IrishOboe

Man, it stinks to have missed that sermon - especially as I had no palpable replacement! I'll have to get the outline online.

Don't you just love education? :) As a homeschooler myself, I also grew up in one of those environments where people always took the time to answer my questions. And how amazing is it that this parallels our adventure with God? There is no question we cannot take to Him that He won't have a well-thought-out answer for that both humbles us and lifts us closer to Him. Praise the Lord for His grace in providing infinite remedial lessons whether we stumble or run His race well!

:) Another homeschooler! I could make a crack about that fact that I should have known since you can't make friends in real life so you have to go the blogs of friends of friends, but there'd be nobody in my audience to direct the dig to.

I depends on what you mean by 'education.' If you mean discovering the world around us, then yes. If you mean teachers and textbooks and desks, then no. What did your homeschooling look like? I'm always curious to see how people do things differently.

I can go a number of directions with the idea that how we teach our children parallels how God teaches us (we're talking the ideal here, same as how husbands are to love their wives like Christ loved the church). It's really no different for the homeschooling family as for any other Christian family, it's just that the homeschooling family has more time together.

God is the perfect teacher and sometimes he responds with silence to make us think and grow. Silence is so important for our spiritual growth, and similarly important for a child's mental growth. Giving children freedom and time on their own is not neglecting them any more than God is neglecting us because he doesn't send down cue cards every moment. Thus the unschooling family is not less involved in their child's education, but in desiring the deeper and more complete growth resists temptation to take the quick or easy route of forcing some 'important topic of the day' on their children.

God wants our obedience, but he wants to transform our nature to be one of willing obedience. He could force us to do anything, but mostly he doesn't. I love to see the same principles at work in families, and I love how it comes in all different flavors. There's no one right way! In particular, watching my aunts/uncles/sister/brother-in-law raise my cousins/nephews have given me great ideas. :) Lord willing I'll get to try my own ideas someday. In the meantime I plan to teach so I can mess with other people's kids. Mwahaha!

See, I'd consider taking exception to such a dig, but I would have liked your blog regardless of whether or not a friend told me about it first. So there. :)

Oh, and by education I mean the process of learning, which never seems to stop and isn't limited by person, place, or thing. Only by our willingness to be taught.

My brothers and I were homeschooled when we lived in Idaho (which, apparently, some people believe is a fictional state). My father was on a rotating shift schedule that meant that under normal school conditions we wouldn't see him for two weeks out of every month. (And we're all a little geeky and couldn't get enough education, but that's true of everyone, right?) We had school 4 days a week, which my mother sat down to plan on Mondays or Tuesdays, with devotions at 8:30 and then schoolwork at our own pace. If we didn't understand something, we could holler for help, but we all knew that meant more assignments and so tried to be as self-motivated as possible. And there were always summer projects, some organized by our mother or the library and some that we invented (these all involved dissecting and labeling everything in the backyard, coloring on every sidewalk square in the neighborhood, who could bike X # miles longest without complaint, etc.).

As long as we weren't in the middle of an exam, we could join our mother in the kitchen for these massive baking projects she enjoyed. If our dad had a few days off, we'd sneak off to Yellowstone or Jackson Hole and make up the work later. My brothers, who are both more outgoing than I am, like to complain about the impact on their social lives. We lived in Mormon country, though, which meant that even if we'd gone to school most of the kids still wouldn't have talked to us, so I never saw a problem. My parents tried to make every moment teachable, so I wound up with a spongelike affinity for new information and an expectation that I could use that information across the board.

Having never been on the receiving end of a silence from God, though, I might have to disagree. There are times, certainly, when I don't hear him because of sin or distraction or a desperate desire what I want to hear instead of what he's saying. And there are times when his answer is not in words or actions, but an invitation to enter into his rest *before* he'll address my question. In the main, though, for my life, if there seems to be silence from God's end it's because I've gotten in the way.

But I so love his patience. How gracious he is when waiting for me to come to him or when repeating a lesson I've failed (again) to grasp. How wise he is in when to nudge me to obey and when to give me time to assimilate. How tender his mercy when plucking me out of the same worldly mud puddle and washing me clean for his service.

Who is like our Lord? Whose love is so vast that is enlarges our hearts merely to brush against it? Whose presence so sweetly overwhelming in its purity? Whose words so valuable, so sharp, so filled with his essence?

Sorry, rambling. I will join the family of your heart in praying for your upcoming audition. Friday, right?

Dang, Brenda. I was thinking your childhood sounded improbably idyllic, but still possible—but then you lost me at Yellowstone and Jackson Hole. Was either of your brothers named Beaver, by any chance? Did you have an uncannily prescient and heroic collie? (Actually, seriously, it doesn't sound too different from mine—with the critical exception that I've got a smallish river out back instead of the Greatest Natural Wonders of the continental US!)

