So you think you want to homeschool?

It seems like yesterday I was speaking with mothers (whose age I have now reached) and asking them how to take on this task of homeschooling. I felt completely unprepared, unqualified, and incapable of educating my children. However one wise woman told me that my lack of confidence was a good thing, perhaps the greatest thing I had going for me. You see as long as I felt unable, then I would trust in God to get the job done, I'd pray more for the Lord's wisdom because I would be terrified to trust my own. Thus began my homeschooling journey.

Now that I have a teen, tween, toddler, babies, and a few in between, I realize that I have probably learned more along this journey than my children. I have learned that my Heavenly Father is a much more gracious and patient parent than I am, and that my children are much more intelligent than me. I have learned that it's never the academics of homeschooling that makes you want to cash out and enroll them in school, it's the laundry. Finally I've learned that you have to be mom first and foremost and that teacher is a hat you put on. If you try to take the home out of homeschool by taking an institutionalized approach to your children you will crash and burn, and it won't be pretty. Here's a few tips to get you started:

First, identify your goals. The is one of those answers based on the honor system, what are you true goals for homeschooling? Do you want to homeschool so that your children can score higher than all the public school students on the tests? If so, I advise against homeschooling, you see homeschooling students do score higher due to the individualized, loving, one on one education they receive, but if that's your goal, it's idolatry. Trust me on this one, if you make your children your idol and homeschool your act of worship you will cause them to crumble under the pressure. Perhaps your like me and started homeschooling because you can't afford christian school, reluctant homeschooling is mediocre homeschooling. I wish I could rewind the clock and have those first few years back and give those precious children my all, but I can't. But I can share with you my goals for homeschooling. Several years ago I scribbled them down on a scrap of paper and stuck it in my bible, it reads: "That my children would come to a saving knowledge of Christ at the earliest opportunity, that they would learn to read, understand, and apply to Word of God to their lives, and that they would learn to conform unto His image, not mine or the worlds'". Those are my goals, and I schedule my days around those goals, and not standardized tests."

Secondly bit of advice, if you were trained as an educator, that puts you at a disadvantage not an advantage. Before you get angry, let me tell you that I am a music teacher, I was trained to teach based on the typical industry school model. That model won't fly in homeschooling, you can be a mom who happens to teach your children amid the ebb and flow of running a household, or you can be a headmistress of your own academy that "provokes your children to wrath!" (Ephesians 6: 4). Understanding this principle will save you and your children enormous heartache and it will affect your curriculum choices also. If you are mothering a large family you probably already realize that you need some subjects to be taught in a broader "one room school house" type format, unless you have worked out an arrangement with God to have more hours in your day than is in mine!

Thirdly, don't get hung up on the curricula! Curriculum in important, vastly, gravely, and essentially important. However I have heard many people say they can't "afford" to homeschool. You can, as a matter of fact go to google books and you can download pdfs of McGuffey Electric Readers, there are six readers in all and each are available on google free ebooks.  A Primary Arithmetic as well as Intellectual Arithmetic, and several others. Harvey's Grammar and Composition, Eclectic Science Series (three in all) and impressive Nature Book, Parables on Nature, A Manual for History and Geography, and even Latin Primers! Check out my blog on Penmanship using the Shorter Catechism also. It may not be new and exciting, but you could for the price of a few reams of paper and some ink, homeschool your children through sixth grade using free books! In case your wondering about the validity of these curriculum's, realize that they stop at sixth grade because the average sixth grader in the late 1800's early 1900's was better educated than today's public school senior! Add a library card and a few great websites with freebies like Donna Young's,  and Charlotte Mason's Book of Centuries to shore up your history study. Spice things up with a some great science experiments from sites like The Science of Cooking, and hooray! You have a few years on your planner without much money at all.

A few weeks ago someone asked me if I could only have five things to homeshool with what would I choose. Amazing in only took me about 30 seconds to decide what I would consider the essentials. An Inductive Study Bible with Maps, The McGuffey Reader Set, Harvey's Grammar and Composition, Practical Arithmetic, and Noah Websters 1828 Edition dictionary, which isn't your average dictionary you could teach Latin and Greek roots from this as well as several lessons in morality. If I could squeeze Mystery of History into my overhead luggage I would do so in a heartbeat.  While I am blessed to have some resources at my disposal to purchase other curriculum I believe that with the Lord's blessing you can homeschool for almost nothing.

