Stay for the feast.

I haven’t updated much about our transition back into the public school. We made such a drastic 180 that only now do we have the gift of hindsight.

We traded isolated, rural, big-sky freedom for city chains, if you will. (Anyone who must drive in traffic on the regular knows the gridlocked feeling of despair.)

Before, we didn’t have to answer to anyone. I set my cell phone to silent as to not be disturbed. Now we must call the attendance hotline before 7:30am if a kid wakes up with a fever or runny nose.

A year ago, there were no grades. I simply marked the days of homeschool completed on my calendar. Now there are parent-teacher meetings, evaluations and report cards sent home quarterly.

With homeschool there were stacks and stacks of books piled all over the house, begging to be opened and devoured. Now there are still books, but they lie quiet, waiting for the school bell to signal the end of the day.

We deal with real life junk. My first grader wonders aloud why other kids watch R-rated movies–who is Jason? Who is Freddie? My third grader wants to know if g-a-y is an insult. About once a month we stomp home from school and I do a little emotional triage over cookies and milk.  

There are complaints of homework and school cafeteria lunches. Bullies. Screaming teachers. Boredom. Inside recess. I can add to the list my own concerns: the weird social and political climate, social media, technology, safety.

Am I tempted to homeschool again? Well, it’s crossed my mind.

Last spring as we were wrapping up the homeschool-for-a-year experiment, I picked up a freebie classical curriculum magazine at our church. I was flipping through it, perusing the articles. Inevitably they were all written by homeschooling parents singing the praises of this particular curriculum, specifically at the high school level. I landed on a piece written by a mother who told the story of working tirelessly to prepare a huge feast for Thanksgiving. She was sad and disappointed when the whole family came down with the flu right before the celebration–no one was able to enjoy the Thanksgiving meal! Then she compared the Thanksgiving incident to the act of homeschooling her children. To the author, educating her kids at home through elementary was equivalent to preparing a feast. Giving up on homeschool–sending them into the public scene–once it becomes academically challenging or all-consuming, then, was like forfeiting the culmination of a meaningful, family celebration.

It raised, as many of these Christian homeschool articles do, questions of what if?

What if you only homeschooled your kids for a little bit and then sent them out into the wild world?

How could you prepare your children and not stay to enjoy the feast?

You know what strikes me as interesting? Human nature intensely seeks others who can tell us exactly what we want to hear. We want friends who pat us on the back, who shoot their arrows at the same target. Christian curriculum magazines work in a pinch with their cozy pictures of mothers spending quality time with their children.  But hear me out–planting doubt or ideas of neglect and fear is anything but Christ-like.

I am still on the email list of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). I get weekly updates, and some include contests with lovely writing prompts like, “I’m thankful I homeschool because…”

But there are more scary emails than encouragement. Tales of school districts purposefully “losing” homeschoolers’ paperwork. Incidents involving child protective services. The looming presence of an interfering government.

Surely the association serves a purpose–it is necessary to keep homeschool legal and free. HSLDA offers a service that informs parents and helps them understand their rights in home education their kids. But I wonder if they could go easy on the horror stories.

When I look back on our time spent homeschooling, I am in awe that we ever advanced in our areas of study. Of course we had fun times, too, but daily life was so all-consuming. Every interaction felt like it had a mirror attached to it. Whether they listened obediently or fought me and cried–whatever they did seemed to reflect my overall success as a mom. I was ultimately responsible for not messing them up. Add to this the classical education pressure of producing kids that are exceptional, above average, regular scholars. The weight of it narrowed my worldview. My whole hemisphere was my cul de sac. What works for us today? Nothing else matters.

I think sinking into this feeling of false confidence shocked me into pulling the plug on homeschool. My motivations were all wrong. My perspective was skewed. My rights and freedoms were tangled in a wad of indignation.

To loosen the knots I had to release control over my kids’ education.

I know this sort of thinking might terrify some people. But there is no place God won’t follow your child. He equips and enables. He works everything out for our good and for His glory. Shouldn’t these promises liberate us to set out on our own wild adventure? If we are parenting at home with the Word of God as our life’s template, do we really have anything to fear?

Life isn’t any less intentional now in the public school system. For me, I’d say it is better. It’s richer. The moment to moment stress of keeping small boys engaged has mellowed. Now they have a job: it is to get up and go to school in the mornings. When they come home we have six hours before bedtime for playtime (fighting, don’t get too precious), chores, reading, homework, music, family time, supper.

Some days are really great. Some days aren’t so hot. Just the same as homeschool. No, we’re not perfecting our Latin, memorizing timelines, or milking goats. We’re learning how to be brave and kind in a not-so-kind world. We fail more often than we succeed.

But I hear kids are resilient, and practice makes perfect. I keep praying that our experience in this world, this neighborhood, this school would open our eyes to see people the way Jesus sees them. Love hopes and believes all things.

I want to stay right here. I will drown out the what ifs with my own battle cries: what if we stay? What if we support teachers? What if school standards were raised and we, the community, helped kids reach them?  

I believe He rewards those who earnestly seek him. I intend to stay for the feast.