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“A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step” someone much wiser than I once said. But I’m finding that it’s true. Could it really have been eleven years ago that our family started this new way of life called homeschooling? It seems like only yesterday…. just yesterday that my oldest was four years old with another year to go before we started to homeschool. We’d known since before she was born that we would homeschool, but we still had time. Then out of nowhere, the child has this insatiable desire to learn. All children are curious, but this went way beyond anything I was expecting. My daughter literally woke up asking questions and went to bed at night asking questions. So in July of 1998, we made the decision to start homeschooling in the fall.

I don’t remember feeling scared, anxious, overwhelmed, or any of those other frightening emotions that so many homeschool families feel when they begin. I think, though, I must have been so terrified that I’ve just blocked it from my memory. I thought I had another year to research homeschooling and get the information I needed. Now, suddenly I had a month and no idea where to start. I had only really met one homeschool family, so I picked up the phone and called Colleen and asked for help. She pointed me to a local support leader who met me in a church parking lot with a handful of catalogs (some new- some not) and an enrollment form for HEART, the local support group. The moment I opened those catalogs, I began a love affair with homeschool curriculum that has only grown with each year we’ve homeschooled and a love affair with homeschooling itself.

Now, all of a sudden, I find myself on another frontier. My oldest child will take the ACT in just a couple of weeks. If that goes well, I will drive her to her first college class this fall. Yes, I will drive her, because she will only be 15 and not yet able to drive herself. The drive to learn she had at four years old still burns within her. Over the years, she’s met every challenge I’ve given her and has eagerly asked for more. Her lifelong ambition, since she was 4, has been to become a pediatrician. With college on the horizon, she’s making her own decisions about where she wants to go. The last eleven years have flown by and somehow, I don’t think the next two are going to go by any slower.

I have the joy and privilege of working with homeschool families who are just beginning the journey on an almost daily basis at Solid Rock. The parents, usually mom, come in with so many uncertainties and questions that sometimes keep them up at night. “Can I do this?” “What about testing?” “Will my child be able to get into college?” “I think I can do better, but how do I that?” They have so many questions and concerns that in some ways seem to have only recently been my own and in other ways seems as distant as the stars themselves. These families serve as a constant reminder of how quickly the homeschooling journey moves. As I provide information about umbrella schools, support groups, co-ops, tutorials, and the myriad of other homeschool related things, I’m flooded with memories of times gone by with my children.