Keep Strong, Comrades

I am so grateful that my parents enabled my brother and sisters and I to hear the call of God for ourselves. We were not told that homeschooling was an educational option we choose. We were not told it was a way to keep us from learning about evolution. We were not told that it was a way to make us nice or polite. We were told that it was a command of God. While I understand that there is no verse in Scripture that says “thou shalt homeschool,� it was a command of God for us. Obedience left no choices other than following, and so follow we did, because to do otherwise meant abandoning our duty of standing for truth in the world.

Now the issues are different ones. Homeschooling is, and most likely will remain, legal everywhere. There are enough non-Christian homeschoolers to dub this as something other than a religious movement. The question now is this: does this lifestyle of education translate into a lifestyle of changing the world? Judging by the number of my peers at the convention, it doesn’t. We obediently followed the pattern our parents chose, but given the opportunity to jump ship, way too many did. Independence? Yes, I want it. College? Yes, I would love the chance to get away from home. Career? Yes, I need one to make me look successful. Colleges recruit homeschoolers and we are happy. Yes, we did it, we cry, we proved to the world that we are normal. Trends show that homeschoolers do well in the work place. Hurrah. We made it. We can finally be done looking different, because we have proved ourselves fit for society.

I think not.

The problem is that we didn’t understand what we were doing in the first place. The goal of our lives was not to get into college or get a good job or have kids so they can have kids so they can have kids. The call we received was that of following Christ, of living a life of self-sacrifice, of loving others as we have been loved, of being Christ to the world. To do this required homeschooling, because we realized the importance of the family in God’s plan for the world. Families are the basic units of society and to so dismantle one as to have its most vulnerable members in the hands of the government for hours a day was not profitable. So now what? We’re done? We graduate from high school and leave? We start supporting the vision of a university or a company instead of the God-given vision of our family that we were born to carry out? We think we have fulfilled the call because we have finished high school. But we haven’t.

The problem in this time of life is that we are once again in uncharted territory. No one sane stays home after high school. No one sane is unemployed. No one sane is left without a satisfactory answer to “And what are you doing now that you have graduated?� Or so we tell ourselves. Criticism? Forget it, I’m leaving. Pressure? I’ll give in. The problem is that we have forgotten how to fight. Homeschooling became too easy and too popular, so we forgot how to lay our lives down for truth simply because it is right.

Glory is a concept difficult to define, but I believe necessary to survival in the present age. It is something martyrs, soldiers, pioneers, and apostles all understand. Glory requires a cause bigger than one’s self. It requires a truth so overpowering that we lay down our lives to see it spread. It’s what makes patriots.

Being an unmarried women living at home takes courage. It means you will get pestered – if not by other people, by your own mind. It means you have unanswered questions. It means you have a fuzzy plan for the future. It means you deal with criticism. It means you have times when there’s nothing to do. It means there are times when you are so busy you can’t think. It means most of your friends live states away. It means you are misunderstood. It means you are living for something bigger than yourself. You are living for glory – for the supreme pleasure of knowing that your cause is the right cause, no matter the cost to uphold it.

When Jesus called His apostles, He merely said “follow Me.� They did not know where they were going. And neither do we, really. All we know is that we’ve been told to live this way. Hanging on to the vision of our fathers, which, if godly, is the vision to demonstrate the love of Christ in the world. It requires us. It requires us not leaving. It requires us not living for ourselves or our pleasure or our prestige.

Our rewards may be only eternal. We may not get married. We may not have children. We may never have the pleasure of having lives that look normal. We may never have satisfactory answers to give to people. But we must follow. We must be obedient. We must stick around.

God keeps bringing into my family’s path other girls who are living the same life we are and these fellow comrades have strengthened me, much as I think soldiers must gain strength from looking at each other in the heat of battle. Some of these girls have easier lives than mine, others have harder ones. Some have sacrificed less than I have, others much more. But just knowing they are there, living lives of quiet service, spreading flowers along the paths of others, laying down their dreams and hopes at the altar of God’s truth, gives me strength. To all of you who are tempted to abandon the life you have been living, please don’t. Please don’t sell your inheritance for a mess of pottage. Don’t lay down your sword and join the mocking throng. The straight and narrow path is, true to its name, straight and narrow, but it is blessed. There are rewards. Our side IS the right one, no matter what it looks like or how few are fighting on it. We must persevere if we want to receive the crown of life. It will be worth it. To those who are walking this road, thank you. Thank you for your willingness to spend and be spent for the sake of Christ. Thank you for living for future generations and not yourselves. Thank you for hauling those covered wagons and walking miles with bloody, bruised feet. When time is swallowed up by eternity, I am confident that this is what will have mattered – that we knew Him and the fellowship of His sufferings and so we will then know the power of His resurrection.

— Posted by Naomi