Choose This Day

When we talk to others about home schooling we normally get two questions.  First, how do our kids learn socialization skills when they aren't spending eight hours a day around twenty to thirty other young adults?  I talked about that one back here.

The second question is why we, as Christians, would want to remove our children from an environment that needs the "salt" as Jesus called us. Something in yesterday's news (more on that below) brought that question to mind, or even more, what our answer has been since day one.

Believers in Christ are all too familiar with the daily struggle to, as Paul puts it, "walk in the Spirit and ... not fulfill the lusts of the flesh." Wrestling against our "flesh," as the Bible often calls our human bent toward sinful behaviors, is a daily task - I want to gossip, I want to complain, I was to stress out instead of pray, I want to get angry, and on and on and on.  What does this have to do with homeschooling?

Basically, I find it unreasonable to expect my children to accomplish something that I am still striving to do and that is to be more of an influence on those around me than they are on me. Let's be honest - children don't encourage one another to do the right thing in deed or word when left alone in a group.  After all, as God has called me to obedience I have had to remove myself from many people and situations that make it too difficult to be holy as God has called me to be  (1 Peter 1:14-16).

On the other hand, I've found that with the right moral and ethical foundation and training children can eventually learn to make great decisions (wise ones).  With the right foundations, when faced with wrong things and tough situations they will be equipped to make the right decision to avoid it (Prov. 22:3).

So, the news? California recently passed a law which requires homosexual lifestyles to be taught in all levels of history curiculum.  That according to CNN and Fox News.  So what does a Christian parent trying to raise a person to adulthood do when dealt that hand?  The answer to me is obvious.  When an institution is doing all it can to teach my children to appreciate and accept a morality that opposes the morality that I am trying to teach them - and I'm giving them twice as many hours a day as I have to do it! - the decision is easy.  Regardless of the financial cost, regardless of the cost of person goals, regardless of the time burden.  I won't sacrifice my children's hearts and minds on the alter of "life experience." 

For those of us not living is California we are in a good position.  We can look to the decisions and laws made there as the wind before the storm, like turning of the leaves in the fall.  We can choose to change our lifestyles now and make moves to ensure our children aren't indoctrinated with lies. 

Steve Maxwell from Titus2 put it this way:
"Dads desiring a godly legacy understand the need to train their children's minds in a Christ-focused, virtuous environment. They will pay their property tax bills (much goes to public and charter schools and state colleges) without the "benefit" of having their children's education funded in order to avoid the godless, promiscuity-promoting, humanistic environment that the state system provides. Families avoiding state-funded education bear the added financial burden to purchase their own curriculum to ensure that God has His place in the knowledge that is shaping their children's minds."

No one ever "finds" time - it must be made.

The last few weeks have been a little weird for me. I took a break from school until next spring. I also have very little additional duties at work. So with the little that I have to do, I have learned a few interesting things about myself.


1. Despite my best efforts, I am still a workaholic. I am completely uncomfortable not having "too much on my plate." This is especially true with my job.


2. If I don't have things I have to get done, I am extremely tempted to do things that have absolutely no meaning in them (TV, games, blogging - ha!).


3. Any lack of deep relationship with my family and friends isn't caused by being too busy. It's caused by being relationally challenged. I actually have a very hard time putting down work or activities just to look another in the eyes, talk about life and each other, and being known by another.


4. When I slow and calm myself down enough to relate with others I realize my "business" has made me too busy to know myself. One can't share what one doesn't know.

Thank God for His grace both to reveal my weaknesses and to allow His power to change me.

Long time, no talk...

Well, it's been well over a month since my last blog. Of course, I just chose not to blog even though I wanted to. A quick recap - I am finishing Theological Survey 201 and start 202 next week sometime.

Candi's ankle is somewhat healed. Her ligament is not healed and sometimes looks like it is dangling under her ankle bone. Plus there's overall mild swelling constantly. However, don't cry for her too much; we are running the Sabino Canyon 10k this Saturday at 5pm (come on out and root us on if you're not going to Beginning's instead!). She is getting on swell with school, too.

The kids are doing great. At the beginning of our school year, Nori and Bubba both had their strengths and weaknesses. The strengths were pretty strong and the weaknesses were the fear of the day (when getting to those subjects). Now, the strengths are even stronger and God's grace has given us the wisdom to teach to their styles and see what prevents them from excelling at those, too. Nori is getting math quite well now (even though she says differently) and Christian is really picking up his reading ability (even though he says differently). It's great to see progress; it's amazing to see the change since we started homeschooling!

Wyatt is a smart little bugger. We took proactive steps to teach Nori and Christian the basic stuff (letters, colors, shapes). We don't have much time to do that with Wyatt, but he spends so much time around the others that he's just picking it up. It's funny how much he's learned from toys too. He has learned blue, green, and red from his Cars toys (blue - Mr. The King, green - Chick Hicks, red - Lightning McQueen). Wyatt also loves to get out and "go bye-bye". He loves playing in the dirt and roughing up the dogs. He's getting further into his ability to express lack of appreciation for naps, eating yucky food, and his parents not focusing on him. That boy can scream! Funny thing is we can see right through it and getting him smiling pretty quick, too.

Really cool news - A couple of weeks ago, while on a hiking trip with our friends, the Harts (and their tribe), and the new music leader at Beginnings, Seth, Candi reminded me that Nori and Christian wanted to be baptized. There is a ton of water in the river right now. Nori went for it; Christian didn't want to deal with the cold (all the water is coming from melted snow off of the Catalina Mountains). It was an awesome experience to baptize my own kid! I love seeing them grow in their faith and knowledge of our Lord Jesus; this was just another step. There were a lot of other people there outside of our little group and I'm so, so proud that they both were "not ashamed of the gospel of Christ". Christian really wanted to do it, but he's never been one for cold water. I know he'll get his chance as the temperatures get into the hundreds.

