Last month I had the privilege of talking with Dr. Grant about that vision and had to admit, I seemed to be in a season of disillusionment. Oh, I still listened to and was inspired by all the getting started with homeschooling talks that are so popular this time of year. It is not that I have any regrets but I no longer am starry eyed about how it all will turn out. Dr. Grant admitted that he too was not sure about his children at certain points in their life before they were adults. But the point he made was we really do not know what the future will hold for us or for our children. In the meanwhile we are to continue faithful to our calling as homeschool parents.At this point in my life, we have graduated our oldest from homeschool, and, Lord willing, will have another graduate this coming year. In addition we have another in high school and our youngest is in elementary school. On bad days I joke to myself that I even though I have made glaring mistakes with my teenagers, I still have hopes of my youngest emerging from my parenting relatively unscathed!

But, as I said, that is on my bad days. When I am thinking clearly and am in more of a spiritual balance (!) I can recognize much grace and much delight in all the years I have homeschooled. I have the fondest memories of early homeschooling, of amazing field trips, of entertaining talent shows, of countless mornings and afternoons just curled up on the couch with my children around me listening to me read aloud from many many living books. Homeschooling has given me the opportunity to teach my children as individuals, to tailor their lesson offerings to what they needed. I used the same curriculum through the years with all four of my children and each one took something different away from it. One child drank in all the beauty and creativity of the arts, another child’s imagination was fed by all the classic tales of fantasy, still another was able to keep up with his academic work even though he had huge difficulties reading, as I read everything aloud to him and we delighted together in the books that my older children read on their own without me. And now my youngest looks at me wide eyed at the antics of the Wilder children in Farmer Boy, the third time reading it aloud for me, but it is all new to him and we are both laughing and being amazed together at the hard work, huge quantities of food and industriousness of farm life.

I can honestly say I am looking forward to another year of homeschooling. I love that I can tell my oldest son what he needs to graduate and he can on his own, do the necessary work in a mixture of self study courses and outside classes. I love that I am still reading quite a bit aloud to my middle son, that I can choose books that I love to read, that I am looking forward to reading along with him. Books on theology, on worldview, on culture along with classics that I never got around to reading myself. And even though it is the fourth go round on teaching year three, I love that I can share those beloved books scheduled for this year with yet another child who will look at me with wonder.

But one of the biggest benefits of our homeschooling journey has been that I have become a lifetime learner. Earlier this month, I visited my daughter who is living and going to school in NYC. Before my trip I did lots of research on self guided walking tours. I am never happier than when I can visit a city and know all the stories behind the buildings, recognize the architecture and realize the life that was happening at the time that building was built. I get such a thrill looking at a street or a walkway and knowing that an artist, writer, musician, etc whose work has delighted me has walked those same streets, lived in that very building. So I purchased several books, checked out others from the library, and arrived in the city armed with a list of places I wanted to visit and guided walks for nearly every area of the city. The first day I decided to try to make an early morning gallery talk at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Frans Hals. Because he is a Dutch painter, I felt an affinity with him. The talk did not disappoint. I left with a new understanding of life in the Netherlands, of the reformation, of the value of art in the common life. The rest of my week was filled with visits to other historic museums, libraries, churches and sites where certain events occurred. I had my trusty guidebook with me at all times. When my daughter accompanied me, she put up with my “obsession” as she called it, with the history of the city. I know it was humiliating for her to be with such an obvious tourist!

I do believe my years of reading about history, art, literature and so much more has whetted my appetite to continue to learn when the opportunity presents itself. For that I am so very thankful. I did not know or expect that when I started homeschooling my children. My goal was for my children to be lifetime learners, to be self-directed, responsible, freedom loving adults. The thing is that we really can not dictate what our children will be like as they get older. It is encouraging to see many of those traits in my children. Yet, we are all unfinished works, even this mom who is on the other side of 50, has so very much to learn. The upside is that our God is forming us daily into the image of Christ just as He is forming our children. We are not perfect, we make lots of mistakes, and yet, we press on. We may not always be the best example to our children. Some days it seems I have to do a lot of apologizing to my children. But instead of making me feel weaker, I know that it is the necessary burning off of all that dross. As my children get older, they are forgiving of me in a more understanding way. For this I am grateful.

It is good to have vision, to see in your children how God might use them in the building of His kingdom. I just need to be reminded that how that vision will be filled in is not for me to control.

And so another year begins. May your homeschool year be full of grace, rich in delight and grounded in His truths,

—JMT

Yet whispers of defeat were being voiced. “I’m so tired of homeschooling,” says one. In another sigh you hear this: “How hard is it to put your children in school after being homeschooled?” OK, I know you don’t exactly hear whispers when you are just reading email postings, but I am certain some of us may be hearing some discouraging words, perhaps just in our own mind, possibly even from well-meaning friends and family members. Hopefully you have started the year with a certain measure of excitement, maybe mixed with a modicum of trepidation, most likely with some definite expectations of the new year. Of course you were aware that not every day will go as planned, not every curriculum choice will be a perfect fit.

You feel weary after a day in which you may feel like you are doing battle with your children, pitting your will against theirs. Those whispers may be suggesting that today’s labor is a mistake, that you do not know what you are doing, that you were not adequately trained for homeschooling.

But let me assure you, you are “well doing.”

If you have those days where you feel like you are flagging, consider this.Is it your curriculum? Could you make some changes? You can always borrow something to try it out and you can always sell what does not work well for you.

Is there ill discipline among the children? Those need to be dealt with first, gently but firmly.

Are you getting enough sleep? A tired mom is often an irritated mom.

Are you tending to your devotional life? A dry cistern cannot water anyone.

Why did you decide to homeschool? Was it a calling?

