Train Them Up in the Way They Should Go

It seems impossible that my first born baby girl is old enough to start preschool. After a lot of prayer and meditation on the subject, we have decided to homeschool. It is important to Jordan and me that our children are taught in a Christian environment, and with private schools running well over budget (three kids at $5-8,000 a year... yeah, no.) this seems like the right answer for us.

With the impending arrival of our third child in August, I have decided to start school for Evie on July 1st so that I can take off the month of August for fun things like labor and c-sections and a million diapers a day. I have had so much fun planning her curriculum, using a few websites as guidance, and realizing that with a three year old the most important thing for her is to have a ton of fun while she is learning. I look forward to the games, activities, and fun mini field trips I will get to take with her!

I printed out a homeschool curriculum planner that I found on Pinterest and one of the pages leaves a place for goals for the year, how you plan to attain said goals, favorite scriptures and quotes, and a mission statement and statement of faith. I went searching the internet for examples of a homeschooler's mission statement, and they were all very good. A lot of "why we do this" "how we plan to execute this" and so on. But nothing that suited my family. And then, while I was (again) on Pinterest, I found this quote and it spoke to my heart in a very deep way:

This has become my mission statement, and something that I want to strive for not only as a parent, but as a human being. I want to live my life for heaven rather than earth-- for God and not for man. And honestly, this is something that I struggle with. I feel as though the world has such a grip on me. I love God, and my heart is in the right place, but there are a lot of times when I feel like I shy away from my love of God for fear of what others will think. And this quote made me realize how much of my life I am living for man, and it has really pushed me to make a change.

I want my children to grow to be confident in who they are. I don't want them to back down from their beliefs, and I want them to always defend what is right regardless of what those around them say. Especially fellow Christians, whom I don't always see eye to eye, and whom can often be the most difficult to stand up to. I want to train up my children in the way they should go, and it is a difficult thing to do when I still feel so weak in so many areas.

I am not a perfect person. I am certainly not a perfect parent. Actually, there have been some days recently when I'm pretty sure I'm a bad parent. I need more patience as a mother, and I need more grace as a human being. I don't like the bitterness I have felt during this pregnancy, and that is something I am desperately trying to let go of. It's so hard to forgive and forget when I have been hurt by people that I love, especially when they don't seem to care at all about how their actions and words have made ME feel. So I struggle, and I pray, and I cry, and I try to focus on my beautiful family, and on the people who love me and have supported me.

I want to be a good enough mother and a good enough Christian to teach my children right from wrong. So pray for me. Pray for me as I enter this new journey in homeschooling. Pray that I am able to grow as a Christian so that I may help my children grow. Pray that I am able to be the wife that my husband needs me to be and the mother my babies deserve. And pray for patience and grace and a forgiving heart, because I really need those things.

And please, God, don't let me screw this up.