And by the way, Janet, you touched on something I thought of saying but didn't. So often the best thing you can do for a kid is not answer his or her question, at least not directly (I got so frustrated by asking "what does blank mean..." questions and getting "Look it up!" answers!). And often God does that with us. I dunno, Brenda—I think half the time when we don't hear answers right away, or don't hear anything from him in particular, it's not because his feeble voice is clamoring to be heard over the dull roar of our internal monologue. My view of sovereignty leads me to suppose that even the times we're ignoring/avoiding/drowning out his voice are under his control and leading. Maybe sometimes he lets us drink a little from "broken cisterns" just so we can find out they weren't all we'd thought they'd be. "Okay, I got the nearness of God, that's great. Excellent. But now I'd be even happier if I had that job, or that person, or understood string theory, or got the acclaim that my keen insight into current events deserves, and I'd better plan for the future, and worry about my schedule (it would be irresponsible not too!), and..." And he lets us try to live on "bread alone" until we notice we are, and realize, "Oh—that isn't cutting it. I was trying to seek first my pet projects or cravings and then expect the Kingdom of Heaven to 'be added.'" (But of course the glory is that it does work in reverse! "No good thing does he withhold"—like, say, the Alps and an embarrassment of musical riches and an awesome family and, believe me, everything else your heart desires that is in fact for your good.) (Which hopefully includes an awesome audition. Go get 'em.)

Hm. On re-reading, I owe Brenda an apology, because it really sounds like I'm ascribing the image of a helpless, soft-spoken God to you. Of course you weren't saying that, any more than Janet was saying he always answers everything we ask immediately. Also: accidental doxologies are always an excuse for rambling!

Thank you all for your support and prayers and comments! What I meant about silence, Brenda, was that when the answer is there before us and we are not seeing it, if we quiet our hearts and be at peace in God's silence it teaches us. Maybe it is not real silence then, but I'm thinking of such a silence as the judgement scene in Till We Have Faces, or a parent lovingly watching her child experiment and patiently not giving a hint until the Child has discovered what was there all along. It is not a cold silence, but a living, involved silence. I think we understand each other more than our words show. There's always a balance to be struck.

Thank you for sharing your experiences and insights. I hope to meet you face to face someday. Feel free to ramble on my blog anytime, and I'm flattered you would have liked it even without recommendation. I particularly appreciated what you said here: "But I so love his patience. How gracious he is when waiting for me to come to him or when repeating a lesson I've failed (again) to grasp. How wise he is in when to nudge me to obey and when to give me time to assimilate. How tender his mercy when plucking me out of the same worldly mud puddle and washing me clean for his service." Amen!

To Janet (because, hey, this is her blog and so she gets to be first), thanks! If we don't meet here, I'll met you at the gate when we get home. I did not for a moment think you meant an uninvolved silence. God is so good at waiting for us to be open to his will, which is what I equate with what you mentioned (semantics, I know). I keep thinking that will rub off on me without me having to change any, so that I'll suddenly be someone who waits the way he does without all that messy repentance and humbling. *sigh* There I go thinking again... :) (And, since Till We Have Faces remains one of the best books of all time, I know exactly what you mean there)

To Andy, are you in league with the other three people who have all mentioned Beaver this week? (Never even seen the show...) I liked homeschooling. As a strong introvert, it suited my personality really well and I knew both then and now that I learned more in a small, focused environment. Mentioning the time I failed a grammar exam and spent the next month being stood over while I read a year's worth of magazine back issues and having to diagram *every* *single* *sentence* didn't seem necessary. There were plenty of things that were less than perfect (like most people's childhoods, I assume), but goodness appeals to me I so try to remember that more.
As for the Lord, have you never been in a situation where you asked him "What do you want me to do?" and his reply of "Go to Africa" isn't heard because you keep talking over him because there's *no way* he'd send you to somewhere like Africa? A friend of mine was once blindfolded during a youth trip and told to follow some spoken directions to another room. The voice of God and the voice of Satan (played by two other youth, one of whom was me) talked at once, but she had no way of knowing which was which. The voice of Satan talked a lot more, said what she wanted to hear, and gave good directions until misleading her in the last steps and deserting her. The voice of God stayed with her always but spoke only when she needed to hear it since she wasn't listening only for it. Not a perfect example, but close enough to how our ears get tuned. And you're right, God's will is vast enough to cope with any and all rebellion or distraction on our part. Doesn't bless the disobedience any, but it does make him no farther away than a prayer.

"mess with other people's kids": A (single) coworker used to say that would be the best reason to have kids, to brainwash them into thinking all sorts of strange things.

"fictional state": As a kid visiting California, we told some kids that we were from New Hampshire, and they asked what state that was in, as they hadn't ever heard of it before.

"letting the kids find out on their own": I do like encouraging Jonathan to think about his own answers, but it seems that lots of times he gets in a rut of saying, "I don't know" quickly, instead of actually thinking about if he really could figure out the answer.

I've learned a great to deal from watching Jon and Jonathan about how much one can step back and allow a child to learn on his own. I haven't been around too much since Jonathan really started talking, but when you are helping him with some task you observe silently until Jonathan gets frustrated and encourage with just enough to keep him at it be it a "no, you can do it" or a "try this." At the point that a child has a question and voices it I generally think that we should answer it. We want our kids to find us trustworthy sources of information and advice! Again, in the specific situation you can easily tell if it's an honest question or a "I give up, don't wanna, too lazy" kind of question. It's the same kind of difference between an 'I'm in pain' cry and a - well, the kind a parent can respond unsympathetically to.

I guess I was thinking of the more "typical" young child questions - sometimes he gets asking so many questions and he asks ones he definitely knows the answers to, and some that he could probably figure out the answer if he thought about it for a couple seconds.