An article by Reb Bradley, “Solving the Crisis in Homeschooling,” has recently been re-posted by Josh Harris and has been making the rounds on Facebook and other venues. It suggests some blind spots in homeschooling.

Actually the points made in this article would be fodder for a whole other column. But this is one of my favorite bits.

One of the reasons parents homeschool is because they want to accomplish something good in their children. Success in homeschooling requires that academic, moral and spiritual goals be set. It is only natural for parents to have high hopes and dreams for their children. However, when we begin to see our children as a reflection or validation of us, we become the center of our dreams, and the children become our source of significance. When that happens in our home it affects the way we relate with our children, and subtly breaks down relationship.

Of course we want to accomplish something good in our children. We want to give them a sound academic education but we want to do so much more than that. We want to educate our children in light of God’s truths.

We want all they learn to be seen through the grid of true truth as Francis Schaeffer was wont to say. We want our children to know they are in God’s hands, that all of history is in God’s hands. That the world about them is created by Him for His glory. That the beauty we see in literature, the arts, in nature study is beautiful because we are creative beings with a soul. He made us to know and glorify Him and the world we see and learn about confirms that. God calls each one of us to be faithful to the task of rearing our children. If He has called us to homeschool our children, then we are doing so as a matter of obedience.

But it is not a joyless, plodding obedience of drudgery. Nor is it merely a discharge of a duty. We GET to be with our children, we know them in a way we would not know them if they were in a regular school classroom seven or more hours a day (plus that hour in the yellow bus). We get to learn alongside them. We have the privilege of seeing sparks of delight, of nurturing their gifts, of helping them over the rough patches. We have the confidence that He who called us is faithful.

A verse I turn to again and again is Galatians 6:9. Here it is in the KJV “And let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.”

One of my favorite ways to study the Bible is using a Strong’s Concordance with the Hebrew and Greek dictionaries. I do not do this often enough but it is always amazing to me what you see when you go back to the Greek and “unpack” just one verse. Here is the verse unpacked with the literal meaning in parenthesis.

And let us not be weary (lack courage, lose heart, be faint hearted, to fail in heart, to faint) in well (right, beautiful, valuable, virtuous, good, honest, meet) doing, for in due (the season divinely appointed for the reaping) season (the set or proper time) we shall reap (harvest) if we faint not (relax, dissolve, melt, put off and so to enfeeble).

What does that tell me? It is a friend who comes along beside me, throws an arm over my shoulder and says, “We can do this; let us not be faint hearted; what we are doing is a beautiful thing. We may not be reaping now all that we have planted, but in His time we will harvest if we don’t melt when it gets a bit hot.”

For additional encouragement, I asked a mom who graduated her last child a year or so ago to share her perspective. Most of us are still in the trenches, so to speak. Sometimes it is nice to hear from someone on the other side who finished well.

“Homeschooling was a long but worthwhile journey for our family. One of our greatest trials came early in our homeschool journey. We became caregivers for my dad after my mother became sick suddenly and died within four months. We took care of my father for the next 2 1/2 years who had lost both legs and was not mobile without help. During this period of our life we had to rethink how we homeschooled our children. Our schedule was no longer our own. For our family, homeschooling became a series of life lessons, not always found in a book. Homeschooling taught our children the discipline of education without the negative peer pressure. We learned to stay surrendered to God’s will. The awesome journey put before us was the key to perseverance in our homeschool journey. The blessings over the 16 years of homeschooling outweighed all of the trials we faced along our journey. When things got tough, I always remembered what one of my college professors wrote on the board during exam week: ‘THIS TOO SHALL PASS!’ Yes, it did, and we are stronger because of the journey God called us to.”

As we homeschool we are in a season of much busyness, lots of running around, schedules to follow, classes to attend, not to mention all that goes with life as a family. It is easy to lose sight of what we are doing and why. Are you fainting?

Be refreshed in God’s Word and by His people.

This month we are starting what I hope will be a regular column, “Where are they now?” (Page 14) in which we hear from a homeschool graduate about how homeschooling prepared her for life.

If you know of a graduate that would like to contribute to this column, please let me know. I firmly believe that God is building His kingdom through faithful families that are training up their children through home education.

—JMT

I was reading to my son in The Roar on the Other Side: A Guide for Student Poets about how noisy our world is. The author, Suzanne Clark, says we must learn quiet. Our culture is at war with quiet. Mrs. Clark quotes from C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters in which Screwtape boasts that he will “make the whole universe a noise … . The melodies and silences of heaven will be shouted down in the end.”

Mrs. Clark goes on, “Our Creator asks us to ‘be still and know that I am God’. . . If we cultivate the art of inner quiet and develop habits to nurture the mind’s green fields, we will hear the melodies of heaven. … Stillness needs a larger room than most of us give it.” How do we create this larger room? “By making decisions to read a good book instead of watching TV or to take a walk instead of play a video game, you are enlarging this room. Writing poetry will add floor space and a skylight.”

OK, OK, I am not saying we all should be writing poetry. But some of us could and others of us can at least find that mind space if we made different choices.

In my devotions in Tabletalk magazine, the topic this month is Sabbath rest. People have differing views of the Sabbath and how it is to be kept. R.C. Sproul Jr. sums it up well when he says, “Rest isn’t just ceasing from working, it is also ceasing from worrying. It’s not easy. Indeed in a manner of speaking, rest, especially ceasing from worry, is hard work. It takes discipline and fortitude to let go of all that has us worried.” What a conundrum, now we have to work at resting! But isn’t that the way it always is. Something inside us urges us to war against what we are called to. God has to drag us kicking and screaming to the place where he will bless us. Dr. Sproul goes on to explain that when we rest in the finished work of Christ, we are a joyful Sabbath keeper.