That last sentence is the clincher, with the Lord's blessing, that's the crux of it all. The Lord is the Father of all wisdom and He gives it liberally to all who seek it, James 1:5. If done to the glory of God, for the fulfillment of His commands to train our children day and night, as we walk through our lives (Deuteronomy 6:7 and 11:19), God will bless our efforts and effect His will. Strong homeschools are natural by-products of strong families, and the Lord is the builder and sustainer of both!

Proverbs 31:10

 “A virtuous woman who can find her?
       She is worth far more than rubies”  Proverbs 31:10

Mission Impossible?

            Have you ever noticed that Christians, who have been part of the club for a while, have their own vocabulary? The "virtuous woman” is just such a  phrase, and it has been seared into our quasi social Christian vocabulary. Unfortunately virtuous isn’t exactly the literal translation of the word in the original text. The original word transliterated is “chayil”, it is a masculine noun, which means strength, might, efficiency, wealth, and it even has the connotation of military force.  I was surprised to learn the thought behind the word myself as I researched this topic, but then again who has the nerve to preach such a thing from the pulpit on Mother’s Day?

Regardless of wether or not the concept of such a strong woman makes us uncomfortable is irrelevant the truth is that this is essence of what scripture says. Now I am not suggesting that women should be rough and aggressive, I think the whole of scripture is very clear that is not God’s best for us. I just think it is interesting that even the most genuine of Christian leaders have difficulty reconciling the concept of such a strong and capable female with the gentle qualities that are easier to swallow.

            So, just who was this virtuous woman, this iron woman? Did she really live? Could one human woman really embody all these noble qualities? The honest answer is that no one really knows if this passage is a historical account of one woman’s life or just the best hopes of a mother for her son. Of this we are certain, these verses are the writing’s of King Lemuel and each word was inspired by God Himself. King Lemuel calls this entire chapter the “oracle” or mystery that his mother told him. I beg you take a pause here and read the first half of the chapter of Proverbs 31, it’s quite a challenge in itself. This wise woman encourages her son to defend the needy and the rights of the afflicted, a true call to selflessness.

            Perhaps the original virtuous woman was King Lemuel’s own mother, she was obviously a woman of great wisdom who could sum up in a few verses all her son needed to know in order to rule a kingdom. However I believe the truth of the mystery of the Proverbs 31 woman is that she is an ideal, a goal, something to strive for. Within the attributes of this woman we see the best performances of all the roles we play. She is rooted in faith, her husband’s true helpmate, mother of the year, and in general the holy grail of femininity. If these passages do not allude to an actual woman that existed, should we consider the ability to accomplish all these virtues ourselves to be mission impossible? Yes, we should.

            The nature of humanity, in its sin, is that perfection will always elude us. Our sinful nature is the antithesis of nobility, the hope of Christ is that we are not abandoned to this fate. Jesus Christ has done more for the liberation of women that Sanger and Steinem ever dreamed. Our Lord loving cared for the woman caught in the act of adultery that was thrown down naked in the streets by those who were charged with her spiritual well being. As the spiritual leaders of her day bellowed for her death they seemed to forget that it takes two to tango. Perhaps her lover was among their own number, nevertheless Jesus forgives her and gently tells her to go and sin no more. Could this woman actually go the rest of her life without committing a single sin? Of course she could not. However I believe after staring into the holy eyes of God Himself she spent the remainder of her life trying.

            If it is mission impossible for any one person to live up to the standard of these verses, why write  about it? I write these words and I live every day of my life with the belief that God only asks me to give Him my brokenness, and He is responsible for the outcome. In the 2 Corinthians 13:11 Paul encourages us to “aim for perfection”, these inspired words from a man who laments that he is the chief of sinners. The reality of the Christian life is that we simply cast our meager efforts and prayers towards heaven and God fashions them into something that can be used for His glory. 

            The concept of hard work without a guarantee of instant reward is hard for us to swallow in this day and age, especially Americans. We have become a culture of instant gratification.  The concept of exerting significant effort for the simple sake of obedience seems foreign to us. So without any promise of success why should we try? We should attempt the impossible because we should meet each day with a fresh commitment to walk in the grace and strength of our Lord, and leave the results to Him.

