Below is the first part to a mini ebook I wrote on No-Regret Homeschooling. If you know someone waffling on the decision to homeschool, consider sharing this resource with them to encourage them.

Making the No-Regret Decision to Homeschool

This isn’t going to be long because this doesn’t have to be complicated. You are thinking about homeschooling, so you already have reasons to consider it. Or maybe you’ve already decided it’s what you want to do, but aren’t fully convinced it’s what you should do. Many reasons that push families to homeschool are fear-based: fear over what they are teaching at schools, fear over how your child has been or might be treated, fear over violence, and now fear over disease spreading through schools.

I want to offer you a different perspective. Personally, I always want to avoid any fear-based decision. I don’t want fear ruling my life. I want my life ruled by love instead. I want you to look at the decision to homeschool from the perspective opposite of fear– one of love.

Who loves your child more, you or the state? Homeschooling is a simple decision when you look at it from the perspective of love. No one loves your child more than you do. No one is going to care about your child more than you do.

Yes, there are awesome teachers out there that care about their students and are experts in their field, but they can’t ever care about your child the way you do. No matter how dedicated they are, they can’t tailor their day and their curriculum to fit your child. They can’t know your child the way you do.

You, however, even if you have multiple children and other demands, are more equipped to adapt and mold your child’s education in the way that’s best for them.

Curriculum standards are one-size-fits-all, but we know each child is different. Each human is unique, even identical twins. School could never give them the love and care that you can.

If you decide to homeschool out of love, then you will not fail your child. Love never fails. That’s a timeless truth. If you are homeschooling out of fear, you could fail. If your only motivation is to keep them away from school and not to provide and support your child’s education, then your child will be at a loss.

Getting that “why” down will be the most important step towards no-regret homeschooling. Homeschool your children simply because you love them. That love will never change, so your motivation will never change. There won’t be waffling in your decision.

It’s pretty simple to feel confident that you love your children more than the state does. You can apply the same confidence towards anyone who questions your decision to homeschool. You can shrug it off without offense. While they may care about your family, you can know that they don’t love your child as much as you do. No one else has that parent-child bond with your child.

*Deciding to send your child to school is not a sign of not loving your child. But, if that’s your decision, make it out of love and not fear!

Read the next part

A year ago I announced we had our own home! It was a decades-long wait for me, but a dream fulfilled by my loving Father. Although we struggled with coming back to America after being overseas for fourteen years, looking back, we are assured that He has us in just the right place, not just in America, but down to being in this home. We were just discussing last night how everything worked to point us to being right here, right now. For such a time as this, right?

Thanks for sticking with us this year! I know we had a roller-coaster ride in the middle of the year when the site crashed. It was actually a sweet time in the Lord for me, His peace and presence being so close and clear. It felt like a personal victory to me being able to walk through it in that state of mind.

This was actually a pretty awesome year for our family. We had our first ever year in our own home. We’ve been slowly working on it. We’ve been able to host guests and spend time with neighbors.

Easy Peasy grew lots this year and we’ve been able to use that to help families locally and around the world. We just got an ad page up to help EP families hopefully, and we brought back our book request for struggling families.

My husband started working on a Bible translation project this year, in the North Macedonia dialect of Romani. He’s partnering via Messenger with his best friend, his language teacher from Macedonia (now named North Macedonia). He’s also become a regular guest preacher by Zoom at churches in India.

During the spring quarantine, I made miracle story videos to encourage people to not be afraid. I got up a site this year to house those videos, as well as other teachings, a gospel message, and the Romani Bible translation. That’s been fun work. I make the videos for the audio version of the Bible translation. While my husband and his friend have worked out how to write down this mostly unwritten language, the main thrust of the translation is to make it available as audio. It’s out on social media now and some Roma have started getting together online weekly to pray and read the scriptures for the first time in their own language.

This fall I led a reading/Bible study group using my novel, The King Will Make a Way. That was a fun and encouraging time for me as well.

Beginning this first week of January, you’ll be able to add “Good Morning, Lord” to your My EP course list. I am making 2-minute Bible teaching videos. I’ve been going through Genesis so far. This year I also wrote a Bible study called “This Is Eternal Life” on the high school site. That was the book of Matthew, and I’ve been adding onto that going through the book of John.

We got some more courses done as workbooks, as requested by our EP families. I got out some updates to our My EP site to make things even easier peasier. We replaced a multitude of Flash games with our very own fun activities, and I got to see my once-a-year-friends at our annual EP picnic, which is always a treat!

Here are our EP stats. We’ve almost made it everywhere in the world! The darker color means more people use it there.