But the most interesting treatment of the whole idea of solitude and being alone with one’s thoughts came from a blog post of a lecture given by William Deresiewicz to the plebe class at West Point in October 2010. The title is “Solitude and Leadership” and it can be found on his website billderesiewicz. com, or at the American Scholar website. His address put an emphasis on the importance of leaning how to be alone with your thoughts and how this ability is essential for leadership. Many of us pride ourselves on our ability to multitask. We may even think less of people who cannot listen to several conversations at once while simultaneously glancing at e-mail and Facebook. Dr. Deresiewicz cites research suggesting that the more you multitask, the worse you are at it. “Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it … in short, thinking for yourself. You simply cannot do that is bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.”

Ouch, he just zinged our entire plugged in culture. He also gave my children some not-so-much needed ammunition to use against their mom. I am always trying to do at least two things at one time. I attempt to redeem the time watching guilty pleasure TV/DVDs by clipping coupons as I watch. Inevitably, I miss the story line on the screen and have to either ask what happened or, worse yet, rewind and watch again — all in all, very nonproductive. Dr. D gives examples of well-known writers who concentrated and produced something of real worth. James Joyce wrote Ulysses at the rate of 100 words each day for seven years. T.S. Elliot wrote 150 pages of poetry over the course of a 25-year career — which works out to half a page each month. All of this required concentration which Dr. D. defines as “gathering yourself together into a single point rather than letting yourself be dispersed everywhere into a cloud of electronic and social input.” That is a pleasing image, to gather oneself into one place, to be all there where we are, it is the opposite of that scattered feeling which so often pervades my everyday existence.

But Dr. D. is not finished with us.

“Here is the other problem with Facebook and Twitter and even the New York Times. When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now — older people as well as younger people— you are continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom. In other people’s reality: for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice.”

But how do we hear our own voice? Dr. D. recommends reading books and then thinking about what you are reading, especially reading those books that are obviously the result of the author’s solitude and attempt to think for himself.

The last form of solitude Dr. D. recommends is surprising. It is the deep friendship of intimate conversation. It is not “skyping with three people and texting with two others at the same time while hanging out in a friend’s room listening to music and studying.” I fear far too many of our older students can relate to this image but even we homeschool moms are guilty of dabbling in friendship rather than investing in it. With intimate friendships you can think out loud, which takes time and patience on both your and your listener’s part. “Our new electronic world has disrupted it (friendships) just as violently. Instead of having one or two true friends that we can sit and talk to for three hours at a time, we have 958 ‘friends’ that we never actually talk to; instead we just bounce one-line messages off them a hundred times a day. This is not friendship, this is distraction.”

Again, ouch; that hurts because it is so true. What are we to do? One thing that comes to mind is to welcome those times when we are alone, perhaps driving somewhere, perhaps waiting for someone. Decide at those times NOT to listen to the radio, iPod or chat or text on the phone. Use those times to muse, to think, to ponder, to pray. Have an intentional reading list that you slowly plow through with time for thinking about what you are reading. If you fall behind in the newspaper, e-mail or other tyrannies of the urgent, so be it. And, of course, spend time with real friends talking about important things — how to love your husband and children, how to walk with God, how to be faithful to what He has called you.

I mentioned that the idea of rest and solitude was also mentioned at the Charlotte Mason conference, where it was referred to as masterly inactivity. Cindy Rollins does an excellent job of applying that principle in her article on Page 13.

I hope to see many of you at the curriculum fair/Expo on July 22 and 23. Please stop by the CSTHEA table and say hello and pick up any back issues of the Esprit that you have missed. I cannot stress enough the importance of helping us get the word out about the Expo (see fliers that are included on Page 7 and in the expo brochure, mailed separately) and inviting your friends as well as coming yourself. It promises to be another wonderful Expo thanks to the hard work of our many volunteers. See how you can plug in on Page 3. Remember you will need to resubscribe to Esprit this month to keep in coming to your mailbox. There’s a discount for “re-upping” at the event.

Have a rest-full summer. It is possible.

—JMT

Every time I read an article on being a certain kind of a mom I think if only I was that kind of a mom, then my children would be really outstanding. I’ve read accounts of families who homeschool in an RV on the road visiting all those fabulous historical sites. Now that is a sure fire way to rear children who love to learn, who become history buffs and children who love being with their family to boot. I’ve read about families who make it a practice of assigning world news topics to family members every day at the dinner table, some even invite local or visiting authors, journalists, statesmen, etc. to the family home on a regular basis to stimulate conversation with their children. Now those children definitely would grow up to be world changers.

But family lifestyle aside, how we parent is even more discussed than the circumstances in which we parent.

It seems as if there are cultural winds blowing which swing from encouraging strict, no-compromise parenting to a style that encourages a mom to be her children’s BFF. What is a mom to do?A few months back, an article in the Wall Street Journal and subsequent articles, interviews and even a book put the spotlight on Amy Chua, a professor of law at Yale, who claimed to be a “tiger mom.” By her description this is a mom who forbids many common outside activities to encourage her children to be outstanding academically and musically. You can read the article titled “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” on the WSJ website. You might be interested to know that Mrs. Chua’s elder daughter played at Carnegie Hall at age 14.

That article resulted in a huge response. It evidently hit a collective nerve resulting in almost 6000 reader responses from hearty “you go girl!” comments to gasps of horror at Mrs. Chua’s abusive methods. (The piano practicing knockdown drag out bit is especially shocking.)

Another mom, Ayelet Waldman, wrote a response to Mrs. Chua, calling herself the guilty, ambivalent, preoccupied mom. Her style of parenting was very relaxed but still calling the child to be responsible.

A mom I greatly admire, Wendi Capehart, over at heartkeepercommonroom.blogspot. com did not wholeheartedly endorse Mrs. Chua’s methods but she did rightly point out the difference in western style parenting vs. tiger mom in these comments.

