458 | Parenting is a Great Sacrifice (Sean Allen)
Show Notes:
It feels like there is so much opposition to homeschooling. Though today there is a far greater degree of acceptance, plenty of voices remain which not only question but blatantly oppose our efforts to raise our children at home. That said, the greatest opposition probably comes in our own self doubts and even resistance to what homeschooling requires of us. And what does it require? Just about everything. But if we learn to yield to the requirements, to the sacrifice, we learn the secret - giving is receiving, losing is reclaiming. Death is life.
About Sean
Sean Allen is the founder of The Well Ordered Homeschool, husband to his beautiful bride Caroline and a proud father of eight. He has a bachelor of fine arts in graphic design and is passionate about creating materials to assist parents in the incredibly challenging, yet surpassingly beautiful, work of schooling and training their children at home.
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The Well Ordered Homeschool Planner - Undated Edition
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Show Transcript:
Sean Allen Hello. Welcome to the Homeschool Solutions Show. My name is Sean Allen and I am one of the many hosts here on the podcast. Since you're listening to this, I'm guessing you already know that homeschooling is both incredibly challenging and incredibly beautiful. Every week we're here doing a little guidance, some helpful counsel, and a whole lot of encouragement your way as you navigate this busy, yet blessed journey of educating your children at home. Now, even though the show is called Homeschool Solutions, it should come as no surprise to you that we do not have the answer to every homeschool related question. But if you come away with nothing else, our hope is that today's episode will point you to Jesus Christ and that you will seek His counsel as you train your children in the way they should go.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining me. It feels like it's been a little while since I've recorded on here or recorded an episode, but it probably hasn't been that long. I don't know. There's been a lot going on. The last episode that I recorded, it was a series of episodes, really, when to say "yes", when to say "no", when to say nothing at all. And then we got into... Boy, we got into holiday season. We're in the thick of it now. And with our businesses, we generally get pretty busy around Black Friday for reasons that should be obvious. And then we've got all kinds of things underway here, so a few things I want to make mention of at the start here. We recently had our planner, our homeschool planner. I converted it to a non-dated format. So going forward, we plan on offering both formats — dated and undated. So that was a big development for us. It was quite a push to get that done. You know, we're a small company, folks and we started small and we're trying to grow, grow, grow and and there is such a thing as growing pains. Getting these planners purchased is... It's a lot of money for us. I'll say that. For somebody else, wouldn't be anything but it's a lot of money and so then the jump from, you know, a few hundred planners to a thousand or more planners was big for us and now talking about doing that for two different formats is even bigger.
But we just received those about a week ago. We've been shipping like crazy. We had a lot of preorders and it's available now and I'm not sure exactly when this episode will release, but I'm assuming it will release before the first of the year. If you are needing a homeschool planner or maybe you start your year at the start of the year, it's a perfect time to check it out. Just go to thewellorderedhomeschool.com and check out our undated planner. It's set up in almost exactly the same as our dated planners without dates obviously, so you have to fill all that in yourself. One of the best features about it is that all the tabs are blank. So we still have tabs. We wanted to be able to offer those just like we do in the dated planner, but obviously they're blank. And so I think we thought of a neat way to be able to get around the problem of having to customize your tabs yourself and that's with stickers. So we have clear stickers that you can put on your tabs and so if you start in January, you can put that first tab as January. And maybe you skip a few months for whatever reason—you can't get around to it and you need the next month to be March. Whatever. That next tab can be March—so you can customize it however you want. And it's still good for use for up to five children, just like the dated planner. So we try to make it the best that it could possibly be and now we're in the midst of working on the dated planner so it just keeps rolling. And we're very thankful for everyone's support and we've had such good reviews. People seem to love it and we try to just make it as useful as we possibly can. So that's the first thing.