 

The dark blue is actual visitors. The big blocks are just views. These aren’t registered users, just people finding their way to the All-in-One Homeschool site. But still…what a difference a year makes. The Lord uses all things for good…

 

All praise to the One who does all things well. I’m grateful to get to be part of what He’s up to. Thanks for joining our EP family, whether you’ve been here from the start or are just beginning. We’re happy to have you and hope we can do a good job of serving your family. It’s our desire to have a little part of bringing life into homes.

Reading/Bible Study Group on The King Will Make a Way

I hope that you will join me weekdays 11:00 AM (Eastern, -5 GMT). Daily, I will be reading a chapter of my novel, The King Will Make a Way, and then leading a little discussion. You can come with questions, and I have a reading/Bible study guide that I think we’ll use.

This study is for adults, but feel free to join as a family. The book, though, is not for young children; there are many deaths. It is read in Level 7 of the EP curriculum. Let’s say ages ten and up.

You don’t have to read the book ahead of time; you can just listen.

You can find links and updates on meeting dates here. We’re doing this November/December 2020.

I want to encourage you who call yourselves followers of Christ to take the month of September and consider it even as you would an advent season, maybe fasting in some way, maybe giving extra time to devotions.

Our family is going to be setting aside an hour each day. We’ll be going through a Bible study of Matthew that I’ve prepared and praying for our country and the church.

When I made the miracle videos, I kept saying that all we needed was to know our Father. If we knew our good Father, then we would know His love for us, and if we knew how much He loved us, then we would love Him back and the love would overflow into love for others.

Since Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God, I thought studying the life of Christ would teach us about who God is so that we could get to know our Father God better.

Whether you use the study or not, I would still encourage you to really seek after the Lord. We need our eyes off the world and onto Jesus. We need to be in love with our first love!

A song: Lord, You’re Beautiful

This is the link to the Matthew Bible study.

At the end of the month, I will break the study apart into more lessons to use it as a course. I’ve added it to the end of the Bible courses block on My EP Assignments if you want to add it as a course for the month, even making your own “student” and adding this course, just so it’s delivered to you each day.

I wanted to thank everyone for the outpouring of love during our trying week when our server crashed. Your patience and encouragement is a testament of the Love in your hearts.

Right now, we’re welcoming in a lot of children who may only be homeschooling temporarily. More people means a greater demand for money, time, and attention. I have had mama bear moments in my life, where my kids are what matters; but the reality is, every child in the world is just as valuable as mine.

It all made me think of fostering. I know EP has many foster families. A couple of our main admin, those names you’d recognize if you ever spent time in our support group, are foster parents. They’ve adopted through the foster system. One adopted three last year and is fostering an infant and toddler right now. Those children are supposed to go back to the mother. It is possible the current situation might just be temporary. But that doesn’t change the fact those children need love and attention right now. It doesn’t make them any less deserving of what other children receive. And it certainly doesn’t make it easier in the moment.

But, you didn’t complain about the newcomers. You graciously welcomed them, despite the trouble. Although our server ended up having a multitude of problems, it was the increase in traffic that exposed it. However, it actually was a blessing to find out sooner rather than later, and we are now switched onto a new system.

When the increase in traffic was first causing trouble, our EP family rose to the occasion. You did what you could to help and offered tons of encouragement. EP users are stepping up and answering questions, guiding the newbies through the process with patience and grace.

“Whoever receives this child in My name receives Me.” Luke 9:48

Thank you for your loving, open hearts to receive these children.

I hope your kids woke up this morning and called you blessed. 🙂

I got an email asking for a graduation hoodie. We made a 2020 EP Grad design and put it up in the store. You can use the menu on the left to look through the different products. There are color choices once you go into the details on a product.

 

EP Gear

My husband and I didn’t grow up in any Christian tradition that believed you could expect miraculous healings. We prayed for the sick, but it was just a hope that the medicine, the surgeries, etc. would make them better. It wasn’t with any thought that we might open our eyes and they would be healed.

The Lord first introduced us to the idea when we had been overseas for about a year. We were newly moved into Shutka, the Roma village my husband and daughter visited with the angels. 🙂 My daughter had recently given her life to Christ (very precocious for her preschool age) and her little brother was sick. He had a fever and was just a lump on the couch. My husband called our daughter over, saying that we were going to pray for her brother. She came running over but didn’t wait for us to pray together. She just came over and said, “God, please help Joshua feel better.” My husband and I thought it was the sweetest thing we had ever seen in our whole lives. Then we realized our son had slipped off the couch and was down on the floor playing. In an instant his fever was gone and he was playing. Within another year or two, we became part of a house church in Shutka where miraculous healings were a regular thing and it grew more into our lives.

Our family has gone years without stomach bugs at all, but we’ve also seen stomach bugs, colds, etc. healed within hours, even moments. But things didn’t always happen so easily. Our one son was born in Istanbul 7 weeks early after I prayed that he would come early (because of a hard time with the pregnancy) if he could be healthy. We left the hospital after 24 hours. They couldn’t find a reason to keep him. The next child was born on time and at home in my bedroom in America.