“We westerners tend to worry too much, way too much, about self-esteem. We, as a culture, do value sports more than academics. We do worry too much about being our kids’ friends than their parents (as a culture). We are too easy on our kids, and it’s not good for them. We praise over every little thing, and by doing so, we cheapen our praise so it becomes meaningless to our kids and it’s counterproductive.”

Is there a formula for raising children who are successful, outstanding, superior children? And perhaps the question we should be asking is what is your definition of successful or outstanding?

If your definition has something to do with academic excellence and getting into an ivy league college, then perhaps Mrs. Chua has hit upon the right formula.

What does Scripture say about success? What is a Christian understanding of what God has called us to as moms?

(Now here is the part of my column where I tell you what we all already know but somehow need to be reminded of, me especially.)

Successful children in God’s eyes are those who are ready to take their place in God’s kingdom work here on earth. They know how to work hard, how to communicate with understanding, how to articulate their beliefs, how to put others needs before their own. They know how to study God’s Word and they depend on God daily in prayer. No matter what they chose as a vocation, they understand the relationship of what they do to who they are in Christ.

God calls moms to be faithful, to be in a right relationship with Him so we may know the way to walk. There is no magic formula to this motherhood, no 10 steps or even 100 steps. It is not a recipe of specific ingredients we need but it is a relationship, a daily looking to Him in prayer and in His Word so that we can hear the still small voice saying, this is the way, walk in it. Each of our children is an individual soul with differing needs. One child may need extra hugs, another might need extra one-on-one time. Still another may need more discipline than the average child, while others need more responsibility. Furthermore, the needs of our children change from year to year, even day to day. How is a mom to know where to put her efforts, how to divide her limited time? Our only hope is in Christ and our relationship with Him. Each day we can start by offering up ourselves and our children to God in prayer. Ask Him how we can love our children that day. He will make our paths clear.

In this issue is an especially long list of activities. Please note that this is a double issue and that you will not receive a separate June issue. Given that this is summer, most folks have more free time, at least that is the idea! There are some great things to do with your children in this area. Be sure to make some memories with your family this summer. Try something new. Plan an outing with another mom. We are all in this together. Happy Mother’s Day to each one of you!

—JMT

Later that week, we came across a word I was not sure how to pronounce. Ague. My first thought was to find my iPod and enter it into Google. But it was not handy so I had to think a minute for an alternative. Then it hit me. I was in a room full of books, including dictionaries, encyclopedias and the like, and I was bereft of my iPod. What is wrong with me that I no longer think, “Hey, I can just look that up in a real live dictionary?”

Alas, we all seem to be suffering from an overdependence on our high-tech devices and have somehow started to eschew the tried and true resources that have stood us in good stead not that long ago. But that is not the worst of it. I fear we have replaced so much that is real with what is just a bunch of pixels.OK, I am not going to urge us to go backwards, to not use very useful technologies. But I would like us to consider how we should try to live real life as much as possible, intentionally infusing real things into our life as opposed to virtual things.

In our homeschools, this suggestion becomes especially important. We now have e-readers, google books, e-books and other ways to read. Yet, can you cuddle with a young child over a computer screen? Can you hear the satisfying sound of pages turning as you work your way through a book on an e-reader? Never mind, I am sure that some of them do provide page turning sound effects! But you get my point.

Instead of visiting an actual art museum, you can now take a virtual tour of any number of galleries all over the world.

In a science class you can do a virtual dissection or watch an experiment. It is so neat and clean, no mess to clean up!

For history you can watch endless videos on the topic at hand. You can watch other homeschool moms re-enact lessons with their children. You can download so many lesson plans, lapbook patterns and other formats of gathering data.

For music appreciation, you can watch Youtube clips of the finest orchestras performing various musical selections.

Nature study can be a fabulous slide show of various wildflowers native to your area.

Geography lessons can be experienced via high production virtual tours of nearly any important city in the world.

And all of this can be enjoyed from the comfort of your home office or video screen.

Of course I know we could not possibly travel to all the places that we would like to go to, in order to see everything that relates to our studies firsthand. We have limits of time, resources and transportation.

My plea is not to turn one’s back on the wonderful technology that exists. I believe that God has given us these devices to expand our and therefore our children’s understanding and knowledge in many areas

That said, I do fear that the education we provide might tend to be a mile wide but an inch deep. Our resources, thanks to the World Wide Web, are virtually limitless. There is so much that we could present to the eyes and ears of our children.

It takes a little more effort to use real resources but I would like to encourage you to consider how not to totally neglect these.

We could actually go to an art museum and look at real paintings. We could go to a nature center or arboretum and look at live trees and flowers. We can go on a field trip and visit a battlefield. We can collect natural materials and create items to use, admire and enjoy. We can attend live plays and concerts. Nothing compares with the smell of a field of wildflowers after a light spring rain, the feel of cold cast iron as you touch the black barrel of a real cannon in the battlefield, or the sound your canoe paddle makes as you lift it out the creek you are exploring with your kids.

Please forgive me if I am stating the obvious. Remember I am the one who forgot the existence of dictionaries on the shelves!

I might also mention that we might consider picking up the phone instead of facebook messaging or chatting to offer strength or encouragement. That old-fashioned sound of a human voice still touches people in a way that a Tweet never will.

Lastly, we can always gather our children around us on the sofa or in the comfy chair, pull out a beautifully bound children’s classic and read aloud. Admittedly this is very low tech but very highly satisfying.

In our home, we are sadly lacking in real activities done as a family. I am resolved to amend this. Recently we purchased a family membership at the Nature Center and I am intending to force everyone, lovingly of course, to participate in some family canoeing.

