sometimes go fishing with his friends…Sometimes we would have a pool party with friends and family, sometimes I would throw a dinner party,and sometimes we would have dinner over a friends house and play board games till Midnight.
In a nutshell..
Saturdays were always super fun! Oh, and we had a wonderful family who lived a hop,skip and a jump away from us and the teen girls would always call us and ask if we wanted to go out to the movies or dinner and they would watch the kids for us…We took them up on this about 3-6x a month. Life was super eventful!!!
This all took place from the beginning of 2001 to the end of 2003 which is when I had my son who is my 3rd.
My Homeschool Testimony
Disclaimer: (this is solely my personal thoughts, and convictions on this matter.)
While pregnant with my son, I met a lady who was Quiverful. Her life seemed to magnify everything holy and right (in my eyes). Sure, my life was fun, but her life seemed “more fun” somehow..She was also pregnant, her 10th baby. She started mentoring me..per Titus 2. I was learning so much from her, that I could barely keep track of all she was teaching me.I wanted to spend more and more time with her. I begin to give up my shopping trips to the mall and my yard sailing, in order to spend time with her. Praying like crazy!!
She taught me things like keeping your kids close to you, the how’s and whys, and hows of homeschooling, Quiverful, and what the bible says about children, natural healing herbs and the alike. My kids adored going to her house to play with her children. We all had an amazing fellowship.
I began to pray about everything she was teaching me and that is when… very slowing… personal convictions started forming, or so I thought.
When my son was 3 months old..I became pregnant with my 4th baby. My husband and I decided to hand our marriage bed over to the Lord..and receive his blessings as he saw fit to deliver to us.
After all scripture does say, “blessed is the man who has his Quiverful”…Psalm 127:5
As well as…”Be fruitful & Multipy” GENESIS 1:28
Life became a bit more busy, but not too much. I found that having 2 kids was not much different then having 4 kids. I stepped out in faith and told my daughters school, that after the first grade was over..I would be teaching her at home, starting with the second grade. This did not go over too well. I am still not sure why folks seem to think that they are not capable of teaching grade school. Didn’t THEY finish Grade school? If you know how to read yourself, your certainly capable of teaching someone else how to read. Math? well didn’t YOU learn Math is school yourself? And if you do not even recall how to do it, what makes you think you had such a GREAT education if you can not even recall what you have learned? Great things to think about, before giving so much harsh judgment to us Homeschoolers. *G*
~That said…
I wanted to get my feet wet for a year regarding homeschooling, before I took my Kindergärtner out. BUT, lo and behold, after 3 months of her being in school, I decided that I was confident enough, and pulled my daughter from school, to home school her full time. :o)
I had no idea how fun and easy it was to home school my kids!!
At first she, (my second eldest) was upset with me..She gave me a very hard time. I looked at all angles though. We were paying 2 grand a year for school..and for what?
My oldest did not learn much in Kindergarten as it was, because I had already taught her the basics at home. Sure, there was reading and writing, but anyone could teach someone to read and write, as long as that person knew how to read and write..I had FAITH!
Most of the year was crafts, cutting and pasting, things I was certainly able to teach her myself..It seemed rather pointless to continue paying the $200 a month for her to remain in school..to learn these simple tasks.
What about social skills, I was once asked after I pulled them from school. Well, lets evaluate that for a moment. She learned how to lie and cheat from the other kids in only 3 months that she was at school. I am certain that had I left either one of them in school, they would have gladly been taught many other things that I myself learned at school, such as, stealing, decietfulness, smoking, drinking, drugs,bullying,greedyness and a whole lot of ENVY!
I did not feel the need to purposely put them in a situation at such a young age, that would teach them these things. These things can easily be learned in their adult life first hand, or just turn on the news. My home schooled kids are very well aware of the big bad world. We have even expierenced it first hand, within today’s churches.
