Faith vs. Fear...in our schooling decision

When our oldest turned five, we also had a three-year-old and new-born in tow.  We had just moved to Louisville a few months prior.  It was February, the month when parents all over the city were making decisions about school.  We had moved to Louisville thinking we were putting our children in public school.  We had even bought our home based on the school district that it was in.

Yet, as Eric and I began praying and visiting schools, we felt God tugging us in the direction of homeschooling.  

HOMESCHOOLING???

The thought scared me death.  What would I teach?  How would I take care of a three-year-old and a newborn while teaching?  What if I wasn't smart enough?  The questions were endless.

One way God has often confirmed His plan to me throughout my Christian walk is with tears.  I am typically not a crier.  I have friends who are so sensitive that they shed tears at the drop of a hat.  I wish God had made me a little more like that.  I have even prayed over the years 'some more tears would be nice, please!'.   But, so far, he hasn't answered that one yet.

--EXCEPT--

Except when he is showing us His plan.  THEN, He most often will confirm it through tears.

And that is exactly what He did.  As we sat at an informational meeting for a local cottage school, I became overcome with emotion.  It was at that moment that I knew.  We were definitely supposed to homeschool.  And we were supposed to use this school to do it.


So we felt the calling to homeschool and we stood at a crossroads--

A crossroads of faith.

Oh, but I was scared.  I had so much doubt.  The biggest fear that loomed in the back of my head was 'what if I fail?  What if they don't learn anything?  Or, even worse, what if I make my children stupid?'

Certainly, this was going to take God's supernatural ability, because there was no way I was going to be able to do this on my own. Did I have enough faith to trust Him?  To step out and do this thing that felt impossible?  Did I have enough faith to battle the doubts so strategically shot by the enemy?

Eph. 6:16 tells us, 'In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.'  Yes, I would be badgered daily by thoughts meant to hinder and cause doubt, but if I was going to walk in faith than I must give no attention to them.  Instead, I must find promises in His Word with which to replace the negativity.  Promises such as in 1 Thess. 5:24: 'the one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.' 

Yes, if He was calling us, then He would do it.  He would come through.

(Brief Sidenote:  Let me just tell you that I battled these questions the entire eight years I homeschooled.  It was the enemy, plaguing me with doubt and seizing me with fear.  I am quite certain it is the greatest struggle that every homeschooling mom faces.)

Thus, our homeschooling adventure began.  If you picture us sitting together, holding hands and singing kumbaya--ummmm, please erase that image.   Not even close!  No, it was more like unorganized chaos, as toddlers threw toys in the midst of my phonics teaching session.  Yes, this would more accurately describe it.  

God kept us on this path for eight years.  Six 1/2 of those years were filled with an underlying peace that we were right in the midst of God's will.  However, in the middle of our sixth year of homeschooling, something slowly began changing.  Little by little, I began to lose my passion and my drive for schooling our children.  Instead of being a joy, it began becoming a chore.  Instead of feeling overwhelming peace, I began to feel overwhelmingly stressed.  

Of course all of these feelings, thoughts and emotions brought with it shame, inadequacy, condemnation and failure.  

Believing the problem was in me, I began trying to 'fix' me.  I prayed more.  I worked harder.  I went to the homeschooling conference and bought every CD from every session I couldn't attend.  You name it, I did it.  

Yet, the more I tried, the more I felt a weight on my shoulders.  Have you ever felt that way?  Like something was physically pushing down on you?  Like you were carrying something  that God didn't mean for you to carry?

Then last February, God clearly showed us that Joshua was to go to public school for eighth grade.  It was so clear that it almost felt like He wrote it in the sky.  We took Joshua to visit all of the middle schools in Paducah and landed on the one that we felt God was leading us too.  As soon as we made that decision, a little weight came off my shoulders.  I felt a little freer.

Before the school year was over, I went and visited all of the public elementary schools in Paducah.  I honestly still thought we were going to homeschool, but thought I better check them out 'just in case'.