For some similar thoughts, see Cindy Rollins’ article in this issue of Esprit. . One might think that Cindy and I get together and decide to write on similar topics but I assure you we do not. Somehow God often seems to put like-minded ideas on our hearts

As Easter time approaches, we are reminded of the promise of new life. Death no longer triumphs. Brown shriveled up plants start showing signs of new life, new buds tell of flowers to come. God’s goodness surrounds us in tangible ways. May we take comfort in His extravagant display at springtime.

—JMT

In Screwtape, the junior tempter’s “patient” becomes a believer. The demons know the outcome of the war for this young man’s soul that they lost. Nonetheless, they redouble their efforts to minimize the damage by coming up with devious ways of making the young man’s thoughts become a hindrance in his sanctification and make him less useful in God’s kingdom.

It made me wonder what the correspondence might sound like between a master tempter and a demon assigned to a homeschool mom. Their goal is to try to keep her discouraged and distracted from her great task of training her children. What might those devils try to get the mom to think about? What would they try to get her to not think about?

I do not claim to know how the supernatural functions in the realm of angels or demons but I can see how we homeschooling moms might be tempted by a similar line of thinking offered by Uncle Screwtape to the junior tempter Wormwood in Lewis’ classic.

Here is my version of a such a letter written to a junior demon, Squirmtoad, with apologies to Professor Lewis and thanks to my husband for his creative prose.

OK, this is way too easy for me to come up with these. Maybe because this is the way I think far too often. Once again I have written another column directed at myself. I am more than guilty of falling prey to all of the wiles of the flesh and the devil.

But I do not wish to leave you in the snares of the tempter. What should be our response? Has Our Heavenly Father left us defenseless?

Praise be to our God for He has already supplied the remedy for all of these false notions. Each one of these thoughts can be brought captive to Christ. The truth of His Word can break these strongholds of wrong thinking. His grace can deliver us from the ruts in our minds that are nothing but lies from the enemy.

    “When my heart is overwhelmed,
        lead me to the rock,
    Lead me to the rock
        that is higher than I.”

—JMT

Yes, you read that right, this homeschool mom, now a fairly conservative Christian, dabbled in the art of telling her high school classmates their future based on the lines in their hands. This was before I became a believer.

It was a fun skill that made for instant popularity, albeit heady and short-lived. I read a few books, practiced on my family, learned some terms and, before I knew it, word had spread and all the football players were coming to me asking me to look at their hands and tell them if they were going to get married, be successful, live long lives.

I share this fact about my life before I became a Christian because the start of a new year is always a time of hope for the future. As a teen, I was very confused about spiritual things even though I was brought up by religious parents in a very devout denomination and regularly went to church from infancy. My ideas of God and eternity engendered fear and awe, but I hoped that my demerits would be outweighed by the good things I did, thus making it possible for me to escape eternal damnation. Palm reading was not my only vice. I also developed a sophisticated method of cheating on tests based on American sign language. Don’t ask me why I thought cheating was OK; discernment was not one of my strong points.

I am always amazed at the transforming power of the grace of God. He takes broken, worthless pots and makes them into worthy vessels, fit for the master’s use. After I became a Christian I learned that all that previous dabbling in palm reading was a wrong-headed attempt to know hidden things and I renounced it along with my cheating schemes. This was part of confessing and repenting; God had made it clear to me in His time that I was to forsake these things. When I was doing a post-graduate internship, I roomed with a girl who was rather straight-laced, very conservative, and who was a mature Christian who knew and loved God’s word. She had a beautiful voice and often sang the Scriptures. One day we were in a rough part of town. “Do you smell that?” she asked me. I smelled something but did not know what it was. “It is pot,” she declared, rather matter-of-factly. When I asked how she knew, she laughed. “Didn’t I tell you? I was a pot-head in high school.” I was floored. There was no vestige of the girl’s former life in her. Sometimes I meet people who come from the most broken homes, who have gone through a series of step-parents, who did not have a Christian upbringing, who made some bad choices in their early lives. But in looking at them today, all one sees is God’s redeeming grace.

The promise of grace should be a tremendous encouragement to us today as homeschool parents. We may look at our children and see lots of foolishness, immaturity and gaps in character development. “What will they grow up to be if that is what they are now?” we moan privately and perhaps not so privately.

Take heart. What you see is not what will be. God promises to complete the work He has begun. In my morning devotions recently in Tabletalk I was encouraged by this explanation of hope: “Hope is the ground of faith and love, the source from which they spring and are sustained by the Spirit’s power (Col. 1:5). Such hope is not a wish for something that may or may not happen, but the present expectation of what will surely be experienced in its fullness in the future. Knowing that we will experience the fullness of salvation in the age to come, our faith and love are sustained in the present era.”

Yes, our children may be foolish, immature and not all we hope in the character department. But God has a timetable for them to conform to the image of Christ. I have often thought: What a mercy it is that God does not show us immediately all that is wrong in our lives at the moment of conversion. Instead, He gently leads us into His truth, revealing our blind spots as we look to Him.

A booklet that was a great help to me as a young Christian was titled “My Heart, Christ’s Home.” It used the analogy of the rooms of a house for the areas of our lives that we must give to Christ as Lord. As an illustration the reader imagines that Christ is walking with them through the rooms. Finally He asks about the hidden closet, the one that represents our secret sins. All must be turned over to Him.

May we expect that God will work these good changes in our children? Are we going to be disappointed?

God is worthy of our hope. He will do what He said. It is not a vain hope, but one that is based on the solid rock of His Word and the finished work of Jesus.

These days I still attempt to predict the future. The difference is I am no longer reading palms. I am reminding myself of the sure promises of our Father God. I am looking at my children and seeing what they will be by His grace and provision.

—JMT

Last month I was very gratified to hear from so many of you that my November column was encouraging and very applicable. It was definitely on the practical side and, like most of my columns, I wrote it to myself as much as to you.

This month you will have to bear with me as I swing more toward the metaphysical side as we approach the celebration of God’s greatest mysteries: the Incarnation.