The second thing is I fully expect to continue contributing to this podcast. I'm very thankful for this opportunity and I'm very grateful for everyone's support and hopeful that I'm continuing to be helpful in some way to those of you who are listening. But another thing that we're going to be launching very soon is our own podcast, and you all are one of the very first to hear about it. It will be called The No Ordinary Days podcast, and I will be hosting it. Caroline will be on there every now and then as well, and we'll just see where it goes. We're just going to start. There was a point in time in my life where I had to have everything perfect before I got anything launched, and I'm trying to learn that that's not the best way to get stuff done. And so we're just going to launch. So we should have about ten episodes at launch and that should be just in a few weeks now. So this is not anything to take away from this podcast. We hope to do both at the same time because we love the people who produce this podcast, they do an excellent job. There's a lot of excellent information on here, so continue listening. But also you might check out The No Ordinary Days podcast. And if you're wondering what in the world, why did you call it the No Ordinary Days podcast? Well, you have to listen to find out. So check that out.
Okay so into today's topic. What will we talk about? Well, I wanted to talk about parenting as usual, because parenting plays into how you homeschool days go, how smoothly or unsmoothly they progress. And so I wanted to talk about the nature of what you're doing a little bit. I like to talk about this a lot because to me, it's important to ground yourself into the deeper meaning behind this enterprise. And it's very important because if you allow yourself to, other people will come along and try to define it for you. They will tell you what it is that you're doing. And usually when they attempt to do that, the end result is not very pretty. Let me just put it to you that way. And most of you probably already know this: when the world takes it upon themselves to define and describe what it is that you're doing, the description is just not very flattering.
And so you don't want that. You want to be connected to and rooted in a deeper meaning, and you want to access that as often as you can or have access to that. You just kind of want it in your back pocket, really. Because at any moment you could become discouraged, you could get sidetracked or sideswiped (I guess you would say) by some incoming philosophy or naysayer or some group of individuals who think that it's their responsibility to discourage you and to knock you off track or to make you feel bad and guilty about what you're doing. It can come in all shapes and sizes and all kinds of forms, and usually it comes when you least expect it. And so I feel like a lot of the things that I say you probably already know, maybe I put them in a little different light than what you're familiar with.
But nevertheless, you know these things and I'm just here to remind you of them because we all need that. We're all human and we all get discouraged and we get discouraged with some of the most irrational, illogical things and things that at face value, you would say, you really shouldn't struggle with that, that shouldn't affect you, and yet it does. And so what are you going to do with that? Are you just going to pretend like it's not there or are you going to allow it to make you feel even worse—the fact that you're struggling with it and you know in your heart that you shouldn't or other people are telling you that you shouldn't. So I like to think of the story of Elijah, you know, when he was contending with the profits of Baal, there was just this remarkable display of the power of his Heavenly Father and it was a show that God was with him and was on his side. And of course the prophets of Baal, their sacrifice wasn't accepted and Elijah's was in a fantastic, stupendous display of God's power. And then shortly after that, we read about him and Elijah is discouraged. He's discouraged about Jezebel and he goes and he hides in a cave and he's lamenting. As I think Shakespeare would say, he's "bemoaning his outcast state" and so it doesn't make sense, does it? Like, "Elijah, you just... Just look at what God just did for you in front of all of these people and some of the most powerful, influential people of your time, God just proved that he in his infinite power is with you." And yet just a few... I don't know what the period of time was. It seems, it reads, as if it's very short. Now he's discouraged.