            So, to answer the 3,000 year old question, “who can find a virtuous woman?” I can. I have personally seen her. Her virtue of kindness lives in my mother who spends countless hours a day talking with elderly folk in her church who are lonely and haven’t anyone else to speak with. I have seen her strength in my friend Rebecca who eluded an iron grace and confidence in the Lord while her infant daughter battled cancer.  In my friend Pam, I have seen her stretch out her hand of kindness across two continents to give two orphans a home. Finally I have seen her in my friend Carrie who put aside her personal pain after a miscarriage to encourage me through the final days of a difficult pregnancy. In every tear wiped, meal prepared, prayer offered up, every lullaby sung, and every child welcomed home, she shines. Oh, yes, without a shadow of a doubt I have seen her!

She is not some fictional character that we should deem unattainable; she is a watermark for all women to strive for. Her worth is more valuable than jewels. Frankly jewels are just rocks that are slightly prettier than the other rocks, if you think about it. However God in His infinite wisdom created common rock aesthetically unappealing but the rare ones are the highly desired jewels. Gemstones are nothing more than the prom queens of the quarry, but we pay more for them than gravel because we have assigned them more worth. God has assigned the worth of these virtues clearly given in Proverbs 31 as more valuable than our human standard of riches, and I believe we should strive for this perfection.

The verses that open the chapter of scripture found in Proverbs 31, begins as a loving admonition from a mother to her son, and they remain so even to this day. I am training my sons to seek out such women, despite the fact that currently some of my boys think girls have cooties. I am raising my girls to walk in her steps. Every day I am aiming for these virtues of perfection and when I fail, I praise the God of grace that He catches me in His mercy. The Scriptures compare the Christian life to a yoke, a race, a war, and I think somehow we’ve missed the picture despite numerous illustrations. The American church has sanitized the gospel in order to make it more comfortable for us. We attempt to make God’s directives to us simple and appealing. The reality is that the Christian life is hard work, it’s physically, mentally, and spiritually challenging, and we are commanded to rise to the occasion.

I will never be perfection on this earth, but I will strive for it nonetheless. I must not use the loftiness of the goal to deter me from trying to reach it. A difficult challenge drives the ambitious and serves as an excuse for the lazy. One of my favorite quotes is from Thomas Edison, he said "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

 I want you to imagine yourself ten years from now looking back over your life, don’t you want to be able to say that you resigned each one of those days, every 3,652 of them to God’s will. I want to be able to say I lived every day to its fullest and cast off the fear of failure. I am not sure how many days I have left in this life, but God has numbered my days and ordained each one of them. When the days of my life are spent, it is my prayer that I can say as Paul did:

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” 2 Timothy 4: 7

So are you ready to work? At the end of each blog in the proverbs 31 project series, you will find a section like the following one. It will give you practical ways to apply the ideas of this chapter.

Read It: 

Read the following passages and pray that God would give you the courage to live them out.

1 Corinthians 9:24 – “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize”.

2 Timothy 4:7 – “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

Hebrews 12:1-3 – “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great    cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”

Colossians 1:10 -  “That you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;”

Work It:

Pray that God will open your eyes and allow you to see the women around you who are living out God’s purpose. Pray that God will send someone to walk beside you in this challenge and to mentor you.

Ask God to show you some way to glorify Him today. Imagine yourself reporting in at the end of the day, signing off on the work done. You can wash a dish out of drudgery, or out of worship. The issue is a matter of the heart.

Lastly, sincerely pray that God would show you the “weight” in your life, the wastes of your time and energy that keep you from giving God and your family all of yourself. This is a hard prayer to if done so in earnest, but as heart wrenching as the process may be, sanctification is not optional in the life of a believer.

The Body and the Bride

The church is an amazing entity, in it's uniqueness, it's value, and it's obligations. It's a worldwide organization that shouldn't seek to make a dime, that's singular purpose to work tirelessly for a goal that won't even be realized on this earth. The scriptures describe the church as the bride of Christ, a  picture of this divine romance between the Creator and the created. The church is also described as a family, as brethern, and here folks is where it get messy. All families have their moments, the days when our sanity hangs by a thread, contrasted by the times when were are so enamoured with each other that we would overlook all wrongs.