The next was born 11 weeks early by C-section in Gaziantep. The doctors told me the day after he was born that he would die. I repeated to myself, “You will live and not die,” over and over holding onto Life and keeping my mind on things above. He is seven now, but that’s not the end of the story. They said he had a hole in his heart and would need surgery. It disappeared. They noticed his body reacting as if he was having a brain bleed. Since they had no equipment to scan his brain, they moved him to the government children’s hospital. They saw he had bleeding in his brain. He needed immediate surgery. They didn’t have the part they wanted (we later learned it was never needed), so they postponed the surgery three days in order to get the part from Istanbul, all the while his brain was getting more and more damaged. I can trust God’s sovereignty over all that and it doesn’t get me upset and frustrated.

He has what’s described as “severe” brain damage due to this brain bleed. After two months in the hospital, I noticed one day that he wasn’t hooked up to any machines. I asked if we could take him home and was told no because he had lost his sucking reflex. The doctor said they had tried a pacifier and a bottle and to prove his point put his pinky finger in my son’s mouth and he didn’t suck on it, which would be the natural reflex. Now, I knew that I had defied orders and had snuck him out of his incubator a few weeks earlier, with my husband standing guard (we weren’t even supposed to touch him), and I had nursed him that day. If I hadn’t done that, I don’t know that I would have argued with the doctor to let me try and nurse him. I made myself a pest until he relented and let me try. He nursed for half an hour and we signed release forms to get him out of the hospital against doctor’s orders, since he refused to believe me that he really nursed. We agreed to bring him back the next day to show he wasn’t losing weight and I brought him back with a nursing blister (which is a good thing)!

Fast forward more than a year and he wasn’t eating anything, only nursing. He gagged on water. I couldn’t get him to eat even really thinned out rice cereal. This also meant he wasn’t talking yet. The lips, tongue, etc. are involved in both eating and speaking and he had lots of motor issues caused by the brain damage. But when he was around eighteen months old, one day he just reached for my chocolate milk like he wanted it, so I let him try it, and he drank it. And that was that. He could eat and drink normally from that day. He never did have rice cereal or baby food. He just went straight to regular food from not being able to even swallow water. That also means he started talking and has never needed therapy for speaking – he has always been able to speak clearly.

He is still in a wheelchair, but we do believe any day he could rise up and walk. But we still see God’s miracles in his body. In December 2018 we saw a miracle after his doctor told us he needed surgery on his hips. The one hip had deteriorated to the point of needing surgery and the other one was close, so he told us to come back in a few months so that surgery could be done on both hips at once. He told us the condition only worsens. He said it was “impossible” to improve at all. I knew that wasn’t true because I knew My Father. When we came back, both hips had reversed. He agreed it seemed like too huge a change to be accounted for by a mistake in the taking or reading of the x-ray.

I stand by my conviction that all we need to do is know God. If we really knew who He was, we’d love and obey Him, we’d love others, we’d live loved – at rest, knowing He’s good and for us and is unchanging and will never fail us. Holding firm in knowing who He is I call abiding. I sometimes think of it as being rooted and grounded in love (Eph. 3:17). You can picture a tree with deep roots. Sometimes it’s a peaceful idyllic scene with sun and cool breeze. Sometimes there’s a storm that’s snapping branches, but either way, you, the tree, stand firm in your place, roots secure in your knowledge of God’s love for you.

Sharpen those pencils! The EP Short-Story Writing Contest starts in one week!

April 15th marks the opening of our short-story contest. This will be our second annual contest! A few things have changed in the rules, so make sure to check the Short Story Contest page. Entries must be shorter (500-1500 words) and they all must be submitted on Google Docs to keep them looking uniform.

Your story can be fiction or non-fiction, but if you are writing non-fiction, remember that it’s a story contest. Tell a story; don’t just tell about something.

On the contest page you can read last year’s winning stories. One of the first place winners was actually the first to turn in her story, so no need to hold out till the end. Our judges would appreciate not getting half the stories on the last day!

Submissions will be accepted from April 15th to May 15th. The registration link will appear on the contest page during that time. You’ll register once you have your story ready. I can’t wait to see your entries. Our stories last year got thousands of readers!

Have fun and get writing!

Short Story Contest Rules

P.S. I’m looking for HTML5 coders to replace Flash games on our Math Facts and Thinking pages. Code must be in html/css/javascript. Copyright must be respected. I’ll buy each activity for $25. They can use same game type for multiple activities (such as addition to 5, to 10, etc.) with just a little adjusting, but do something to mix it up to keep it interesting. All activities should be hosted on Github.