Recently I picked up my order at a local bookstore for a Book-of-the-Month Club I teach. The clerk asked me about the books because it was an unusual number, about thirty. When I explained that I was teaching literature to some homeschool teens, she came back with this surprising response: “I wish someone had loved me enough to homeschool me.”
I was floored. I couldn’t think of anything to say. But she had just nailed the reason we all, at bottom, are educating our children at home. It isn’t the information, the books, the tests, the learning, the head start, or the facts, facts, facts. It’s the love—our love for them and our love for God.
When your children are grown and gone, they will not remember that you didn’t know the synopsis of A Tale of Two Cities. They will not care whether you could adequately teach A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
What they will remember, though, is the nest you created for them, the environment, and the feeling that you loved and cherished them enough to teach them at home. They will intuitively know, in the end, whether they were a burden or a fellow traveler with you. That, make no mistake, is more important than any plot structure or author fact you can come up with.
God bless you as you labor in love.
