On My Way To Heaven

A post by my guest, and dear friend Eileen Lawyer. She will be kindly sharing  her beautiful homeschooling experience with us for the next several Fridays. This is her first post on the serie, the continuation is here)

When Becky first approached me about writing something for her blog on homeschooling one child, I thought, “Oh my, what would I say?” But, now that I have been contemplating it for a while, I am currently thinking, “Oh my, I have too much to say!”

Let me begin by introducing myself. My name is Eileen Lawyer and God has blessed me with being able to say I am the wife of Mike Lawyer. We have one daughter, Rachel, who is fifteen and is the joy and delight of our hearts. We live in Moscow, Idaho, USA.  We have been homeschooling Rachel from the day that God brought her forth.

Before I begin with specific ideas for homeschooling one child, I would like to lay a foundation about homeschooling, no matter how many children you may have. These are not things Mike and I have made up for Rachel, but rather, they are the foundations of life that God has given us, and that we are to pass on to our generations.

I realize that within the sixty-six books of the Bible there is wisdom contained on each and every page. But these are just a few verses for you to consider:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” (Lk.10:27) reminds us that what we are teaching and what our children are learning should be impacting everything that encompasses who we are;

“Thou shall have no other Gods before me” (Ex. 20:2-4) keeps us focused on the fact that schooling is a priority but, not our God;

“If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (Jn. 3:16) reminds us that we need to confess and repent of any irritability with our little ones (and it does happen) so they learn to confess and repent of their sins as well. They will imitate us, the good and the bad, and so we must remember to set the example of God’s mercy and grace;

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” (Gal. 6:9) There will be days when you say, “All I have been doing today is disciplining. We have not accomplished any of the goals I had set, nor have we stayed on track with the school schedule I had lined out.”  Do not grow weary but remember that even while disciplining, we are teaching our children the faithfulness of God – confession, forgiveness, restored fellowship, how hugs can be joyous. Our God is faithful and has proven his faithfulness by raising Jesus from the dead as he said he would do. So, if he says we will reap the harvest if we do not give up, then we will reap the harvest.

I remember one time specifically when Rachel was only five or six, and one of the ladies in our church had a daughter who was about sixteen. She had the sweetest disposition, was kind and gentle to little ones, respectful of her parents, filled with laughter, and whom God had obviously blessed. I spoke with her mother about the things I had noticed. Her mother pointed out that their family was at the point where they were reaping the work of the ‘training’ years. She encouraged me so much that day, to not give up when a few days were tough, to rejoice always, to pray unceasingly for our little one, and to be confident that God would bless our efforts in raising our daughter to be a Godly young lady. And now, our daughter is fifteen. She is like the young lady I saw over ten years ago. Both Mike and I are reaping the blessings of the years of teaching her and knowing that our God has been faithful.

May your days be filled with the knowledge and the goodness of the Lord as you train and teach your children. May your generations be blessed.

– Eileen

PART 2: Homeschooling One Child, The Core of All Learning and How to Do it, is found here.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 26, 2010 at 3:00 AM and is filed under Guests, Learning at Home with tags Homeschool, Just Friends, womMEn. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.