Ray and I have been blessed to be part of some great churches as we have been transferred all around the U.S., I have to say we have probably experienced the cream of the crop for the most part, especially in recent years. However we have still had our moments of disillusion with the family. There is an old saying "if you find a perfect church, don't join it, you'll ruin it" and that is so true. Much like the fact that even the best marriages are made of two depraved sinners attempting to live together to the glory of God, the church is comprised of many families from different backgrounds and convictions. In this line of thinking every Sunday is more like an extended family reunion, with all the relatives gathering at a potluck buffet, no wonder it can get stressful.

There are also cultural issues, especially in the American church, so much of what we call "traditional" in the American church are really unbiblical innovations that have only been around for less than a century. So what do we do? Do we continue to splinter off into our own groups, based on our comfort and sometimes our convictions? Are house churches the answer? Many of the problems facing the modern church never existed in scripture, it's hard to find time to squabble over ideology and social posturing when your brethren are being martyred all around you. Maybe that's our issue, we don't understand the severity of the christian life, the sacredness of our duty.

The second problem is the human condition, we tend to surround ourselves with people who makes us feel good, not necessarily what's good for us. For those who suffered through "normal" high school remember cliques? Well unfortunately the same ideology has invaded the church, we have bible studies by age segregation, by occupation, and so forth. Why should I participate in a bible study for homeschooling moms? If all the ladies of the church were part of one study, perhaps some might be encouraged that they could take on that challenge. I might also develop more compassion for moms who are single and have to work outside the home.What good comes of these divisions?  If we live and work as a whole unit we understand each other's weaknesses and strengths, we are able to love one another in unity and encourage each other toward godliness. Would my son not learn more about what it means to be a man by being his father's disciple and spending time with the men of the church? If my son is surrounded by godly men he sees godly manhood modeled around him. In even the best youth groups a young man sees immature youths still trying to grow themselves, not mature examples of believers. Age segregation and occupational groupings, in my opinion are some of the greatest tools of division and destruction in the modern church.

The American church has sliced and diced itself into all these sub-units that make us feel comfortable, and because of the prevalence of segregation in the school system we have come to know over the last 100 years, we have come to accept it in the church. Separating into groups makes life easy, and just like high school, it provides us with the cool crowd. We have the jocks, we just call them by a different name, we have the pretty girls, the wallflowers, the nerds, and so on. The reason we have these problems is because we are no longer viewing the church as a family, we have institutionalized the bride of Christ. So when trouble comes, we have an attitude of "privatizing" or we'll just find another church! The same thought process pervades our homes, my marriage isn't serving my needs, so I'll just find another wife! This ideology of "jumping ship" is nowhere in scripture, the bible tell us to learn, to train, to forgive, to disciple, to persevere. If our children are acting unbiblically do we trade them in? No we circle the wagons, look at the situation, and say this child needs training. Sometimes in my family an older child will encourage a younger child to be diligent or obedient, and as a parent this makes my heart warm, that is exactly how brethren should act. Other times my older child will jump in the muck of sin and whack that younger sibling, and that's how the church acts sometimes too. Only by the church working together has a family unit can it even identify the challenges it faces and overcome them, just like a family. The church should act like a family, but it doesn't take the place of the family, but that's another post altogether.

I have had my moments of severe disillusionment with the church, but I am the bride, I am part of the problem and if I submit myself to the Lord I can be part of the solution. I'm not talking about the "machine" that we have come to know as church, constantly churning out entertainment to satisfy our carnal wants. I'm talking about the true bride, who is fervently and passionately in love with the Savior. We are one body, there's no getting out of this, we cannot severe a human body in half and hope to survive, and we cannot severe the church into messy bits and hope to thrive. We have a choice, we can be the whiny child that fusses for their way or we can be part of the solution. We can be the ear that listens, the heart that cares, the eyes that weep for the body, and most important the knees that ache from hours in prayer for our church. As Americans we have a hard time with commitment, we can return just about anything or get out of almost any obligation. However the church of scripture is an eternal membership, if you don't like the product ask God to show you your part in improving it. I don't know about you, but I'm in this for the long haul...