Why feed them to the wolves at such a young age, and have them rebel like crazy, then wonder where we failed them, and cough it all up to teenage rebellion, that ALL kids HAVE to go through! I have no idea who made up that lie..but what ever makes one sleep better at night I guess. Parents do not have to go through the heart break when their children reach the teen years. There is a cause, and there is a prevention.
As a family unit, We play and laugh together, and most importantly, we learn together. It amazes me that every single day, including the weekends, are one big learning opportunity. We are all very happy and content to be home. Afterall, Home is where the Heart is. Just the other day as I was watching all 5 of my children playing a game on the floor…I felt a little envy myself, ( I am only human).
I thought to myself, how cool it would have been to be able to have my best friends living with me 24/7. Each of them have 4 other people to talk to when ever they want, and it is just going to keep getting better as they age..Oh, and wait till they all marry!!
Then there will be 10 of them to socailize and have fun with! This is not even including when they all have kids..I do not expect each of my 5 children to have 5 kids, but oh WOW! How many grand babies would I have?? Of course, they can each have 2, and that would make 20 people gathering together, including their spouses! WOW!
I will forever feel the Lords blessing upon me!
Moving right along…
We had our happy suburban life and 4 kiddos in tow. Some nights my husband and I would have long talks together about how happy we were, how lucky we were, and how much fun our life was..We figured it could not possibly ever get better then this.
One very important thing was missing from our Happy Go Lucky, carefree life….
We were not growing spiritually, at least not very much..My husband was in Bible college 3x a week and had talked about one day getting either ordained, or becoming a evangelist or something of the sort, but that was the gist of it..Isn’t there more to life then just Fun carefree times that involved socializing, shopping, and parties? These were a couple of the questions that were going through our heads.
We began to feel guilty about how great our life was..Yes, guilty!!! I remember sitting in the living room one evening in front of the wood stove, and my husband said that something was going to happen real soon, that he could feel it. This was the holy spirt speaking to him, not a coinencidence. When your heart is pliable, you WILL hear the spirit!!!
My husband later told me that he began to pray the night of this chat, that if God wanted more for our lives, then he would HAVE to shake it up a bit, because we were just so content and happy with the way our life was..that we were not about to do anything to try to change it…
I began getting more acquainted with the Internet, and message boards, and blogs. Up until then..I had only used the net for email and Ebay.
I landed on a message board called GCM (Gentle Christian Mothers)
I began learning from other ladies, and found that I was able to relate allot with many whom I conversed with on the site.. I am not sure why, but one day I put a post on this message board asking where everyone lives, and why they Love it.
One lady replied to me.. She lived in North Carolina, she said, and would never dream of living any place else.
I made contact with her by phone, and we became fast phone friends. We each had 4 kids and she was pregnant with her 5th.
I told my husband about it and out of nowhere..North Carolina popped up every where we went. Either we met folks from NC, we were over hearing conversations about NC where ever we went…
At that time, things started looking rather down at my husbands job. They were talking about selling the company, and his liberal co-workers began really giving him a hard time due to his faith in the Lord. He was asked not to listen to Christain music, even though he had his own office. He was not allowed to even talk about God, however, Budda could be talked about all day within the other co-workers.
What to do then?
We decided to step out in faith, place our perfecthouse on the market, and see what adventure would soon unfold.. We had ONE open house, that was all that was needed…We got several offers that day, and 3 days later, we accepted an offer, having then to be out in 30 days. YIKES!
We drove down to North Carolina to house hunt, but couldn’t really find a house that called out to us. We also had dinner with Heather and her family at that time. They were GREAT!
We came back home, packed it all up, putting everything in a storage POD. At this time DH was talking about buying a RV and living at a camp ground in NC. The thought of this kinda scared me.
We gave more then ½ of all we had away!!! Bye-Bye all my materialistic goodies! Sa’la’vee to my four place settings, and Burburry coat & Chanel sandals…My mind frame began to change.
I was really changing inside!!
We then headed down to NC, pulling a small trailer with only the necessities in it. Off we went!!!
BYE-BYE NORTHERN YANKEES!!! Hello North Carolinians!!!