From the Editor: Judging by a Notebook
For the last several months I have been working on cleaning up my schoolroom. Some days I actually make progress! One of the things I do regularly is to add loose papers to my boys' portfolio notebooks. It is always fun seeing all the things each of them has done that year, and I enjoy being able to look back at what they have done in other years. But as I look at some of the papers in the notebooks--a cutout of the human body with all the parts glued on it, a colored picture of a Spanish Conquistador, a map of Europe--I realize that if I asked about any of those things, they probably wouldn't remember much about them. Each boy did the work, but he didn't really learn everything about those subjects.
With the older boys it might be a little different. They might be able to tell me a few more things about the work in their notebooks, but I asked my oldest son yesterday what an adverb was, and he couldn't tell me the definition. If the school board called me before them to account for what my boys had learned this year, I could show them a portfolio of what we had done, but it wouldn't be an accurate account of what they actually learned, nor would it be complete. After all, I don't have any work in it showing that they have learned to make scrambled eggs on their own. Nothing proves that they each can clean bathrooms, wash dishes, or fold clothes. I don't have any paper showing how they learned to give a baby a bottle, or how they learned to be kind to a handicapped child at church.
As I thought about this, I realized that my life is much like this. I keep going to God trying to show Him the notebook of my life. "Look, God, I served on the Women's Board for three years! See here? I tithed my ten percent, and then gave even more! Look! I homeschool!" Is He impressed with that?
I can almost hear Him respond: "No, my dear, I put you on the Women's Board to teach you how to care for women. But you hardly thought or prayed for the women you were serving. And the giving ... you still don't quite understand that it is all Mine, and I will give you what you need. I don't want you to hold on to anything. Be ready to give it all away! And my precious girl, you're homeschooling right now because I still have so much to teach you, and you would be distracted in that busy world. You see, I am homeschooling you right now!"
Oswald Chambers said, "Active work and spiritual activity are not the same thing. Active work may be the counterfeit of spiritual activity." As we begin to evaluate the past year and to plan the upcoming year for our children, let's be sure to think about their spiritual work, not just their math, spelling, and history. Let's keep their academics reasonable enough that they have time to spend getting to know their heavenly Father. And let's take a look at the notebook of our own lives and see what lessons we really haven't quite gotten yet.
Many Blessings...
Lisa A. Baker
Single Parent e-Newsletter Editor
SingleParent@TheHomeschoolMagazine.com
Parents Helping Parents: Earning Income on Top of Other Things
By Lisa A. Baker
As I have gotten to know other single parents around the country, I have been intrigued at the variety of ways God has provided for us to homeschool. Sadly, many other moms and dads struggle to make ends meet and don't know how to earn an income and still home educate. We need your help!
My next newsletter will be dedicated to offering stories and ideas of ways to earn an income while raising children. If you have an interesting testimony or an idea of a way God can provide for parents and children as they homeschool, please send them to Lisa Baker.
Apples for the Teacher: Possibility in an Impossible World
By Lisa A. Baker
As a single mom, one of the lies I fight most often is that I don't have what it will take to raise my three boys to be godly men. I begin to realize that boys are very different from girls, and I know absolutely nothing about being a boy. I read that passing on "manhood" is something that is done from man to man; however, one of those does not live in our house. Or I see one of my boys facing an area of temptation that is much more common for men than for women, and I discover I don't have the knowledge to help him through the practical battle of it.
The daily realities of living as a single parent bombard me with lies about how impossible it is for me to do alone something that God originally intended to be done through a partnership of a man and a woman. Even though it is based on God's typical pattern for families, if I believe that God cannot do something different in the circumstance He has placed me in, then I am giving in to doubt about His character. God can raise up godly men using even a simple single mom like me.
Fifty years ago, a handful of families were living in the jungles of Ecuador working on translating the Bible into native languages. The men in these families became burdened for a local tribe that was infamous for its violence. They prayed and longed for opportunities to share the gospel with them and worked to establish relationships with them toward that end. When they finally gained the opportunity to meet them face to face, all six men were killed violently, leaving behind six widows and a handful of fatherless children. They never saw the fruit of their prayers and work. Their lives ended in death at the hands of the very people with whom they were trying to share salvation.
Soon after their deaths, the sister of one man and wife of another went into the jungle to continue the work these men had started. These single women, one of whom was a single mom, lived and worked with these Waorani Indians for many years, seeing them converted and witnessing a complete change as God transformed them into a peaceful people. I recently watched a movie about this tribe, and it struck me that although God used the men to sow the seeds of the gospel, it was the women--single women--who reaped the results. One of them did so with her young child in tow. This amazing single mom was Elisabeth Elliot, and she not only successfully passed the gospel on to South American Indian tribes, but she passed it to her daughter and is now passing it to her grandchildren also. She has also influenced countless wives, mothers, and single women to live out their calling as daughters of the Most High God, trusting Him for the results of living obediently to Him.