A Lost Nobility

It was a bizarre introduction; several years ago a gentleman from my church was introducing me to a new family and suddenly realized he didn’t actually know my name, so he jokingly said this is Mrs. Ray. You see, I am a pianist, and as such I have spent the majority of my adult years at the keys before, during, and after a church service.  Often people talk to my husband and he points in my direction at the piano and tells them I am his wife, when people finally get around to staying more than five minutes after service and meet me post-prelude they think of me as Mrs. Ray. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My greatest sense of accomplishment comes from being Mrs. Ray. I enjoy being aligned with this man, playing for his team so to speak. Unfortunately, I haven’t always felt this way. When I was young, both physically and spiritually, I wanted my own name, my own entity. I wasn’t satisfied being the wife of a good man, oh no, I wanted recognition for being me and for whatever talents I perceived I possessed. I hadn’t been taught by my family or church that the whole “they two shall become one flesh” wasn’t poetic metaphor, that the Lord intended it to be taken literally. So for years I tried to severe my identity from my husband’s and in doing so damaged our marriage and my own relationship with God.  Then like the pinnacle of all the beautiful stories of my life, God intervened, bringing people into my life to show me the path I needed to be on.  They began to teach me about the nobility of being a wife, it's a lost art in our post-modern, post-christian society, but if we are to thrive as people of God we will have to learn this lost nobility.

It’s all in who you know,  this cliché’ may be modern but the principle is ancient. If you study the ancient world at all you will see Family Dynasties ruling China, Celtic Clans with ruling Chieftains’ passing succession down by paternity, the ever so popular fairy tale of Camelot, begins with a secret son born of the King’s blood that takes the throne and unites the Britons. Family is everything, in every society, in every age, to return to the vernacular, families rule! Strong patriarchs, raising strong sons in succession make nations strong, but as every chess player knows, if you compromise the queen the game is over. That’s what we are seeing in our current culture, we are compromising the queen, stealing her value and nobility.

In ages past to be the wife of a good man, was a title of honor, a woman’s first name was rarely used in polite society by a gentleman who wasn’t a close relation. A woman was addressed by her standing in society, and she was standing next to her husband.  I can guarantee that some of you are already typing scathing responses in your mind about how I must devalue women and so forth, but take a deep breath and read on. Anytime there is a fundamental shift in a social paradigm, we have to ask ourselves three questions:

What was changed? Who changed it? What was their motive for change?

The change is obvious, women want independence, control, they want to be in charge, this desire is nothing new. Take a cursory look at Genesis, and you will see God telling Eve that as a result of the fall “her desire will be for her husband (more accurately translated for her husband’s position), but he will rule over her”, sounds like a curse alright. Take two newly minted sinners, place them in a romantic environment and tell them that their very natures are going to make them desire to rip each other’s heads off. That explains a lot, it certainly clarifies the motives of the feminist, she doesn’t want to be ruled over, she wants her husband’s position. It’s human nature to desire what we cannot have, our sin drives us to covetousness, and we women think autonomy is the holy grail of guilty pleasures, it’s innate and inescapable in our unredeemed form . This desire has been present for all human history, look at the story of the Egyptian Pharaoh Hatsheput; she was a female ruler over Egypt. She desired power and position above all else, this led her to concoct an outrageous tale about her divinity, then she dropped all titles related to being female, subsequently assuming the title of Pharaoh, eventually she even wore a fake beard! This lady was invested in her ideology to say the least.

The feminists have done the same, step by step, they have concocted an outrageous lie, then systematically stripped away what it meant to be female, and assumed male leadership. My question is where did this leave the queen? You may say she’s on the throne, autonomous, and doing fine! Perhaps if the curse of desire for her husband’s position was her only longing she would be fulfilled, or if our lives were just this brief vapor on earth and there was not eternity or account to be given, but neither of these are reality. You see inside every little girl thrives the dream of a fairytale, Prince Charming, true love, the Castle, the whole nine yards. Women may have found power, but they stand alone. They stand without the joy of their daughters, the strength of their sons, the love and protection of their husbands, and most importantly without salvation from their God. The queen, my friend, has been compromised and the consequences are dire.

