Homeschool Bravely
By: Jamie Erikson
Publication: April 2, 2019
208 pages
Genre: Nonfiction, Parenting, Christian, Education
Source: Personal Kindle Library
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Goodreads description--Quiet the voices of "not good enough" and step courageously into guilt-free homeschooling Many homeschool parents have a long-term relationship with self-doubt. "Did I make the right decision?" "Could someone else do this better?" "Am I robbing my kids of something by not sending them to ‘regular school’?" What if there’s a better way? Not a 3-step technique or a shiny, new curriculum, but a change in perspective that transforms the way you plan, teach, and homeschool? Homeschool Bravely teaches you to see homeschooling as a calling, helps you overthrow the tyranny of impossible expectations, and guides you through the common bumps in the road, including how Reclaim your hope, renew your purpose, and transform your homeschool. Because the truth God will use every part of your homeschool, even your fears, faults, and failures, to weave good plans for your kids.
I was inspired to homeschool when Little Girl was only 18 months old. I remember watching video after video on YouTube. There were so many pros and only a few cons. However, when she was two and a half, I realized we didn't have many other children her age around us. Our church is small, and at the time she was the only child under the age of ten years old. We enrolled her in a mother's day out program for three days a week from 8 am until noon. She loved it. And we came to realize how social she is. By the time she turned four, I was convinced she was smart enough to learn to read. And I still believe she could have. But I now understand that she wasn't interested at that time. And my pushing her resulted in frustration for her and for me. I started to feel like I wasn't capable of teaching her, or maybe she wasn't capable of learning from me. She seemed resistant all around. Her kindergarten year started when we were in the middle of our home renovation and were living with my parents. Baby Boy was also only 6 months old. Homeschooling her then would have saved me some drive time, but it also would have added extra stress on top of an already extremely stressful period in our lives. So we sent her to public school for kindergarten and first grade. And she had wonderful experiences there.
I started to move away from the idea of homeschooling because public school seemed to work out well for her. Yet I still had a couple of issues. I missed her terribly. I felt like she was missing on so much family time. When I picked her up from school, she was grumpy, irritable, and tired of being around other people. Yet Little Boy had been looking forward to playing with her all day. Nearly every day there were fights in the car before we even made it home from school. Add to that, Little Boy started getting into trouble in his K4 class. He was acting up, disobedient, and generally disruptive to the other students in class. His teacher suspected he may have ADHD. He has not been formally diagnosed, but I do think it's possible. I also think ADHD is overdiagnosed in our country. And so I began to explore options that might be better suited for him than being in a classroom for 6-8 hours a day. I came back to homeschool.
In all transparency guys, I am not a patient person. Parenting hasn't come easy to me in that area. So much of parenting feels like putting out fires in all directions all day long. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Maybe I'm too reactive and not enough proactive. I'm constantly trying to improve myself as a person and parent. So this aspect of my personal struggles terrified me when I thought about homeschooling. Yet, I yearn for the opportunities to overcome my personal struggles, and teach my children how to overcome theirs. My reasons for homeschooling go beyond those I've mentioned here, but this is just setting up my journey and state of mind. I pretty much determined by January/February of this past year that we would try homeschooling. And so I set out to research in all the ways possible for resources, curriculum and help in any area possible. I saw this book recommended so frequently, that I knew I would have to check it out.
Jamie Erickson touched on it all. The fear. Other's people's reactions. Whether homeschooling feels like a calling for you or a convenient temporary thing. Dealing with the struggle of homeschooling a difficult child. The challenges of teaching a child that is struggling. The difference between schooling at home and homeschooling. And of course the entire point is pressing forward with bravery and handing your homeschool over to God to work in and through it and you.
Favorite quotes:
-"Fear will be a threat whenever you set out to pursue a desire that means something to you." Emily P Freeman A Million Little Ways
-And the work, when done faithfully, will always lead to worship. When I set aside my wants, my plan, my goals, and joyfully embrace the calling God has placed in my life to train my children in this short season, I am offering up worshipful praise to my King.
-Trouble will always brew when you allow your own narrative to speak louder than the whispers of God. But His voice is always there.