We're like that too, folks. If Elijah can be like that, we're like that, too. So don't feel bad about that. But parenting at its core is—let me just get to the heart of it— a sacrifice. Homeschooling is a sacrifice. It's a sacrificial offering that you make to your God. And hopefully, deep down inside, you feel that call that emanates from the heart of God himself to do the best that you possibly can on behalf of your children for the limited time that they're with you. And it is a limited time. It seems like it's going to go on forever. That's another irrational thing that we generally ascribe to, even though we would never admit to it. But we live our lives, many times, as if they are always going to be three or they are always going to be ten, and it's just obviously not true. And when we do that, we allow the days to just kind of slip by almost unnoticed and we miss opportunities. We're all going to do that, every one of us. But I think the closer we can keep this sentiment and this understanding that what we're doing is incredibly important and it is actually God ordained, the better off we'll be. And the fewer days we will actually allow it to slip through our fingers
And we won't live each day as if there's always going to be a tomorrow. We will put as much importance and meaning and I guess relevance in each day that we possibly can so that, you know, when the time comes that our children leave us, we will have as few regrets as possible. I don't know that any one of us can ever really fully escape regret. I think that's probably going to be an experience that we all have to some extent, some greater, some lesser. But we're trying to reduce the amount of regret that we experience as far as possible. And so when we acknowledge and accept and not fight against, but accept the fact that parenting is a sacrifice and homeschooling is a sacrifice, it actually opens up new avenues of possibility that were previously not, I think, available to us. When we wrestle with it, when we resist it, when we've bought into some line of thinking that suggests to us that it should be much easier than what it is, that's when we get discouraged and that's when we kind of let the flag trail a little bit and some of us give up altogether because we're disillusioned.
Again, something or someone or some spirit perhaps has come along and has deceived us into thinking that, you know, we're doing it all wrong and other people can do it, but we can't and I'm not cut out for this. I just don't have the patience. I don't have the drive, whatever it might be. I'm not smart enough. And, you know, the world's all too happy to join in on that chorus and convince you that you just don't have what it takes because whether they know it or not, or whether they're actually engaged in this or not (and some are and most aren't) but nevertheless, they all seem to speak in one general direction, is that you need to kind of give it up. And I would understand if if you do. I would understand why you would give it up because even the people who are well-meaning when they talk to you and they act a little amazed that you're homeschooling your children and they might even praise you a little bit, but they would follow it up with, "Well, I could never do that. You know, I just don't have the patience for that." So what I mean by that is, so these individuals (for all intents and purposes) are not actively engaged in discouraging you from the path that you're on, but if you were to decide to leave that path, they would they would perfectly understand that. Of course, I mean, I can't do it so how can I blame you for not continuing?
And so the world is genuinely pretty unified in their opposition, I guess, to a greater or lesser degree to what you're doing. And not everyone, obviously, but on the whole, that's generally what you get. If you're not connected and submitted to the fact that parenting is a sacrifice and it can't be anything other than that, then you are going to be more susceptible to their arguments and to their attempts to drag you down and to get you to change your mind to go a different direction. Homeschooling is an extension of parenting. Why? Because obviously your children are with you all day long. And I always like to say that really what you're doing is home-rearing. The education is really an extension of the rearing and it shouldn't be the other way around. We place such a great emphasis on education. I mean, it's not that education is not important, but the emphasis comes from the fact that we have, you know, these massive constructs of, you know, government run schools that have been with us for as long as we can remember. And they were there for our parents and their parents before them. And so it's just always kind of been there. It's this monolithic structure that we just sacrifice our children... I shouldn't put it that way. I mean, a lot of people don't view it that way, but we yield our children to this edifice and we allow them to take upon themselves the responsibility of the biggest part of our children's education.
Well, again, I want to remind you that when they do that, they're also rearing your children. They're not just educating. You can't divorce those two things from one another. Now, they might be poor at it and they might not be as purposeful, I guess, about it as what you would be, but nevertheless, it's going on. The influences are there, you know, the philosophies are there, the relationships are there, and so you cannot help but have that ongoing along with the educational enterprise. And so it is with your home. That's really the main reason why you should bring your children home is so you can rear them yourself and not give that over to somebody else. And this really needs to be taken out of the sphere of an argument for or against education and really the larger issue is who's rearing them.
And you might make the case that I'm just not as capable at educating my children than somebody who went to college, you know, someone who's trained to be a history professor or a math teacher or whatever. I'm just not as expert as they are and that's an easy argument to make. But with that, you need to ask yourself the question—what's more important, the rearing or the educating? And if you're a Christian or if you have faith of any kind whatsoever, or if you're a conscientious parent. Doesn't really matter if you're Christian. It definitely applies if you are a Christian, but if you're just a conscientious parent, I would say that you should be more concerned about the rearing than the educating.