Unless…this is one of my favorite words in all of the English language, unless we return to the teachings of scripture and the idea of a wife of character being the personification of nobility. Unless we throw ourselves on the mercy of the Savior and He renews our minds to understand His paths. Unless we teach our daughters to war with their natures and embrace the nobility of being feminine and designed by God to be woman, the queen will continue to be compromised. There is great and precious value in being the wife of a good man and in fulfilling that role throughout our days. I know that sounds archaic to our modern ears that barely rise above the drowning tide of feminist’ witches brew that has been steeping for decades in our culture, but personally I think it about time for a modern day fairy tale.

Over the next several weeks I will endeavor to crawl verse by verse through the well known passage in Proverbs 31. I will attempt to glean from the scriptures what it means to take on this noble role. If you would like to take this journey with me stick around as we wind through this section of scripture. It is a passage ripe with sacrifice, joy, love and a heroine that helps secure her husband’s place and family’s security, sounds like an epic adventure to me. A virtuous woman, amid the ashes of our burning sinful natures…can you find her?

Tales of the Budget Beast and Pantry Monster

The words bulk foods and large families are sort of naturally inclusive concepts. If you have a bulk of children your are going through mountains of food. Adding to the frustration is the time required to shop for such a large family and taking into consideration the massive vehicles we drive, it's a costly venture to run all around town hunting down the best bargain. A godly man I know recently joked to me that his children were eating through their college tuition. Most large families tend to live more frugally than average folks, but with rising gas prices the cost of groceries has become an enormous concern for all families. Unless you are blessed to live on enough acreage to grow considerable amounts of food, the cost of groceries is something you can't avoid. Throw health consciousness into this quandary and you could quite easily spend your life centered around trying to keep everybody feed without sending the bank account into the red!

The Chief and I knew we had to get off the hamster wheel when it came to feeding our family, as a homeschooling mom I didn't have to time to shop during the week, and our weekends were to precious to waste on shopping. So we decided to stock up! Big time! Gone are the quaint canisters that once graced my pantry shelves. They have been replaced by 5 gallon buckets from US Plastics and self dispensing boxes of canned veggies, and what a lovely sight it is! My husband and sons also fixed up some shelving in the stairwell that leads down stairs to our finished basement. It is amazing how much those shelves can hold. We also claimed a coat closet for a second pantry, because as every mom of large family knows, normal coat closets are useless for a family this size anyway. The key to bulk storage and shopping monthly/quarterly is planning, planning, planning! Not only do you need to devise a storage plan, you need to create a master shopping list to keep an itemized list of everything you buy. My Master Shopping List  is a color coded spreadsheet, little frustrates me more than having to run out to the store because I forgot something! Finally train your children to work the system, mark your shelves, buckets, even your fridge drawers, and teach them were things go.

The end result? I shop for bulk foods: wheat grains, rice, beans, rolled oats, sucuanat, etc. once a quarter. There is a wonderful bulk foods market an hour or so south of us that has a petting zoo and lovely little bookstore, we visit this store as a family fun day quarterly. The gentleman who manages the Yoders Country Market, was kind enough to inform us that he places his orders on Friday, so we call ahead and make sure he has the goods we need. We shop at Costco once a month as a family. Costco is a warehouse type store, it costs to join, but they sell many organic items like peanut butter, jam, agave, meats, milk, and some healthy and hygeine items that are paraben/sulfate free, these purchases save us much more money that we spend. We also get a percentage back at the end of the year based on the membership we selected. That leaves us with stopping in Aldi Food Market weekly on our way back from the Chiropractor, for fresh produce and any other bits like milk or eggs. Aldi's eggs and milk are not organic, but they are produced without growth hormones or antibiotics, or so the label says.

A few ending comments, Us Plastics is run by a christian gentleman who sent me a hand written note a week after my order, and included gospel booklet with my order.  I don't know about you, but that just warms my heart, and the Chief and I like keeping our money in the family.You may also snag some buckets for free if you ask around town at bakeries, etc. Due to concerns over food sensitivities we have and leeching plastics we choose to buy new buckets. A word about coupons, due to the fact that we buy the majority of our food from places that don't accept coupons, it pretty much a moot point. I do find online coupons for the few name brand items I buy or seasonal items. I have tallied the cost of our grocery bill and it is on par with the national average, considering that our family is nearly three times the size of the national average (3.14  according to the latest census), I'd say that's quite the bargain...

