The Godly Homeschool Family: Myth, Reality, or Idol?

 My guest author today is Cynthia Clack from A Life Profound.  A mom of NINE (yeah, baby, you read that right!), she’s “been there, done that” and lived to talk about it.  Her words resonate deeply with me.  Cynthia and aaaalll her family (plus her step-mom, seated) are pictured below (being their goofy selves -HA- click on picture to see full size).     

Cynthia’s Story:

The year was 2000.  Once again, I was on my annual retreat to a local statewide homeschooling conference.  That year, as I stood in line to register, was already different and I had no idea what God had in store for me later.  I was there not as an eager participant anticipating a weekend of encouragement but as a heartbroken parent.  Just the weekend before, my husband and I were slammed with the reality of some things going on in my oldest daughter’s life.  All that we had worked for, all that we had prayed for, all that we had strived to produce in our children seemed shattered.  With tears in my eyes, I gazed at the perfect homeschooling families with their pasted on smiles and matching clothes.  That is what we used to be and at that point, I felt lost and confused.

I started out my parenting journey in 1984 as a single mother but not for long.  My husband met and fell in love with me when I was seven months pregnant.  The next year we would marry and begin to build a Godly family.  We were young and had no idea of how to raise children.  Oh but there were plenty of Christian experts willing to guide us along the way.  It was my deepest desire to be a good mom, to love my children and protect them from the heartache that my own rebellion and mistakes had brought.  It was as if I set out to redeem my own life through the lives of my children.  I was looking for results and the parenting formulas made sense to me then.

There were promises that if I just did A, B, C and D then my children would be cheerful, obedient, godly children.  Coupled with the mandate that this was my calling, my duty to produce children for the Lord who would grow up to serve him, the rules of parenting became my guiding force.  The children were young, compliant and our family looked picture perfect.  Compliments were plenty and I thought all was well.  We were being obedient to God; we were following the recipe.  There were if and then charts, punishments were handed out for any infraction.  If you broke the rule, you paid the consequence.  God was an angry God who required cheerful obedience and holiness; nothing less was acceptable.

When it all came crashing in that spring of 2000, I felt like I was being spun in a hurricane.  I had no bearings, no idea where we had gone wrong, no plan for the next step.  God had me right where he wanted me.  Only when all I had held onto, all that I had replaced Him with, all the parenting books and charts … only when all that was gone could I hear that still small voice speak to me.  It came through the voice of Mark Hamby who was speaking at the conference that year.  I stood in the back of that room, tears of sorrow streaming down my face and Mark made a statement, not even directed to parenting, but absolutely what I needed to hear.  He said, “Wives, you need to let your husbands fail so that God can do the work He needs to do in their lives.”  My heart was split open by the finger of God at that moment and my true motives were revealed.  My spirit was broken and I turned to the One who should have been guiding me all along.  He picked me up, turned me around and set me on a 180 degree turn around.  I have never looked back.

Three things God revealed to me that day.  Our home was controlled by fear.  The children obeyed in fear and I parented in fear.  It was that failure that Mark Hamby spoke to that I feared.  I feared failing as a parent.  I believed that my children were a reflection of me, of my success.  They had to be good so that I could be good.  It was up to me to produce Godly children and if I could do that, then I was a good mother.  The key element that was missing was assurance of Love.  God taught me that perfect love drives away fear.  I had not known His perfect love yet and certainly was not demonstrating that toward my own children.  As I began to know and trust the Love of the Father and as my children began to be assured of my love, fear left our home.  Love is the driving force now.

The second thing God revealed to me that day was my pride.  It was an ugly monster that consumed my life.  As my parenting methods seemed to show results and as people recognized my efforts, the pride swelled inside me.  It’s a heady thing to be complimented about your children, to be asked for advice and teach others how to accomplish the same things.  It become all the more important that my children perform well so that the pride monster could continue being fed which led me to be more controlling, more strict, more harsh.  I look back in complete gratefulness to the fall of our idyllic family.  With that break, I finally began to understand that God gives grace to the humble.  He began to teach me how to walk in humility with my children and grace became the most beautiful thing to me.

The fear and the pride all settled into the third thing that God revealed in me.  Selfishness.  My motivations were centered on me.  It was all about my being a good mother, my self esteem as a parent, my accomplishments.  The very opposite of what people thought of me.  Being the mother of nine children, I was never accused of being selfish.  But I was.  God led me to Colossians and a verse I used against the children so many times.  “Consider others as more important than yourself”, He told me.  It went counter to all that I had been taught about parenting and my need to establish authority over my children.  God asked me to place myself beneath them. 

Seven years have passed since my epiphany into the grace of God and how to live that out toward my children.  God had an immediate paradigm shift for me and the learning process has been constant.  My trust in God has increased exponentially.  These years have not been absent of some very difficult times.  At first, I believed if I just parented differently, then the results would be better.  God had to get my eyes off of striving for results.  Grace filled positive parenting is not just another method to produce Godly children.  It is a life filled with God’s love and perspective.  I am so thankful for the journey that started with heart break but led us into a life of trusting God. 

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You can read more from Cynthia at her blog, A Life Profound.