From the time I first started dating my husband in 1969, I knew he wanted to be a physician. Although he always believed he would be a surgeon, things happened in his life that caused him to specialize in a different area of medicine. He ended up becoming an emergency room physician.

From 1977 to 1989, God blessed us with three children—a girl and two boys. As each of them began to enter school, I noticed there were many weeks when Jim would be home during the school day while the children were away at school. Then when the weekends arrived and the children were home, he would often have to be at work. It started to become a strain as we tried to find blocks of time to spend as a family.

Add to this the issue of homework, activities, church, and other occurrences and we were becoming a family that seldom seemed to be able to find time to be together.

One morning during the craziness of getting the children out the door for their ride to school, I found myself feeling rather unsettled. Mornings during the week were so rushed. Since our daughter had been four years old, I’d been getting up early, pushing her through the mornings, trying to get her to eat breakfast so she could make it through the day. You see, she doesn’t do mornings very well. (It’s still not her favorite time of day. Once we added the boys into this craziness, I was beginning to feel overwhelmed and lacking connection with my family.

Through the course of several “God-incidences” of 1989, our family began the journey of homeschooling in the fall and we’ve never looked back.

Has it been easy? No. It has been a lot of work for me, especially in learning what was available for teaching my children, especially 20 years ago when homeschooling was in the “pioneer stage,” how to teach them, and how to organize my time.

Has it been worth it? Absolutely! Though there have been tough, tiring, and trying moments, the results have proven to far exceed anything I could have imagined. For us as a family, we’ve enjoyed things like being able to stay up late at night to watch the Olympics together, then sleeping in the next morning. We’ve been able to take a lot of fieldtrips and go places to experience real places from history while most of my children’s peers have only read about such places in textbooks. We’ve been able to minister to other families who were facing a crisis, and even participated in helping to paint walls at church because others were too busy.

During the course of our homeschooling journey, we’ve added two more children to our family. Homeschooling is all they have ever known, and if things go according to my plans, this is the only “formal” schooling they will ever have.

I share my story with you simply to say, “you always have options.” If you don’t like how stress is controlling your family, look for change. Seek wise counsel. Talk to others who have been through what you are experiencing. Though the choices may sound difficult, or even impossible from your perspective, change is possible if you want it badly enough. It may involve making sacrifices like lunch out with your girlfriends and having hunks of time alone.

Also, taking control and doing things differently from what others you know are doing can seem risky and scary. Homeschooling can feel like this sometimes, especially when you are first getting started, however, it has the ability to change and enrich your lives as a family.

If after reading this you feel led to pursue this option for your family, I encourage you to talk and pray with your husband about it. Make sure the two of you are on the same page. Seek wise counsel and talk to others who are homeschooling, all the time remembering that your homeschool will look different from theirs. Don’t try to replicate their homeschool. Your friend’s children aren’t yours!

Finally, step out on faith and go for it! It is true that challenges await you and there will be bumps in your journey, but the rewards of preserving and meeting those challenges will bless you and your family far beyond your expectations.

Well, I still don’t like mornings. However, since I decided to homeschool my own kids I do get the luxury of deciding what our mornings look like around here. It’s definitely not always easy but I do try to remember that “The joy is in the journey.” I’m not in a hurry for my kids to grow up or for summer to be over so I can send my kids back to school like some of my friends. I don’t always feel like I’m doing many things well. But I do feel without a shadow of a doubt, that I know my kids the best and I have their best interests at heart so I AM the most qualified teacher for them.

So, thank you, Mom for stepping into the unknown world of homeschooling. The fieldtrips and the reading aloud as a family are still some of my favorite childhood memories. Because of you I made the decision to homeschool my own kids because you showed me how great it can be for the entire family.