"If you don't see the real me, you won't see what love has won..." Vota

Monday, July 13, 2009

Why I am planning to homeschool.

God has a plan and His plan will prevail!
When I was first starting out in college, I thought home schooling was a joke. I believed that parents who home schooled their children were doing them a disservice. I also thought that if they were going to choose this way of teaching their children they should at least have a teaching license.
Now at this point in my life (at 18+ years old), I had turned from the Lord to hide my face. I thought that in my current condition there was no way He would want anything to do with me. (I could identify with why Adam and Eve hid in the garden.) I was out to make my own plans and follow my own dreams. These dreams consisted of becoming famous (I already had a slight taste of fame and I liked it), rich and having NO children to get in my way.
God had a different plan.
He started working on me, a little at a time. He sent someone (a very controlling boyfriend) to my life to focus me. I know this now, but at the time I just loved this man and wrapped my world around him and what he wanted. So at his bidding, I changed my major and looked to become a teacher. Little did I know this was God’s providence and not my boyfriend. After about 3 years, I figured out that this man was not the man I wanted to marry (nor, as I know now, the man God wanted for me.) I severed the relationship vowing to never do that again (wrap my life around a man). I know now this too was God’s work. He was working on teaching me the importance of not putting anything or anyone in front of Him. I was shattered, broken, in the pit…
God lifted me up.
I left that college, headed home to my parents and went back to work where I had worked through high school. I planned on starting my senior year at UT that next semester. I found the man I had once asked to marry me still worked at that place and would be my manager again. When I saw him, all the reasons why I had proposed, it all came back. We started dating. I changed my major at UT twice over the next couple of years and nearly graduated with a degree in Psychology. The winter/spring before my last semester, I got engaged. I did not reenroll to finish my degree… what would I do with a degree in Psychology. So I got a job substitute teaching (high school) during the day and continued my other job in the evening. I was making quite a bit of money and was pretty happy. I started planning our wedding, and we joined the church I grew up in. I was practically new to the church thing; it had been a really long time since I was a member.
God was moving in my life and moving me.
After we were married, I became the office manager for the church where we were members. This job was so incredible. There was no drama like at all the other places I worked. I got to work in a quiet, still place where God was the focus.
God knew what He was doing.
I worked there for a while and learned what it meant to have a real relationship with The God of the Universe. He was leading us away from where we were living and working together, but we kept ignoring Him and staying put.
God won’t let you ignore Him for long.
We left this place after a Jonah type encounter with God. We picked up everything and moved out of town. The only plan we had was to follow God and He was telling me to go back to the first college and finish my education degree. (I was within a semester or less of three other degrees, for I had continued college on line all this time.) We obeyed. With no job prospects and no place to live, we took care of business and moved. I started my last 2 years of college that fall. During my student teaching I got pregnant.
At this point I would have liked to be a stay-at-home mom, but I really loved teaching and was very good at it (at least that is what I was told.)
I got an interim job teaching 4th grade. At the end of the year, I went, 6 months pregnant, on many job interviews. Just getting one interview in this town was something major. They took one look at my condition, and I could read it in their eyes, “She is going to be leaving after a couple of months for a maternity leave.” I did not get a job.
By this time, I had seriously thought about home schooling. The teacher I was working with really encouraged me in this. AND NOW I did have the degree.
My husband and I had talked about it many times over the course of our marriage (where we were working/living before we moved, home schooling would have been the only way we could have children and he be a part of their lives, IF we decided to have children that is.) So I knew he would not be shocked at my decision and he would be totally in support of it.
See God’s providence?
Now, I was getting closer and closer to my God. I could hear Him talking to me: that still small voice, through the Bible, and through friends at church. He had led me to this place in my life for a purpose. The purpose was to raise my children to know Him and to glorify Him through their upbringing. I have so many reasons to home school, but now the one, the ONLY one that matters…
It is God’s plan.

5 comments:

  1. That's a beautiful testimony. And I agree. Working at MHCC was completely incredible!

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  2. Thanks, TJ! The only job I've ever missed and cried over because it was time to leave!

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  3. Awesome story. I knew most of this but it was neat seeing it all put together.

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  4. Beautiful. I had tears in my eyes.

    Rhonda

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  5. Rhonda, now I have tears in mine. I do mean it when I say I pray for my readers. I pray that somehow my lessons learned about the goodness... no, that word isn't substantial... OK, there is no word to describe my God... I just want everyone to know Him as He wants to know you. There is nothing like a realationship with Him. He wants us just as we come... no matter what we have done... I've done most of it!

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