Perhaps it is because I am facing the rapid decline in the health of my beloved father, Eduard Pulles, that I am thinking about unseen realities.

Because of a degenerative brain disease, his 89 year old body is now just a shell of the strong man who lived through the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, emigrated to the United States and built a life for his wife and three daughters in the suburbs of Chicago.

You would think that years of working in a hospital and seeing death and dying on a daily basis would have inoculated me by now to the shock of the finality of death but seeing the handwriting on the wall for my dad has caused me to look at what is really happening behind the curtain, so to speak.

I know that death is the end of earthly life but only the beginning of a deeper spiritual reality. Thankfully, my dad’s mind is as sharp as ever but his speech is slurred, and one must concentrate all one’s senses to understand him. But it is worth it to do so and have a conversation with him — about what he is thinking, what he is reading.

At the recent meeting of the C.S. Lewis society, I had the opportunity to view some rare photographs of Lewis as a young man. I could not help thinking how delightful it would have been to have known this man, to have had a conversation with him about literature, about words, about poetry, about anything really, but then I realized in heaven we will see all those who have died in Christ and what glorious conversations we shall have.

Thoughts of heaven and what it will be like can boggle one’s mind. No sorrow, no disappointments. Instead there will be right relationships, intimate fellowship with God — and all of this for eternity. No wonder Paul and others longed for heaven.

Do I long for heaven? Should I?

Is it helpful to a Christian to yearn for a scenario so different from life on earth?

Here are some thoughts of heaven that I have gleaned from my nowhere near comprehensive study:

So “set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:2). Let your Scripture-guided imagination wonder what living in that perfect world will be like. Doing so will simplify your spiritual life by helping you to see your spirituality (and everything else) more from the perspective of eternity. It will clarify your priorities. It will remind you of a coming glory that’s worth any suffering here, knowing that “our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

[From a chapter titled Think Much About Heaven From Donald S. Whitney, Simplify Your Spiritual Life (Colorado Springs, Colo.: NavPress, 2003).]

As homeschooling moms and dads, we can definitely get weighed down by all the minutiae of life. We so easily forget why we are doing what we are doing. We are not just checking off a scope and sequence grade by grade, nor are we finishing a booklist.

We are in fact training our children, preparing them for what God has given them to accomplish. We are equipping them to be kingdom dwellers and kingdom overcomers. How might God use them in the building of His kingdom here on earth? We may not yet know all the details but we know it is a work we are called to. Many days this work may seem the most mundane of activities as it includes spelling lists, multiplication tables, grammar rules. But even these lessons of seeming drudgery are part and parcel of being faithful stewards.

All of our efforts in this life should point toward our heavenly goal of one day knowing Him fully even as we are fully known. There will be moments of inexpressible joy as we teach our children and share their delight in truth, goodness and beauty. These are foretastes of heaven and should remind us of God’s sure promise for us and for our children. We should take heart when those discouragements occur and remember the words of the Puritan preacher Richard Baxter:

All sufferings are nothing to us, so far as we have these supporting joys. The reason we are impatient and complaining is that we gaze on some present evil but don’t fix our thoughts on what is beyond it. Those who saw Christ on the cross, shook their heads and thought him defeated; but God saw him dying, buried, rising, glorified; and all this at one view. Faith will, in this, imitate God, so far as it has the telescope of a promise to help it. We see God burying us under the snow, but we fail to see the springtime when we shall revive. Could we only see heaven as the end of all God’s dealings with us, surely none of His dealings could be grievous.

[Richard Baxter, The Autobiography of Richard Baxter, abridged by J. M. Lloyd Thomas, ed. and with an introduction by N. H. Keeble (introduction and notes, London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1931; reprinted with revisions, Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1974)]

This is a season of wonder, of awe, of contemplation of our God made flesh, the Word incarnate, dwelling among us to take on our sin and guilt. He willingly became sin so that we could be in a right relationship with God here on earth and in eternity in heaven. Here are some quotes on heaven to aid us in fixing our thoughts on things above.

• “A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do.” —C. S. Lewis
• “Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret? There are better things ahead then any we leave behind.” —C. S. Lewis
• “The passing beauty and joys of the world points us towards another world, a New Jerusalem in which ‘there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away’ (Revelation 21:4). In the meantime, we must live and work in the world. Yet we do so as people who know that they are on their way home, and anticipate the joy of return and arrival.” —Alister McGrath
• “Hearts on earth say in the course of a joyful experience, ‘I don’t want this ever to end.’ But it invariably does. The hearts of those in heaven say, ‘I want this to go on forever.’ And it will. There is no better news than this.” —J. I. Packer
• “My heaven is to please God and glorify him, and to give all to him, to be wholly devoted to his glory; that is the heaven I long for.” —David Brainerd
• “O my Lord Jesus Christ, if I could be in heaven without thee, it would be a hell; and if I could be in hell, and have thee still, it would be a heaven to me, for thou art all the heaven I want.” —S. Rutherford
• “Heaven and Christ are the same thing.” —S. Rutherford
• “There will be little else we shall want of heaven besides Jesus Christ. He will be our bread, our food, our beauty, and our glorious dress. The atmosphere of heaven will be Christ; everything in heaven will be Christ- The now and the not yet like: yes, Christ is the heaven of His people.” —C. H. Spurgeon
• “To pretend to describe the excellence, the greatness or duration of the happiness of heaven by the most artful composition of words would be but to darken and cloud it; to talk of raptures and ecstasies, joy and singing, is but to set forth very low shadows of the reality.” —Jonathan Edwards

The words on the front of this issue of the Esprit are from one of my favorite Christmas songs. I especially like James Taylor’s version of this on his Christmas CD. What looked like a bleak midwinter was the setting for the greatest event in all of history.