Now, some people might hear that and they'll be like, oh, well, so education is not important? What's going on in these homes anyway? Are they learning anything at all? And yes, of course they are. We care about that very much. Because we care about our children, we also care about what they learn and the fact that they are learning so that they can improve themselves and acquire as much knowledge as possible and be useful to their families and to their fellow men. Of course, we care about those things. We care about the quality of their education. That is a part of their rearing. But again, it's not the other way around. The education does not trump the rearing. And so while we're educating them, we're trying to expose them to good influences and to proper sourced texts and textbooks that are actually useful. And yes, we get to be the ones that make those decisions and to tailor our child's education in such a way that it suits them—that it suits their strengths and their weaknesses and their interests and their personalities—because we believe that they could go further rather than to force them to or consign them to a cookie-cutter type of education that was predetermined by so-called experts who don't know your children and who aren't capable even, much less interested, in discerning the proper path that your child should be on. Because the one who created them is the one who has designated a path because no one knows them better than he does. So he knows what's best for them.
And so because he has given them to you, he trusts that you also love them. He's hoping that you will acquire the same kind of love for them that he has for them, or at least you will seek for it, and in so doing, you will also seek for the best path forward for them. And that includes, again, the selection of the various curriculums that you will employ in their education, but it also applies to the influences that are present—the pictures that are on your wall, the music that you listen to throughout the day, the discussions that you have, time at work and time at play. And all of these various things go into the rearing of that child. So it really needs to be taken out of the domain of just merely educating, because again, you cannot divorce those things.
If you decide that you want to send your child to public school five days a week, eight hours a day (and sometimes longer), well, then just know that they are playing a very significant role in rearing your children. Why we have this idea that education is so important that you should take it out of the hands of the people who love their children the most and turn it over to a third party institution for eight hours a day is a little baffling to me, to say the least. And I think that probably most parents don't think about this. I don't think my parents thought about it much. And, you know, God bless them. I know that they still loved me, they wanted what was best for me, and this was the best option that was available to them. I don't think that they were made aware of any other options. And if they were, probably the individuals who were practicing those other options did not live it in such a way that made it viable at all. Because I remember my limited exposure to homeschooling when I was young was... I just had one word for it. It was weird because the people who were homeschooling were weird to me, and I would say that they were genuinely weird.
And so you don't want that either and that's on us. It's our responsibility to present a better vision for how this can be carried out within a home. But nevertheless, I don't hold that against my parents. I'm not wanting to hold anything against anybody. But it's just now that the options are much clearer than what they used to be. And so I'm just asking that parents would just take a little bit of time just to think about it. Just think about it a little bit and ask yourself, is this necessary? Is this what's best for my child? And if it's not what's best and you're still willing to submit to it then, you know, the next question would be why? Why am I in that way? Am I trapped? Is this because I don't feel like any other pathway is financially viable?
There's all kinds of different questions that enter into this. But I'm guessing (and I think it's pretty safe to guess this) that you probably cannot think of anything or any reason why you would not homeschool that is superior to the welfare of your children. I bet you can't think of anything. Now, again, there are situations that arise where you are literally trapped. But if you truly love your children and you truly want what's best for them, you will find a way. You'll find a way. You'll do everything that's necessary to clear the path in order to get to the place where you can homeschool. If you've deemed that the best way forward. So yes, of course, it's a sacrifice. I think that's probably one of the things, maybe the main thing, that makes it the most distasteful, aside from the lie that, you know, you're not educated enough, you're not intelligent enough to educate your child. And so therefore, you should leave that off for someone else.
