Those cement factories overseas, where people labor in dust and despair, with no relief in sight by the power of unions, would be a hard place to work.

Homeschooling our kids is not as hard as working in one of those factories.

But neither is homeschooling sitting next to the pool, a martini in hand, flipping through a magazine as we ring a small bell every hour to usher our kids onto their next subject.

Homeschooling kids would eat you alive if you tried that.

Homeschooling your kids is not the hardest job on the planet.

But neither is it as easy as we thought, right?

Sort of like parenting.

Because homeschooling is also about kids.

Consider taking our kids to a baseball game, as any good parent does.

(Wait! I’ve never taken my kids to a baseball game! Ahhh! Now I have to have many long evening baths to appease my guilt for messing up yet ANOTHER aspect of parenting! “No!” I yell at my family. “I won’t be available to help clean up the kitchen for a few weeks after supper again because I have to take many long baths to appease my homeschooling guilt!” We all find our own ways to get downtime, but that is a topic for another blog post.)

Now where was I?

I actually forgot where the baseball analogy was going. True story.

But yes, parenting has, even for the most accomplished-looking of us, had us all on our knees at some point, begging for mercy.

Why was it that we decided to raise kids, we all wondered at some point?

Ah, yes, it was because we need them to sanctify us.

So God made babies cute, we want one, and before we know it, our tyrannical children are regularly winning battles against us.

“Time to get stronger,” we think, as parents, going to the gym to increase our muscles to fight against these ultra-small beings. Except the muscles we are building are metaphorical. We are getting stronger in selflessness, in empathy, in understanding more clearly our need for grace, in spirituality, as we cry out to God for help.

And so, in exactly the same way that parenting sanctifies us, homeschooling provides an even deeper opportunity to sanctify us.

Because those tricky little kids are involved, the ones that came out of the womb stronger than us, we have met our match in the work of homeschooling.

They have an advantage over us because they already know their need for God.

Jesus . . . said . . . “Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom.” The Message

And homeschooling forces us to remember that we need Him to complete our tasks successfully.

And so this homeschooling journey is a marathon that will transform us. Not from sloth to athlete, but from capable to incapable. From standing and shouting orders to kneeling and begging for wisdom.

And just as an athlete is rightfully happy in their new body after the race, the stronger, more capable one, we can be rightfully happy as our hearts are cleansed a bit more, thanks to this homeschooling adventure.

Ready for your spiritual life to be supercharged?

Keep homeschooling, mom, dad.

God’s homeschooling adventure is equally for you as for your children.

Sanity is overrated anyway.