The encouragement I received was that I can raise my boys to be godly men. Not only can it be done, but I will do it more effectively by having them alongside me as I work to complete Kingdom work. The difficulty is that sometimes Kingdom work looks like it is competing with the daily educational "requirements" that I somehow think the state or someone else expects of me. The challenge when I fall into this kind of thinking is whether I trust God to provide all that my children and I need as I obey Him, or whether I feel like I have to provide my children with it all, even if it costs my obedience.
Schoolhouse Store Spotlight
Be sure to check out the latest e-book offering from The Old Schoolhouse Magazine! Homeschool Dialogues is packed full of "conversations" with many of the greatest names in homeschooling. Read what John MacArthur, Josh McDowell, Dr. Bruce Shortt, John Taylor Gatto, "Little Bear" Wheeler, Lisa Welchel, Teri Maxwell, Karen Andreola, and many others have to say about the homeschooling experience.
Homeschool Dialogues is packed with interviews previously published in The Old Schoolhouse Magazine. TOS writers get the honest answers about what is taking place in the public schools today, the impact public education is having on our children and the country, how the church needs to support families, and how we are being desensitized. Writers also sit down and chat with homeschoolers' favorite pioneers and leaders who share their advice on how to have a relaxed homeschool, the difference between home school and home education, and ways to foster a love of learning.
Nuts and Bolts: Helping Children Cope with Heartbreak
By Lisa A. Baker
Whether it involves a broken toy or being left out of an activity with the nonresident parent, it is a common thing for a single parent to want to make up for the unfortunate circumstances in his or her children's lives. I often find it very difficult to walk through my children's hurts and disappointments without trying to fix everything. I want to soothe their disappointment when their dad cancels a visit by taking them out to eat and to a movie. I want to send them to every camp they desire to attend and to provide them with all the extracurricular activities their friends enjoy. I want to do all the things the dads do at Cub Scouts, and I want to teach them how to throw a baseball or pass a football. And I want to change the requirements of our school day every time it feels too demanding. But all too often, I have to stop myself and remember that God is using suffering in the lives of my children just like He has used it in me.
It is a difficult thing for adults to understand how a loving and sovereign God can allow His beloved children to suffer. Oddly enough, I have found that children are more accepting of God's will in these matters. I have also discovered that God wants me to use my children's heartaches and heartbreaks to point them to Him. God has taught me a few lessons about my children's suffering so that I can weave even these lessons into our school days and our lives:
- Life is extremely hard. Allowing my children to experience suffering prepares them for real life.
- Losses and disappointments help us and them focus on things in life that truly matter. I have watched my children learn to focus more on what God is trying to teach them in a particular circumstance rather than merely looking for a way out.
- Suffering makes my children more compassionate to others and to me. When we experience pain, we are better able to sympathize and minister to the pain of others. I have not hidden the pain of our friends from my children and have deliberately used their hurts to help them connect to their friends.
- Suffering brings about needs, and needs give us opportunities to allow the body of Christ to minister to us, deepening the relationships we have with our brothers and sisters in Christ. I have watched in amazement at my children who think of many in our church family as "family." They have learned to think of them this way by seeing others help us, and they are usually on the lookout for ways we can help others.
- Disappointment and grief give them practice in experiencing the consequences of sin on ourselves and others. While I don't bad-mouth their dad, when they ask we talk about how his sin has hurt us. I do the same thing when I sin against them. And I try to show them how their sin affects others around them, even when that was not what they expected. They must understand that sin has consequences we do not plan, and those consequences hurt us and others and grieve the heart of God.
- When my children suffer, it allows them to make choices and decisions as they practice handling trials with me alongside them to guide them. As I said in the beginning, life is hard. They will have to make decisions in the midst of pain for the rest of their lives. If I shelter them from pain now, they will not be able to think biblically when the more difficult trials of life come upon them.
- Suffering shows my children their limitations. As men they will need to understand that they cannot fix everything no matter how hard they try. Sometimes we just have to hurt. At least right now they are learning that it is better to hurt as you cry on someone's shoulders instead of facing it stoically alone.
- Finally, suffering teaches my children to lean more on God. Whether it is His great pleasure to fix our hurt or use it to prepare us to serve Him more effectively, we have to turn to Him to make it through the pain. It has been encouraging to see my kids learning to take their cares to Him as He teaches them to trust Him.
It is hard not to put our hands to work to rescue our kids from hard circumstances. But if we allow God to use pain to mold and fashion our little ones, we will learn to trust Him, and they will follow our example. Although it is hard to watch our kids suffer, we can trust that our sovereign God loves our children even more than we do.
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Thank you for joining us for this issue of the Single Parent e-Newsletter. Send article submissions, questions, suggestions, or comments to Lisa Baker at SingleParent@TheHomeschoolMagazine.com
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