-Fortunately, hearing God's voice in the big things, such as a child's education, requires no more faith than it takes to find His voice in the everyday. He's not clutching it tightly just waiting to see if you can muster up enough strength and tenacity to peel it from His steely grasp. He's holding it out for you. He's inviting you to trust Him with it. Ambiguity is not in His nature. His plans are certain. His way is sure--especially for you, especially in this.
-God does not withhold His will from me, and He won't withhold it from you, friend. If you ask for wisdom for your child's education, He will give it abundantly--no secret codes or special security clearance required. Immerse yourself in Scripture, and it will become a compass, guiding you toward True North. His rhema will answer your heart cries and cast out your fears. What once looked like a coincidence will begin to show itself for what it's been all along, God's calling.
-My fear was not a sin, but my disobedience in my fear would have been.
-Since the very beginning, Satan has taken the self-doubt of humanity, coupled it with some truth, and slipped in an ittybitty lie when no one was looking in order to dupe entire generations into believing God will never give a Christian any more than she can handle on her own. In this case, he’d like you to believe that if you were called to homeschooling it was because God knew you could do it— and so you better come through. Satan wants nothing more than for you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and try to get this thing done all on your own. ... God didn’t call you to homeschooling because you could handle it. He called you because He could handle it.
-When you finally hand Him the reins, step back, and let Him do His thing, you’ll watch your liabilities become your greatest assets. His power will be made perfect in your weakness (2 Cor. 12: 9). As you decrease, He will increase (John 3: 30). Knowing that, why in the world would you ever want to just sit silently in your fear?
-God is at work right now in the midst of your fear to break your bonds of self-sufficiency.
-God is in the business of calling foolish, simple people to do great and mighty things—not because they are able, but because He is. ... Your glaring inadequacies will only stand to prove His might.
-And when we came to the end of us, we saw God. Without the fear, we would have missed His presence entirely. We wouldn’t have been looking for it. We wouldn’t have been waiting expectantly for it.
-The key is to set your sights on who your child is becoming and not just how he is acting at this moment. God is writing a story in the life of your child. And stories, at least the good ones, always have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It would be so much easier to skip to the last page— to the completed work.
-The middle pages are what make the last page so captivating. They’re where all the action takes place. The pretty resolve is only pretty because of the struggle that happened just before it. To remove the struggle is to remove the story. That’s not to belittle the struggle or to dismiss it away but to realize that the struggle is a necessary plot point in the bigger narrative.
-Most people believe that conflict and sibling rivalry are to be avoided. But it’s in the conflict that basic heart issues and differences are brought to the surface and can be dealt with accordingly. Without the conflict, the sin issues fester and multiply.
-What you don’t know, or perhaps what you may need to be reminded of, is that a “struggle” shows that you are doing something right. Struggle is a verb. It implies action; effort; giving it all you’ve got. If you are teaching a struggling learner, it means that you are, right now, developing a learner. You’re not sitting idly by or watching from the sidelines. You’re not growing comfortable with good enough. You’ve gathered all your pluck and moxie and are moving forward, helping him do the same.
-Joshua 1: 9, and the promise that God would be with me ministered to my heart. I realized that God wasn’t saying, “There’s the path; go down it”; he was saying, “Here’s the path that I have prepared for you. Take my hand, let’s walk down it together.” So I held tightly to His hand and took the first step. And then the next and the next.
-You can’t always opt out of the struggle for you or your child.
-But don’t forget that Christ’s best moments of teaching were wrapped in chaos too. In crowded homes, along the lakeshore, and even in the house of God, Jesus was familiar with messy living. He had to teach stubborn people who refused to listen.
-...should you feel dead to homeschooling because of the struggle that surrounds you, remember that God can resurrect anything. Pray He resurrects your love for your children, your calling, your commitment, and remember that this moment doesn’t define your entire homeschool. You are more than your worst days. Nothing is ever too far gone for His redemptive power. He is always working even when it doesn’t seem like it (John 5: 17).
-In His kindness to me, God’s shown me that in trying to do everything perfectly, I end up doing a lot of things with mediocrity. In His kindness, He’s revealed the idol I’ve molded out of my mothering. In His kindness, He’s encouraged me to stop wondering if I’m doing enough and has given me the courage to ask, “Am I doing what’s mine to do?”