As summer began, Eric and I began praying, discussing and wrestling over this decision ...and I found us once again at full circle...

at a crossroads of faith

Whereas in our earlier decision, I was having to trust God to do through me what I couldn't, this kind of faith was the complete opposite.  This kind of faith required letting go and relinquishing control.  

Ouch.

I began to realize this decision in a lot of ways was going to take a whole lot more faith than before.  

While I had fear regarding the decision to homeschool,  the fears to send them to school seemed to overtake me.

What if they don't learn anything of value except potty talk on the playground?  If they are going to be at school eight hours a day, how will I be able to influence them for good?  What if following the crowd becomes more important than their faith?  What if their desire to learn is overtaken by their desire to socialize? What if their taught something contrary to God's Word?  What if my twelve year old daughter becomes a disrespectful teenage girl?  What if ...what if...what if...what if...?

And one morning as I talked to God about it I sensed him tell me ever so clearly:

'In whom do you trust?  Me and my supernatural ability or your ability?  Why all your premature judgments?  You've never had your children in public school so what do you know about it, anyway?  All of your 'what-if's' stem from fear.  I did not give you a spirit of fear, but one of power, love and a sound mind.'

He brought me face to face with scriptures such as 1 Cor. 2:5: so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.

 And face to face with my sin.  My faith was resting in men's wisdom (wisdom that homeschooling was superior), not on God's power.  My faith was resting in my ability and my work, not in surrendering this area to the Lord and allowing Him to work.  I realized that sending them to school was going to require a dependency on Him like never before, for I wouldn't be able to be there at all times--protecting, watching and controlling.  

I recalled Hebrews 10:38:  'But my righteous one will live by faith.  And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him.'  Oh, if I was shrinking back out of fear and fear alone, the Lord would not be pleased with that.  

I read Hebrews 11:8: 'By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.'  Now, obviously neither you nor I am Abraham and neither you nor I had his unique calling, but as believers there is much we can apply from this verse.  Specifically, that faith requires us to step out and do that which we do not know the outcome.  To step out and do that which seems risky.  I realized that homeschooling had been my insurance policy--insurance that my children would become good little Christian children just because I was teaching them at home.  I was putting my hope and my trust in a formula, in what seemed to 'make sense' from men's wisdom (that the one who spends the bulk of five days a week with my children will be the one to have the most influence on them).

To be honest, that was the thing I was having the most difficulty with.  Was allowing my children to learn from someone else wrong?  Was it going to corrupt them?  Because somewhere along the way in my innermost innermost, I had begun to believe that.

God convicted me and brought me to my knees over such prideful, Pharisee-like thoughts.  Such thinking took God--our supernatural God who can do more than we could ever ask or imagine--out of the equation.  

Then, God brought to mind the tears.  The tears I had had to choke back the day I had went to visit the elementary school.  The tears that had surfaced when the principal walked me through the colorful school and called every student she saw 'friend.'  The tears I had  when a mother stopped us in the hallway to show us the picture of a birthday greeting her child's teacher had sent to her child while on maternity leave.

Once again, He had spoken through the tears.

And so--with tears--I resigned this area to him, not knowing what the outcome would be, but knowing this was His way for us and we needed to walk in it.

I marveled at the fact that in one season of my life God had burdened me to homeschool and in another season it had become the burden that He had beckon me to remove.  I marveled at how differently He speaks to each one of us, calling us to different places and different things at different times.     

That day as the decision was made, the monkey left my back, the ten ton weight slipped off my shoulders.  

I felt lighter.  I felt freer.  

And I began walking with a little spring in my step, a spring that had been missing for quite some time. 

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."  

Matt. 11:28

'That is that which I seek for, even to be rid of this heavy burden; but get it off my self I cannot: nor is there a man in our Country that can take it off my shoulders; therefore am I going this way, as I told you, that I may be rid of my burden.'   Pilgrim's Progress