May we rejoice together in His coming to us.?

This column is for the other moms out there that continually re-write their schedules, fail at chore lists, carry to-do list items over from week to week and month to month and generally keep house and hearth together by the seat of their pants.

I often find myself thinking, Oh yes, I need to do [this and so]. Oh, well, I will get this and so done as soon as I catch up. And somehow I fully expect to reach that nirvana of “being all caught up.” In fact, my expectation is that this pinnacle will be reached in the very near future.

Of course we are not just homeschool moms. We are daughters of aging parents, siblings in needy families and wives of busy husbands. All of these tasks make demands on our time, our energy and our emotional stability.

When my husbandand I decided before we got married to homeschool our children, I remember well my mom’s response. “But why do you want to make your life so hard?” My mom admitted that she loved sending her three daughters off to school each day. She kept the house immaculate while we were gone, met her girl friends for coffee, sewed, baked and shopped while we were occupied in class. Now don’t get me wrong; my mom was there for us 100%. I have the fondest memories of walking home from school for lunch at home each day as I attended a parochial school in our neighborhood in the suburbs of Chicago. Still, we were away for the bulk of each weekday. Mom could do all the things she needed to keep our house running smoothly, adhering to her Dutch standards of everything clean and in its place.

Perhaps it is just my temperament but I cannot seem to get it all done — EVER. I cannot remember a single moment after having children when I felt as if I had done everything I needed to and now, for a short spell, I could kick back and enjoy some leisure time. Oh, I do enjoy leisure time. But I pay for it by feeling even further behind.

I am finally realizing the toll feeling constantly behind takes on one’s psyche. There is a feeling of failure, a sense of always running and not seeing the goal reached. There is a humming noise of stress, knowing there are at least 30 things I need to get done each day and that I might accomplish fewer than half of these. I find myself staying up into the wee hours of the morning, trying in vain to “catch up” on e-mail, reading the newspaper, reading a favorite newsmagazine or doing the laundry.

Some of the women at our church have a joke about how the experienced homeschool moms try to get the newbies to lower their standards in an attempt to reduce the frustration level. One might think the role of older women is to encourage the younger women to reach further, to aim higher. But not at our church! Reality has set in and, in this culture where women are told they can do it all, it is kinder to tell the younger moms to relax, cut themselves some slack and figure out how to prioritize the tyranny of the urgent.

That tyranny seems to have grown exponentially with our high-tech society. We are more connected than ever. We have smart phones, texting, e-mail, Facebook and Internet. On a recent trip to New York, I was struck by how tethered to their own private telecom worlds everyone seemed to be — and how lost and lonely at the same time. Almost no one in the subway interacts with any one else unless there is a problem. But I digress. That is perhaps fodder for a future editorial.

However, technology clutters up one’s life. It becomes a huge black hole of a time waster. It causes us to feel that we must stay up with all of these networks, thus creating even more things to do in a day. And that is NOT what we need. I have no 10-step method on how to tame the tech monster. If you have one, please let me know.

I want to have a right view, a biblical view, a relational view on this idea of getting caught up. Obviously, if one is neglecting deadlines, keeping a slovenly house, allowing one’s children to ignore their lessons and noticing other red flags, something needs to change. That kind of life is not honoring to God, nor is it a witness of His grace and provision to the world.

One practical idea would be to find out from your husband what is important to him and what communicates your care to your children.

If they are older, they will tell you what they REALLY need from you. Husbands are often are bothered by things that don’t bother you and are not bothered by things that do bother you. Not sure about it? Ask him.

There is hope. Before I was married, I visited the home of a homeschool mom who was in the throes of having young children and homeschooling older ones. Her home looked very lived in, to put it kindly with a goodly bit of clutter and apparent disorganization. Not too long ago, I visited her. All but one of her children are either married or out of the house and her house was organized, neat and clean.

I remind myself there are seasons in life. In the busy, tired season of life with young children and/or homeschooling, your home may not rise up to bless you. It might rise up and mug you! We can only do so much. God gives us 24 hours a day. He puts limits on our energy, our resources and our abilities. As fallen creatures, we do not always make the best decisions of how to use that time. At the end of the day, we should remind ourselves of the reality of God’s grace to us and to our families. We should take heart that a season is coming when we will be able to devote more time to housework and maybe even a favorite hobby or craft.

But my reality today is a house that is more disordered than usual thanks a major structural repair that led to remodels of all of our bathrooms. Not one room is in order anywhere. The disarray is starting to wear on me, but I remind myself each day it is temporary and that momentary messes are the path to home improvement.

This is not a treatise to defend slacker moms. We all know when we shirk duties when we put premiums on “me time” or when we indulge a natural tendency to laziness. Those behaviors need to be confessed and not excused.

However, constantly feeling behind and beating ourselves up about it is not kingdom living. Accepting our current position, asking daily for God’s wisdom, keeping lists of what needs to be done when and being cheerful in the midst of it all is what God is calling us to right now. What He calls us to do, He will enable us to do. That is no myth, but solid rock. May we find encouragement for each day in His promises.

—Jeannette Tulis

Recently, I attended the C.S. Lewis Society meeting. The book being discussed was Surprised by Joy. I had read it a while back and had no time for a read before the meeting.

During the evening discussion led by Rev. David Beckmann, I was struck by Lewis’ account of how he came to faith in Christ. What led him to ultimately believe the truth of the gospel was a series of stabs of joy that came to him in childhood and remained with him to give him a yearning for something beyond what he could see.

These poignancies came to him in the beauty of nature, in the loveliness of poetry and in the delightful description in a children’s story. These three events awakened in Lewis a longing for imaginings to become real. He calls them glimpses, unsatisfied desires. His exposure to these images inspired a quest for Lewis that found its fulfillment in Christ, although he had no knowledge of Him at the time. The link to an inspiring excerpt from Rev. Beckmann’s talk can be found at cslewischattanooga.org. Check out the entry for Sept. 19 and the audio at the end.

