[Robb]

One of the blessings of parenthood is that God mercifully seems to grant us a second chance to relive our childhood in some ways, we re experience, traumas, forgive, and heal the wounds of our youth, to become whole. Homeschooling offers an exquisite opportunity for this healing. I think Listo could have used this healing. Maybe listo was sent to Catholic boarding school at the tender age of five, and grew up for the next five years in the hands of frustrated impatient nuns from Hades. Maybe list memories are mostly outrageous and injustices, like being forced to stand in a corner with the spiders if she didn't finish her meal or committed some other imagined offensive. Maybe she grew up, those convent years receded from her mind, but something has made their mark on Listos soul. Years back, while discussing whether to send our child to private school or to homeschool, public school has never been on the table, I am responsible. Who has a better right to teach them than me? Let that truth penetrate your mind, and Pierce your heart. I can say the homeschooling has been a journey, sometimes bumpy, occasionally tumultuous, but overall a wonderful, painful, well-planned, spontaneous, serene and rollicking adventure. But it's not just about better curriculum and protecting your kids from school shooters, lesbian poetry and jihad studies. It's a way of life for the entire family. I've watched as every family member has grown in character, I have filled gaps in my own educations by teaching, and learning, history, geography, literature, science, math and more. And I have even forgiven the nuns for their thoughtless cruel discipline to Listo. But more deeply, and ultimately more importantly, the homeschooling experience is sewing our family together as a unit. For the family that learns to learn together, work together and play together is the family where the siblings become best friends for life, and their families become a rock, a powerful godly subculture, to which they can always return for guidance and rest. As for my boyhood question, is that all there is? It has been answered most graciously. A gentle and progressive unfolding of understanding from that "other dimension" beyond time and space. With Jesus as my compass, and guided by the Scriptures, the blueprint for our character, shown with exquisite clarity in the life and words of Jesus Christ, I hope, like every Christian dad hopes, to lead my wife and child safely toward that distant shore. After all, we are Pilgrims. "And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up."