But probably the thing that makes it the most unpalatable to others is the sacrifice side of it. And here's the thing about the sacrifice is that it's something you have to learn and you have to practice. When you start out, no sacrifice was ever pleasant I think at the start. It's hard because you're unaccustomed to it. It's just not something that you regularly do. It could be something such as just learning how to run long distances. So the first day out at running, is that a sacrifice? Yes, because you could be doing lots of other things and you're sacrificing your energy, you're sacrificing your time, in the hopes that there will be a return on that sacrifice at some future point in time. The first day's rough and you might not make it two blocks. Why? That's pain because you're not accustomed to it.
And I would say in my experience, probably the first, you know, one, two, three instances, maybe the first week of practice is it's a little hard to see the why. And it's easy to get discouraged because the results are not easy to discern just yet. But if you get that first week under your belt or first, you know, single digit days, something happens. There's some kind of a voice inside you that says, yes, this is unpleasant, but boy, it sure seems like it's worth it or it's going to be worth it very shortly because you start to see gains and the gains are what spur you on to greater and greater gains. And I think that applies to all sacrifices. They're not easy initially, but as you practice them, if you intelligently are making a sacrifice and I'm talking about, intelligent sacrifices, by the way. Sacrifices that are forced on you by other people that you do not want to willingly submit to, that's a whole different issue. But the sacrifices that you commit on an intelligent basis, because you have an invincible surmise that there's going to be something good that arises from this, those are the ones that over time become actually quite pleasant.
And so again, let's just take the running analogy. If you're not seeing results for whatever reason, and maybe you set out with a defeatist mindset from the get go. You know, I can't do this. I've been told that I can't do this. Nothing good's going to come of it. And so you're a self-fulfilling prophecy and you're just always discouraged and there's not a single second of this that you enjoy, coupled with the fact that you're not seeing results and eventually you're going to give up. Well you're just listening to the wrong voices. You're listening to the wrong voices because not only are there others who have been benefited by this discipline, it's been proven time and time again that there are good results. And so it's just a matter of whether or not you're going to yield to it. If you're afraid of bad results or of injury or, you know, maybe you focus more on those kinds of results than you do on the positive results and you're just fearful that that's going to be your story as well. Well, you're setting yourself up for failure.
And this is something that's far more important than running. We are running a race of sorts, but the welfare of your children is way more important than getting in shape or losing weight or being able to run long distances, as important as that might be. And so in that sense, you really cannot fail. What you're doing here is something that is too big to fail. That was a phrase that we heard back in the 2008 housing crisis, wasn't it? We heard that about banks and various financial institutions, and we had to bail them out because they were too big to fail. Well, that phrase could legitimately be applied to your home. It's too big to fail, too important to fail. And you cannot fail at what you're doing. You have to reconcile yourself to this fact. You cannot fail. It's not an option. There's too much riding on this, okay?
And so if you believe that God has called you to this sacrifice, and by so calling he has effectively promised to you all of the helps that he may make available to you to ensure your ultimate success, and if you believe that not only has he called you, but that he will give you the strength to help and that he will catch you when you fall, he will help you through the good days and through the bad, then it doesn't matter really how much pain there is in this exercise because you will have access. Access when you need it. Access whether from day to day or in the very moment that you need it. Access to the testimony of the spirit that says to you that great things will come from this. And that is the thing that keeps you going from day to day, isn't it? No one's denying that. It's hard. No one would suggest that to you—that it's not hard, I guess I should say. It is pain and it's very similar to my experience in long distance running, which I don't do a whole lot of that anymore. But I did at one time and I would say that I had this thought multiple times while I was running—why am I doing this? Why am I doing it? I cannot wait until this is over, I don't ever want to do this again, and I'm not exactly sure... I'm hallucinating, if it's a very long distance, you know, and you just hurt and you would give anything to stop, and that kind of pain is... I mean, there are a lot of homeschool parents who could tell you that that's the kind of pain that we're talking about.