Such ideas have been a tremendous encouragement to me as a homeschooling mom. The truth, goodness and beauty that are the warp and woof of our lessons are truly important. Music, art, nature, poetry and literature can bring one to Christ. Fantasy stirs one’s imagination to desire something beyond what the world gives. Imagination must be an important aspect of our walk with God.

As providence would have it, my daily devotional, the publication Tabletalk, from Ligonier Ministries, spotlights the topics of truth, goodness and beauty this month.

• Truth – I so appreciate Francis Schaeffer’s reminder that all truth is God’s truth. In home education, we can present truth to our children, even if the material we are using is not explicitly Christian. There is a resonance in our spirit when we read or see something that matches up with what God says. It is His world and He made man in it for His glory. Truth is absolute, objective and immutable.
• Goodness – this is one quality that makes a book a living one. When the protagonist sincerely tries to do the right thing, the noble thing, the brave thing, despite all odds, we are hearing a story of redemption, part of THE story, part of HIS story. Our spirit cheers with the telling of goodness, whether in a biography, fiction or poetry.
• Beauty – Our creator made us to be creative. We mirror Him when we appreciate creation and when we create. Art is an extravagant beauty, it feeds us more than what we need just to exist or survive. It is a rich feast for the senses. Again great art is a reflection of God’s truth, His images, His creation.

You may be saying, how does one incorporate these into our home education when the tyranny of the urgent is ever present and the basics of academics such as the three R’s seem to take precedence. Those other things are, of course, lovely ideas but how does one work them in?

Let me share what have been doable simple steps for my children and me.

• Music – Play classical selections during mealtimes. Don’t know where to begin? Purchase or borrow from the library a collection of well known an d well loved classical pieces. Make a list of the pieces in order on paper that you can refer to as the music plays. Simply saying “the name of this piece is Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven” is enough. You may want to ask, “Why do you think the piece has this name?” Later you can ask your children to name the instruments they hear, talk about how the music makes them feel, what it reminds them of, what pictures are in their mind. Cindy Rollins’ essay has some great thoughts and practical plans for music appreciation on Page 14.
• Art – Studying art with your children can be a simple picture study where you give them a print, let them really look at it, then have them turn it over and try to remember as many details as they can. Picture study selections are available at Amblesideonline.org. One book that is very helpful in teaching you what to look for in great paintings is a Dorling Kindersley book titled Annotated Art. For younger children the series Come Look With Me also serves the purpose of a gentle introduction to picture study.
• Nature Study – One of the easiest ways to encourage nature study in young children is to supply them with a good quality jeweler’s loupe. I recommend 16X power and 22mm size. You can put a nice leather or other sturdy material shoelace on the loupe and have your child wear it like a necklace. When you give a child a loupe, they will explore everything around them both inside the house and outside. Common things become small worlds of wonder when magnified. Another helpful idea is to start a collection of well done field guides such as those from Audubon or Petersen.
• Poetry – We incorporate poetry just by reading a poem a day, right after our opening prayer. Lots of collections can be downloaded for free but my favorite poetry book is Poems Old and New by Helen Ferris. You can choose seasonal poems or poems by a particular poet. Check the suggested poets for each age at Ambleside. You can also make poems a part of your mealtime. When my children were younger I read seasonal poetry as they enjoyed a mid-day snack which became our tea time. I have fond memories of calling my camo clad boys who were in the midst of enemy warfare in for tea times.

• Literature — I am of the strong opinion that every academic subject can be enhanced by literature, specifically what Charlotte Mason called Living Books. Truths of history, science, math, nature study, geography can all be clothed in literary language. Hearing great literature makes one more articulate, imaginative and gives us a hook where we can hang the facts.

  You can use the bookfinder application on the simplycharlottemason.com website.

• Handicrafts — If you can’t find someone to teach knitting or crocheting, start with something simple like feltcraft. There are loads of projects for all ages of children, boys and girls, on the web. There is something immensely satisfying to a child when they take the time to create something of beauty that is actually useful.

In considering truth, goodness and beauty, the last thing I want to do is to make you feel like you are not doing enough. I do not want the reader to think she has to add more to her lesson plan. The ideas I have shared here were added gradually over the years for me. Please do not be overwhelmed. You may just want to pick one area that especially speaks to you and add that this year. Then you may want to add something else when that is established. Or you may need to wait until your season of life is not so demanding. The point I hope to make is that as we teach our children, we can consider how we might stir up their imagination.

And here I must add a confession. Once again what I am offering is not a formula for ensuring that your child will grow up appreciating all the finer arts. My own family attests to that. Sometimes what you present seems to reap a lovely harvest in a child that takes ownership of what you have presented to them. And then you may do all you can to lay out the table of truth, goodness and beauty in art, music, poetry, literature, nature study. It may be that you spread a veritable feast in front of a child who grows up to shun all of that when he or she has a choice. That is when you trust the Lord of the Harvest to do the reaping in His time, and in His way.

As is most of our work with our children, the effect may not be immediately observable. But we can take heart that God’s truth never returns to Him void. We lay out for our children these delicacies that stir their imagination and the seeds take root, although the shoots may lie beneath the surface unseen in a very deep place.

Film festival — If you are a movie lover or have an older child who loves movies, I can’t encourage you too strongly to consider attending the Kings Meadow Film Conference at Parish Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tenn., on Oct. 29 and 30. You will learn how to look at movies which are not explicitly Christian but are still stamped with eternal truths which we can recognize and appreciate.

May our spirits be refreshed along with our children’s as we open our eyes to the truth, goodness and beauty with which God has surrounded us.

—Jeannette Tulis