Teaching Daughters

Our family has been homeschooling for about a decade now. My daughters are 14 and 16 now, and we see that we are nearing the end of formal academics with them.  I say I'm nearing the end, but really we have never been incredibly heavily academic anyway. The girls like to read history, literature, and math (yes, read math). They also like to create, examine, discover, and play. Basically, they live life and enjoy what they are doing.


They spend their days learning to be homemakers, lovers of the home and the people in it. This hasn't been accidental. When we brought Jasmine home from government schooling when she was six, my Honey said something to me like:

"Don't forget to teach them to be women. It's important that they can cook for their future families. Teach them to organize, clean,  care for babies, and all the things you struggled with so they will be a blessing to their husbands and children." 

I don't remember if those were his exact words, but over the years, he has said over and over that this was my responsibility to raise them to be true women. 

The world's way of teaching girls to be women have everything to do with "empowerment" in the form of public nudity and "free love (no strings attached)." It calls being a homemaker monotonous and gives abortion as the answer to the problem of having little human beings who need everything from you 24/7. It's the opposite of what the Lord has deemed a vital role. It talks of a better future, but it leaves girls and women exposed and betrayed, alone having to struggle with all of the consequences of living a lifestyle filled with sin. 

So, let's look at our Mother, Eve. She was created FOR Adam. He could not work alone. He could never do the thing God had commanded him to do: be fruitful and multiply. Funny thing, Adam didn't even know he was incapable of multiplying until YHWH showed him that he was alone unlike the animals who all had a mate. They were created to be a team. One could not accomplish much without the other and vice versa but together they could do what our Father wanted them to do. Then enters sin and the curses. During the eating of the forbidden fruit, some things come to mind. One: Eve was deceived into eating the fruit but Adam was not. He still ate it, but he had not been talked into it using deception. Both of their curses were different: Adam was going to be working until the day he died to just feed his family and Eve was cursed to have pain in childbirth AND to be subject to her husband rather than being partners on equal footing. Even later in scripture, wives are under the authority of their husbands. 

Look at Sarah and Abraham: despite the fact that he asked her to tell people she was just his sister, which could have gotten her killed, she obeyed him "calling him lord (see 1 Peter 3)."  She is commended for being faithful under his authority. I know that's such an unpopular idea: that women are under the authority of their fathers or husbands and that even an adult woman is to listen to her father (especially an adult woman who is not married) or to revere and obey her husband, speaking in a respectful manner (Ephesians 5: 22-24, 1Cor. 11:3, Pro. 31: 23, Col. 4:6), but God's Word is always timely. So, as the girls have grown up, I have struggled to be respectful and honor my husband. He's a good man, so it's not so hard to obey him. However, every fiber in my body wants to be rebellious and do the opposite of what my husband expects. I know it's in our (sinful) nature to just do whatever we aren't supposed to. I know it's true of my daughters as well. We have spent the past decade helping them to first, Love the Lord with all that is within them, then their brethren and in doing both, understand their own natures, give themselves over to the God of our Salvation and how to be true women. It is our prayer, as parents and as fellow heirs, that they both grow more and more in the Lord. It is our hope that they will do the unpopular thing and be women of God- not just calling themselves that and living any old way while talking trash about us as parents or their husbands in the future, but really be women who love by living it. Even women married to unbelieving husbands have the same advice:

1 Peter 3 Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, ² when they see your respectful and pure conduct. ³  Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— ⁴ but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. ⁵ For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, ⁶ as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.

Disclaimer: God's Word is HIS Word, not mine. I am writing a disclaimer in case any one wants to debate this. Take it up with the Lord, because it's His idea! :) 


Blessings!

Trading in "Good" for "Best"

We have decided after prayer and discussion that our girls will not be continuing with their Thoughtful Thursday classes. Yesterday, I sent the emails to their teachers about it. I felt a little heartbroken to do so. It is not something that is in our best interest to continue to do, though not a bad thing of course. Isnt' life funny like that? Sometimes you have this thing you think is great only to find that it's merely good and you're missing out on the great because of it. Does that make it bad? I don't know that it is bad- just bad for us. 

Part of our inability to go has to do with the fact that we have wood heat. It’s bitterly cold in our house when there is no one here to keep the fire. This is an od drafty house that needs constant care.