And yet here is the strange phenomenon. It's very much like childbirth, even though I've obviously never had that experience before. But the scriptures speak to this, and many women that I've talked to, my wife in particular, have had this experience. But the strange phenomenon is in long distance running, once you cross the finish line and you have a moment to catch your breath, it's the strangest thing in the world. You're like, I could do that again and I think I'd actually like to do that again. I made it. That was actually incredible. It was hell, but I'd actually be willing to go through that again. And it's the same with childbirth. I mean, the pain that I've seen my wife endure to bring a child into this world is a harrowing experience. And yet once the child comes, the joy that overcomes her, just the sheer unbridled joy. And you could see it all over her face. And she's even told this to me after the fact, "I could do that again." And she has done it many times.
Homeschooling is like that too, folks. It's hard. It could be just brutally hard because children are flesh and blood. They have unbridled passions. They have a need, need, need mentality. Need-now mentality. They can get discouraged. They can get angry. They can get frustrated. They can get lazy and messy and all of these various things. And yet, through it all, you also see the good and the encouraging things that are in them. And you lay hold on those things. And you might have a rough string of days and yet there is a voice that comes stealing to you, perhaps in your quiet moments that says, it's worth it. It's going to be worth it. And if you have any sense of memory whatsoever, you can look back from where you've come from and hopefully you can see some growth. Yes, there's still some great challenges and things that need to be sorted out, but you can also look back and see, well, this is where we started. And boy, we have actually gained a lot of ground. We're not there yet, we haven't arrived, and I don't know exactly what it will look like when I do arrive, but the Lord keeps giving me strength and giving me insight and giving me hope and courage, and I'm going to press on.
And those are the sorts of people who yield to that process. Those are the sorts of people that find the secret to life is death. The secret to receiving is giving. The secret to reclaiming is losing. You see, we're losing a lot of ourselves, aren't we, in this process? We're giving a lot of ourselves in this process and it sometimes feels like death. It's the death of some of your hopes and dreams—your former hopes and dreams. I had this and what I discovered is that my former hopes and dreams pale in comparison to the glory of the hopes and dreams that I now have, that I have discovered through yielding to this process of death, of sacrifice. And I know that sounds morbid. People say, "Oh, death. Like, how could you ever inspire anybody to homeschool their children by telling them it's a death?" Well, I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you because it is a sacrifice. It's a sacrifice and it's a sacrifice in deeper ways than what actual death is, because that comes in a moment, you see. But this is something wherein you're dying all day, every day sometimes. And you have to keep giving. And you wonder to yourself, I just don't think I have... Do I have anything else to give? I think I need a moment alone. I need some silence. I need some time away. I don't know if I can... I know tomorrow will come, but I don't want to face tomorrow.
And yet there's that strength that is given to you by the God of heaven because, again, you're too big to fail. Your children are too important for you to fail in this endeavor or for you to turn it over to someone who's less capable than you. And yes, I mean that. As capable as certain teachers in the public school might be, they do not approach the capability that you possess. They just don't. That doesn't mean that they're bad teachers. It doesn't mean that they don't know a lot. It doesn't even mean that they don't care about your children. But what it what it does mean is that they cannot have as deep an insight to the needs of your children as you do. It's just not going to be there. They're not going to love them to the same degree that you do. And if they do, that is a blight on your character. It should not be that way. That's unnatural for them to have the same kind of love that you would have. Can they have a love that approaches it? Sure. I'm not suggesting that there aren't public schoolteachers out there that actually have a genuine love for their students. But they're not their parents.
And so you are the best equipped and the best situated to rear your children in the proper path that they are to pursue. You do that armed with the revealed knowledge of God's will that He will give to you if you ask. And if you knock and if you seek, he stands ready to give that to you. Why? Because it's the best. It's what's best for them. And I'm sorry, there are precious few public schoolteachers out there who are actively seeking for the revealed will of the God of heaven, for the proper course that the children who are under their supervision are to pursue. I just don't know that that exists. And if it does, it's probably incredibly rare. But bless them for trying and for doing the best that they can by your children, but that's just not really ultimately their responsibility. It's yours. That's your responsibility to take on yourself. And God has equipped you and he will continue to equip you with everything that you need to see this thing through to the end.
