The Odds Against Homeschooling
If a husband decides to go back to college at 30 to become a pharmacist—and his wife has to support him and the children for the next decade—he will have praise of the multitudes: “It’ll be tough living on one income, but you can do it. You just hang in there. It will all be worth it.”
If a woman quits her demanding job as a nurse to start a scrapbooking business in the spare bedroom, her friends are green with envy. “It’s your life . . . do what you enjoy. Set your own pace, be independent. Best wishes! Making a living isn’t all about money, it’s about enjoying what you do.”
But let someone say, “I want to homeschool my children,” and a thousand eyebrows may instantly raise. The masses gasp for breath, and counselors crawl out from under every rock to warn of “the dangers” of entertaining such thoughts. Cunningly, the vacuum of doubt attempts to abort the dreams, aspirations, and faith from the hearts of parents who are being called to the road less traveled. Are the odds really against homeschoolers, or are the challenges really part of a higher plan which God uses to manifest His wonderful grace?
My wife Jenny and I have lived through a lot of stuff, and some of it was not good. In the process we’ve been blessed—though we didn’t always realize it until after the “stuff” was over. I would say that our greatest blessings have been the results of beating the odds. For some reason we believed that God would prove Himself through life’s overwhelming challenges. Time after time, our heavenly Father has manifested His power in the face of all those odds. Let me tell you about a few of them.