We are also continually working on the house. We have yet to replace the roof (which we’d hoped to have done by now) due to finances. What seemed like only $30 per week really became more like $100 after gas and being so far away from home that we were only able to have one meal before leaving home and getting back so very late. Really we probably could have put the roof on the house by now had we chosen not to do TT  and saved that money instead. 

We spent many years just not leaving the house except for basics like grocery shopping  and doctor visits for Scott’s Mom that I just wanted the girls to do something different and fun (hence going to TT). Of course retrospect is 20/20 and many of the valuable lessons we learned during that time of trial were the best things and nothing a book nor a class could teach us can compare. 

In keeping with the “plan” we feel the Lord has given to us for our daughters, the art and music lessons, which entertaining and fun, are not “best” but only “good.” None of us should be willing to give up the “great” for merely “good” although sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which. The girls have both expressed a desire to continue classes, but also to fulfill their life plans, and so are ambivalent. Last night they spent at a friend of the family's home in order to help the Mother today with chores and childcare. After feeling tired from not sleeping well, they worked hard today. They came home tired but feeling fulfilled having helped this family. I think they have realized their calling in life if greater than the fun they have been having in classes. I am grateful.  Another lesson the Lord has provided!

How do you stay at home or......

This evening on Facebook a lady asked this question: "What are some things that you do to make sure you don't spend more time reading or writing about your home ministry than you spend actually ministering? Let's share ideas!!!"




Here is my response:




I used to go to this great ladies Titus 2 Bible study. Sometimes I would come home with these great ideas from the group that my husband just thought weren't for us. One day I realized I spent so much time there and studying to be a good wife without implementing anything I'd learned (like obeying and reverencing my husband) that I just felt foolish and stopped going. When asked why I didn't come I told the ladies that I needed to start practicing some of the theories I had learned. LOL

I also have come to realize that the Lord places us where He wants us to minister. Here I am in the home with my daughters, homeschooling them (now teenagers) and teaching them what kind of future wives to be! I'm all for spreading the Gospel to the world, but I have a family that the Lord has given me to care for here. If He brings others into my home then this is the place for me to share in. Also, it's not a "do as I say not as I do" thing. The Gospel, hence the Christian life, is one of love (not defined as mere affection but the kind of love that as CS Lewis wrote: But Love is not mere Kindness. "Kindness cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering", while Love "would rather see [the loved ones] suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging modes". How can I love my family if I only want them to always "be happy" by placating them with toys and entertainments? I cannot. Thus it is my job to serve them and teach the children in this precious time that I have them here with me to love the Lord. That is my ministry.

Learning

Jasmine (15) has expressed an interest in learning about the workings of the human body. I'm so excited to teach her! I love science (though not so much chemistry) and I love sharing what I know! Miriam (13) on the other hand thinks the inside of any living thing is "gross." So, last night I researched different biology programs. There are alot of great ones out there, but I think we chose the best in Biology 101. I emailed the owner/ maker of Biology 101 and he promptly got back to me answering my questions about his program. My biggest concern was how does his program handle human reproduction. This is honestly why we haven't been in any kind of hurry to teach biology up until now. So he told he told me. I was very satisfied with his answer. We purchased the program. I'll blog about it again once we're into the program for a while.

On thinking of homeschooling and it being summer, I'm not really enforcing any kind of scheduled book work. I never really have, except that the girls read scripture, do a math lesson and write from Spelling Wisdom.  As we get closer to being "done (whatever that means)"  with the formal part of their education, we are considering graduation requirements for our school. Now, this is why I love living in NC- we can decide what it means to graduate. Really all schools can but most do the requirements to get into the UNC system. Neither of my girls plan to go to college so we don't have to worry about that. If they want to attend later on, they can start at a community college and transfer (which I really recommend for any child who graduates- not moving away from Mom and Dad but easing into college life and waiting on the university until they are older and wiser). Both of the girls have things they love: Jasmine loves music and Miriam loves art. With our year around- always learning approach to life they have time to pursue their passions. We don't "stop learning" like many families do- we realize we learn from all sorts of situations, people, books, games, observations, etc.... There is no "right way" to learn. Now, we do the math and spelling the way we do just because it's easy to quantify what they have learned. It is not possible to tell what the soul is learning of our Father Creator, but we like to learn a little bite at a time. Where can learning about the Lord happen? Everywhere!