-Your identity cannot be found in your ability to meet someone else’s quota. You don’t have to set yourself on fire just to keep others warm. God constrained Himself when He took upon human flesh. He gave Himself physical limitations. If God recognized the need to do less for a time, then why shouldn’t you? Why shouldn’t I?
-But by prayerfully making a don’t-do list at the start of each school year, you are mentally preparing yourself to be able to give a hard and fast no to those things that deplete you and leave you with little to give to homeschooling. You’ll have more room for the yeses that matter most.
-We go in with guns blazing, touting homeschooling as the answer to everyone else’s problems. We see a friend’s public- schooled child falter socially, spiritually, or academically and pridefully announce that homeschooling is the answer— the quick fix that will right every wrong. We see our “perfect” curriculum and our “perfect” methods and our “perfect” well- ordered plan and begin to prescribe it to our friends and their obviously- in- need- of- change children. We place homeschooling on the throne of God and forget that change comes only through Him.
-That’s God’s way. He forecasts victory because He can see all the way to the very end. He called Abraham the “father of many nations” before he and his wife Sarah ever conceived one child. He called Gideon a “mighty warrior” before the man ever set foot on a battlefield. He dubbed David as king when the kid was nothing more than a shepherd. And Peter? Well even in the midst of Peter’s cowardly denial, Christ nicknamed him the “Rock,” and made him a leader of the fellowship of Christ- followers.
-you can’t always tack a pretty system onto spiritual transformation.
-You are like the farmer carefully planting seeds that won’t actually bear fruit until much later. The field might look fallow and dormant, but many things are happening just below the surface. Your task is to plant while the soil is rich and fertile and then have patience like the farmer, allowing the invisible, silent work to happen slowly over time.
-If you’re willing, God wants to travel some long roads with your kids. Every mile will mean something, even the wandering ways and the missteps. It will all matter.
-When your abilities seem small, when you’re surrounded by people who could do it better, when your time and finances and patience are depleted, bring your small offerings to Christ. Trust that He can take your simple loaves and fish and create a feast for you and your children. Your impossibilities will become twelve baskets full and overflowing in His hands.
-God does not require your success, my friend, only your surrender. You’re charged with simple obedience. God is in charge of the results. But you can’t have one without the other. Don’t believe me? Take a quick flip through Scripture, and you’ll find that obedience always precedes the miracle.
And the quote that made me cry...
-The best part about simply obeying in faith and trusting God’s good plans for your homeschool is that obedience and trust take the pressure off of you. You don’t have to be a math genius if you’re not. You don’t have to be impressively patient if you’re not. You don’t have to have lots of letters behind your name if you don’t. You just have to believe God can and will provide—that He will take whatever small offerings you hold out and multiply them. You don’t have to stand at the back of the line fearing the fish and bread will run out when you get to the front. They won’t. He’s got enough for you. He’s got enough for me. Trust Him and just obey. The obedience always has to come first, then the miracle. God’s in the business of turning all of our nothings into somethings. He’s good at it. After all, He’s had a lot of practice; He’s been doing it since the very beginning.
-Bravery, on the other hand, exists in the present tense. It happens right here, right now. It’s not a lack of fear, mind you. It’s just a decision to do the thing even in the midst of fear. Bravery is the courage it takes to say with boldness, “Here is my homeschool, God. Here, too, are my fears, faults, and failures. They’re Yours now to face, fix, and forgive.” In my bravery, I might never say farewell to all my fears, but I’ll face them.
Homeschool Bravely is my first 5-Star book of 2023. It will easily be a book that I come back to over and over and over again. As I'm writing this review, we are only 3 days into our homeschool journey. These three days have been challenging for sure. My commitment is still strong. But I know days will come when I waver and wonder. And I know that coming back to this book will be just what I need because Jamie Erikson addresses nearly every potential breaking point that I can imagine. There is truth to be gleaned about the Christian walk outside of homeschooling. Simply following the call God has placed in our lives and stepping out beyond fear. I will recommend this book a ton, I know. Have you read Homeschool Bravely? What did you think? Let me know!
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