How We Came to Homeschool When My husband Was Against it

It seems like God often speaks to the wife first about some matter and then uses that to teach her to submit to her husband and to wait on the Lord for the matter to come about. This is the way homeschooling came about for our family.

I don’t even know when I first got the notion to homeschool. I believe it was even before I was a Christian. After I was saved it became very strong and though I didn’t know much about it, I was convinced that this was what God wanted for our family.

The only holdout to homeschooling was my husband. He thought it was very interesting, but was not for our family. It took me a while to figure out what he wanted because I didn’t take the time to ask him. I would listen to his conversation when it was brought up in public. I thought he was very interested until we had a conversation with some friends and he said that we would never do that. HUH. I thought he was in on this for sure. I spoke to him later and he said that it was an interesting concept, but not for our family.

I begged and pleaded, and tried to reason with him. I was so sure that this was God’s will for us. This was when our daughter was 3. As time went on I learned about submission. Oh, this was hard. And why would God let me desire something so much and not let my husband in on it. At this point Meg was 5 and had missed the cut off date for school by a week, and Dh wanted me to put the girls in preschool. I gave my desire to the Lord and said, “God, I was convinced that it was Your will for us to homeschool, but I know you want me to submit. If it is your will you will have to change Chad’s heart.” I decided then that I would not say another word about it to Chad. And I didn’t mention it to the Lord either.

I took the girls to preschool 10 minutes away for a two months. Then my car broke down and we couldn’t afford to get it fixed until January. It was the 1st of November. During this time I actually had put away the idea of homeschooling and had resigned myself to public school for the kids.

One day, before the car was fixed, Chad came home from work. He announced, “If you still want to homeschool, I think we should.” I had to ask what brought this on and he said he didn’t know but he felt very strongly that we needed to do this; that it was the right thing for our family! He was already to convince me if I hadn’t wanted to. He didn’t know I still did because I hadn’t said anymore about it. Praise God. My husband has been totally commited to it ever since.

We’ve been homeschooling for 9 years now and have no intention to stop!