Our First Home School Graduate

A little over 16 years ago, I was great with child... our first. One day I came home and told Casey that I felt the Lord was telling me that we were supposed to home school our child. I knew this had to be from the Lord because Casey and I are both  the product of public schools and didn't have anything against them or any reason to do anything different with our own chidren. Furthermore, we only new one or two people who home schooled so we didn't even really know all of what homeschooling entailed. Naturally, I never thought Casey would go for the idea but to my amazement, his response was, "I couldn't think of a better person to teach our child than you."

We both gushed at the thought and then agreed that we would just do the homeschooling thing until she was in middle school because homeschooling longer than that would be weird.

So I started right away, of course. I bought a belly belt that had speakers in it and hooked it up to my cassette playing Walkman because I was cool like that. And so my little unborn baby was listening to Bible songs and Mozart while I walked, sat and slept. I also collected a few children's books and began to read them out loud to my navel. As soon as we brought our firstborn home from the hospital, I started with reading flashcards and weekly trips to the library, where I spread out a blanket on the floor, laid her on it, and read to her. I was homeschooling!

By the time Kelsi was old enough to officially start school, we were surrounded by homeschoolers. God is so good. All we had to do was obey and He provided others to help us along the journey. Many of those "others" were homeschooling their middle and high schoolers and, to our surprise, they weren't weird!

Now, 16 years later, we may or may not be weird. The jury is still out on that. But, weird or not, our little Kelsi was home schooled all the way through high school and this past Saturday, she graduated.

When I saw her coming up the isle in her cap and gown my mind drifted back to that day when the Lord led us to home school. Then it flipped through the many memories we made together on the home schooling journey: learning to read, doing experiments, playing Play Dough, doing co-ops, writing papers, going on field trips and so much more.

I'm so thankful that I got to be the one there for that. We sacrificed a lot and it wasn't easy but, yes, it was worth it. I'm also beyond grateful that I got to be there last Saturday to see her graduate. There were many tearful eyes that day as her daddy and I walked up on stage to give her the diploma. God was merciful to our family to allow me to be there to witness and celebrate such a momentous occasion for our family.