So, yes, parenting is a sacrifice. It is a great sacrifice, but it teaches us many things, not only about our children, because you've got a lot to learn about your children. And I don't care at what stage of the game that you're in. You still have a lot to learn. You might be on the cusp of graduating your last child and you still have a lot to learn about them. And how could you learn as much as you need to learn about them if you're going to give away eight hours a day for five days a week for I don't know how many... 35 weeks out of the year? However many it is. 40? Maybe it's 40. I don't know. It's a lot. How could you possibly learn everything that you need to learn about them by giving away the heart of the day to someone else? I contend that you can't. That doesn't mean that you can't learn a lot, but you won't learn everything that you need to and you need to learn a lot.
Furthermore, this sacrifice, this exercise, teaches us a lot about ourselves. And if you have children—and again, you're turning them over to a third party for huge swaths of time, out of their day, out of the week, out of the month, out of their year—you're not going to learn everything about yourself that you could learn otherwise. Does that mean that you won't learn a lot? No, it does it, but you won't learn everything that you could. And our children act as mirrors. They act upon us in ways to illuminate the things that we do and why we do what we do—our motivations, our hearts desires. Some of those things are ugly, hard to bear, hard to look upon. Ask me how I know this. Still learning every day. And I'm looking and searching, actively searching for this knowledge that I think is necessary for us to acquire, to draw closer, ever closer to our Heavenly Father.
So that is the beauty of the sacrifice of parenting and of home-rearing, home education, and we should give as much of ourselves to that as we possibly can. It's not easy, doesn't make us better than anybody else, it's not something that we ought to glory in, it's just a responsibility that has been extended to us by the God of heaven and God forbid that we not have a heart of willingness to take that up. So I'm in your corner. I think about this all the time. I'm trying to stay in very direct connection to, you know, the deeper meaning and the deeper purpose of what it is that you and I are doing. I need that for myself and here I am trying to talk to you and encourage you along the way and all I'm trying to say is just keep going. Don't give up. Do not give up. You cannot give up. You cannot fail. Your children need you. Your home needs you. Your community need you. This nation needs you. The world needs what you're doing.
And you think that the home-rearing enterprise that's actively going on in your little corner of the world is like, how could that possibly influence anybody? Well, you might be just surprised and shocked to know. And I don't know that we'll ever fully know that until the hereafter when God will reveal to us just how far reaching the implications are of some of the smallest sacrificial gestures that we've made in our home on behalf of our children. Just how far those will go. And so it would be a shame for us to give in to this mindset that we're insignificant and that it doesn't really much matter whether we succeed or fail. I'm here to tell you that it does matter. It matters far more than any of us know and we have to keep going.
So I'm going to leave it off with that for today. That's just another little pep talk. Hang in there. We are on the cusp of entering 2025, which is just really a remarkable thing. I don't know what to say about that. That's just hard to believe. But we're still here and our children are here and they need us. We owe it to them to give it everything that we've got to this thing and I trust that you will. So thank you for listening today. May God bless you and I look forward to talking to you again very soon. Bye bye.
Thank you for joining us this week on the Homeschool Solutions Show. You can find show notes and links to all the resources mentioned at Homeschooling.mom. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast. And while you're there, leave us a review. Tell us what you love about the show. This will help other homeschooling parents like you get connected to our community. And finally, tag us on Instagram @homeschooling.mom to let us know what you thought of today's episode. Have you joined us at one of the Great Homeschool Conventions? The Great Homeschool Conventions are the Homeschooling events of the year offering outstanding speakers, hundreds of workshops covering today's top parenting and homeschooling topic, and the largest homeschool curriculum exhibit halls in the US. Find out more at GreatHomeschoolConventions.com. I'll be there. I hope to see you there too.