There's a ton other stuff that happened but I don't have time now.

Good Update

Well, it's been a while because we've been busy. I'm working at night this week and "night" weeks are always busier. We're implementing a new schedule for homeschooling and it's going pretty well. I'm a little too selfish to instantly adjust my life and desires, but by God's grace I'm getting there.

Day 7 with out the TV - We don't miss the TV much. In fact, it's kind of "out of sight out of mind." Occasionally, I want to sit down and relax, have a little fun. One of the things the Maxwell's stressed was how fun is the worlds counterfeit for joy. True joy is derived from living a life completely devoted to God. Desiring fun then directly assaults God's desire for us. I haven't fully ascribed to their point, but as day after day passes I am more convinced and convicted that "fun" has kept me from loving God and gaining joy from it.

I started Theology I on Monday. The classes run from Monday to Monday (at midnight EST) and I'm behind schedule. Like I said, "night" weeks at work get really busy. I'm trying to include my schedule into the home schooling one. I've never been a great time-manager so I appreciate the trial-by-fire. Maybe necessity is the mother of adjustment, too.

The best result of our new schedule and "TVlessness" is that we're making time to pray and study God's word every morning separately AND as a family - every day! It's letting us communicate and experience God's love and will together daily. It feels like we've had a re- occurring car problem and just figured out the problem was that we're missing a crucial but simple nut/bolt/seal/etc.

God bless you!

Weekend events

Well, this Saturday we were invited by our friends to a homeschooling conference. It was by the Maxwell family who has been homeschooling for over 25 years. They have eight children and some amazing fruit has come from their labor. All of their children are very impressive, are outgoing (the stigma with homeschooling is that the children won't know how to behave in public or relate to others), and have done some very impressive things. You'll have to visit their website to see it all.

One of the things they feel strongly about is that TV is completely out. Again you'll have to check out the website to read their reasoning but I see a lot of value in what they think. The biggest thing to me is preventing Nori, Christian, and Wyatt from having to overcome the lies, false values, indoctrination, etc. that comes from watching years of television shows, movies, and commercials. Now that I have children I realize kids don't need to see or know about wrong things in order to live a right life. So I agree with a lot of what the Maxwell's taught this weekend. We're going to try 30-days with out the TV (we haven't had any channels really (cable or local) for that last year, but we still watch plenty of movies and play video games.). I'll go ahead and say now that I have to keep one going because my Theology 201 (starts Tuesday!) is half online and half DVDs!. I'm interested to see if the time we spend with the TV is time God actually wants us spending elsewhere.

What a week!

This week has been just plain rough. After last weeks revelations and questions, I'm trying to ensure my priorities are in order. It seems I'm over tasked with school because I'm now a week behind in the work. I keep telling myself I'd rather get a C in school and an A in family/husbandry (I really don't think that's a word). With God's grace, I'll be successful and bring God more glory by it.

We got the home school curriculum and Candi is doing an amazing job as always. I just don't know that I would ever do as well as she does in planning and completing plans for our kids. i don't care what anyone in the world says - Candi has the most important job in the world and she is an absolute success at it. I hope to give her a raise soon (depending on how our stock goes this quarter :) ). We're going to teach the kids year round so we're not actually doing a daily-planned lesson. We (by that I mean Candi) just work on a little bit each day and the kids really enjoy it. Nori is happy as a clam being home schooled; Bubba is taking some adjusting. He really likes the social time, a lot. Candi's just making a big effort to invite his friends from school over and getting out during the day to visit other friends.

The only real "stressor" right now is that I'm getting to the final assignments of the Evangelism class, which means I am going to have to go witness to someone. I don't think I'm going start with a stranger. I know some folks at works that I really care about and would probably find it "fun" to be the guinea pig for my assignment. I truly believe I should be able and willing to witness at any time, any place because I believe the saving gospel is the most important message and is meant for everyone in the world. I just need practice and experience so I'm starting small. Here's a question - should Christian's do the door-to-door witnessing that a lot of other religions do? Is it effective and is it biblical (in that there is a biblical precedent for it)?

To home school or not to home school

The kids have been in school at the Academy of Tucson since mid-August; even though it's a good school my wife and I are praying about home schooling them again beginning in December. We've scoped out the program we want to use. It's called LifePac. They basically publish each chapter in a text book separately. It makes things really easy for planning the lessons and course work. Of course, Candi is the one doing the majority of the schooling (I'm there for a solid .5 to 1% of effort). I'm just excited because I love what home schooling did for our family last year. I believe that if a family can make the sacrifices to live on basically one income, it is well worth it! My family as a whole and kids are much happier when home schooled.
There seems to be a lot of factors that determine if a family will be successful or not at it. The biggest one to Candi is whether or not she has a support group. I can totally understand what she's saying. I guess it's kind of like the old rule that says we're afraid of what we don't understand. It seems the consensus from the world at large is that kids come out of home schooling unable to adapt and succeed in life because they haven't had the relational interaction necessary to cope with day-to-day real life. I can see that point, seriously. Why even today my daughter learned something extremely valuable. At school she has a "reading buddy." That's someone from an older grade that reads with you each week. Well, evidently Nori's reading buddy hits her, calls her stupid, and says that another boy Nori talks to is dumb. I can only thank the public school system that she learned that lesson before she got much further in life. How could Candi and I ever ensure at home that she's receiving all that important wisdom and experience?! (Did I lay the sarcasm on too thick?)
Anyway, any comments? Are we nuts for teaching them at home? Are we the best parents in the world? We'll see. Maybe they'll be 25 and blaming me for not knowing how to deal with someone at work hitting them.
God bless you all!