Penmaship on Purpose

One of the great difficulties of being a homeschooling mom, is...well..., the fact that you are the mom! You are spiritually and emotionally invested in these children, they are more than a job or part time commitment. As a christian you also realize that scripture gives you clear direction about training up your children and redeeming every moment of the day to use for this purpose. We are also directed not to "provoke our children to wrath" (Ephesians 6). As a child, little irritated me more than handwriting practice. It always seemed to be filled with dreary useless drivel. I felt like a robot mechanically reproducing page after page of silly sentences. I have found a few good penmanship programs, like "A Reason for Writing" and "Classically Cursive", however these workbooks can get quite pricey and they still lacked the depth I was looking for.

One day my husband asked me to find a way to work the Shorter Catechism into our school curricula, my initial thought was how in the world will I find time to teach one more thing! As I tried to wrap my sleep deprived brain around the Chief's idea I had an epiphany! Not really as grand glorious as an epiphany, but rather a logical plan, my children would write the Shorter Catechism! In keeping with our classical education ideology they would do it three times over as well, once in manuscript as young children, then in cursive, and finishing up in advanced cursive! Not only was this purposeful penmanship practice that served a kingdom minded goal, it was going to save us some serious cash! I printed out the entire Shorter Catechism for free offline, then found some handwriting paper from Donna Young. I was even able to snag a cool picture from wikipedia for the cover of my binder, along with a brief historical synopsis.

I divided my binder into three sections based on manuscript, cursive, and advanced cursive. I then used my quintessential red pen to write out the individual questions and answers from the Shorter Catechism for each skill level, and placed it in a sheet protector within the binder. The fabulous part is that I am writing the Shorter Catechism myself three times over, which frankly I could use both the spiritual and the penmanship practice! Secondly it's yet another subject we can do with "the one room school house approach" which is my preferred method of educating our children. It working out splendidly in the Via Academy, the Chief is happy, and my precious blessings have penmanship on purpose.

It was Accidentally on Purpose

There are deliberate steps you take in life, purposeful strides you make to achieve your goals. On the other hand for some of us supernatural providence intervenes and takes us a place we never intended to go. The later scenario is our story. It's a tale of blessed intervention on the part of a loving God in the lives of two wayward children, twisted and molded into a kingdom focused family committed to becoming God chasers, and living a life we never knew existed. This is our story...

Ray and I grew up in rural Virgina, a place where the definition of Christianity is ill defined and there aren't really clear jurisdictions as to where "the world" really is. Christian school was okay (for the rich kids) and homeschooling was for weirdos. It was a story I imagine is similar to many people who grow up in the bible belt, where church attendance is a as important as high school football, and unfortunately Jesus is pretty much relegated to mascot status as well. That world is starting to fade away now and the traditions of the church that held the world at bay have begun to weaken as rural communities begin to show the fruit of the social Christianity that they have clung too for generations. We are probably the last generation who will recall such a place in our country. I don't grieve for it, I am glad to see it go and the boundaries between Christians and traditionalists become more defined, but that's another post.

When we were married we knew we wanted something different for our marriage and our family. The problem was we had no idea how to get there or even which direction to start walking. There is an old saying that "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", that is so true of our life story. The story of our family began with a single honest prayer for guidance offered up in sincerity, and God answered that prayer in a way we could never have expected, taking us across the state and  this country and back again several times over, all the while placing people in our lives to train us.

Fast forward from that single prayer on our wedding day to almost 15 years later, we are the homeschooling family of 7 children and counting. We have been involved with church planting for 4 years in two states, and Jesus is everything but a mascot to us now. As I look around my life since I married there are days when I think to myself "how did I end up here?". Our Journey as been one of twists, turns, heartbreaks, frustrations, and temptations, but today we are finally beginning to see the path in front of us with clarity. Knowing our footing can be sure as we are rooted in sufficiency of Scripture for our guidance and steering clear of the dangerous traditions of man. I hope you will enjoy reading about our journey, there is a lifetime of material yet to be covered, and it all happened accidentally on purpose...