Well, welcome back everyone to another episode of Faithfully Engaged.
Those of you that have been watching for a little while have known actually the first
episode that I did.
We had some technical issues on the first go.
So it was actually a second run.
And my guest today, Anna, we're doing a similar thing.
We had some issues, but she was gracious enough to come again and share with us her journey.
So today my guest, her name is Anna.
So Anna, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself?
Yes, thanks so much, Shani.
So my name is Anna McLaughlin, and I am a wife of, gosh, almost 13 years, mom to four
kiddos.
I was a corporate lawyer for a number of years and really had a passion to be home with my
children and through that process began the journey of homeschooling about seven or eight
years ago and entrepreneurship as well.
And so we kind of live a life a little bit out of the ordinary, which has allowed us to
have a significant amount of time with our family and to really seek to walk this path
that the Lord leads us on.
So step by step, it's just been a great ride.
That's what's so interesting about your story as you go.
Every thing that I don't know if I've ever heard in the same sentence there of corporate
lawyer, homeschool and entrepreneur, that those things to not mix all together.
They do not.
Nope.
It's been a stretching process.
So kind of walk us through that process a little bit of from lawyer to homeschool.
What did that process look like for you?
Yep, so I became a lawyer because I really loved learning.
I loved words.
I loved communication.
I loved asking questions, solving problems.
So I worked as a transactional lawyer, which meant I did mergers and acquisitions.
It's a corporate side of things.
I wasn't in a courtroom, in other words.
And I loved the work, but it was very intense, very long hours.
I worked for a large law firm in my town of Charlotte, and I just found there was an incredible
tension between my work life and my home life.
I loved the life that I was building with my husband.
I loved being a wife.
I loved being a mother.
And I just felt like we were constantly building two separate structures, his work and my work.
And then in between was this life we were trying to build together, which was really
suffering as a result of just honestly a lack of time, not a lack of desire, but just a lack
of time together.
So through that, through that experience, we just kept coming back to like, I kept saying,
I want to be home.
And then as we were making this transition, we were in a church that had a lot of homeschool
families.
And I was like, I just loved the idea of not only the amount of time that you get to have
with your children as a homeschool family, but also the amount of flexibility that we
could travel, that we could really sew into both my husband and I at the time had parents
that had significant health challenges.
And so being able to sew into their lives, be able to have just a lot of room.
It felt like we were without room.
And so that was the first piece of the puzzle.
As we continued, both my husband and I felt that we had landed in careers that did not
really match our giftings.
And so that feeling of, I kind of chose this path because it was one of a very few that
I knew of, for the joke with lawyers is we're smart people who don't like blood.
So we can't be a doctor because we don't want to be in the ER or whatever or go through
residency.
But we are intelligent and we want to use our intellects.
And so I just kind of walked down a path that seemed very wide.
It was like, okay, well, I guess this is the next step.
I'll go to law school.
And then I didn't know about, you get out into the adult world and you hear about people
who do things that you didn't even know existed in college.
And that was very much my experience, same for my husband.
And so we felt like we didn't want the same to happen to our children.
We wanted to help them identify their unique giftings from an early age, cultivate and
develop those and really kind of steward their gifts to really further the kingdom of God
in their small circle.
And so that was really, as time progressed, it became this burning passion more and more
of like, I am an expert on my children.
I want to help them become themselves.
My dad used to say, the greatest gift of being a parent is watching your children become
who they always, you always knew that they were, who they've always been.
And so I grabbed hold of that.
And my husband and I just kind of went all in on that idea of, let us help them become
fully themselves and love the work that they do in the world.
That's such a wonderful, wonderful little story there, which I know, I'm sure took all
sorts of waves at times and pain and all that stuff along the way, but a beautiful,
beautiful conclusion there.
And I love where you ended up of talking about your kids kind of seeing them become themselves.
And that's something that has been incredible for my wife and I.
My daughter is almost four, my son just turned two.
And as of this recording, our youngest son will be born hopefully next month at about
this time.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
I had a second boy to the mix or third kiddo.
But from the get go, this is what's been really interesting is we didn't have a perfect knowledge
of our children's personality, but we could see it even in the womb of their differences.
And my daughter's kicking through the stomach.
My son, I never felt him kick at all.
But Isaac, our youngest son, he seems to be somewhere there in the middle.
And I'm super curious to see when he comes out if he will kind of be that mixture between
his brother and sister.
But yeah, to be able to see that play out as a parent is awesome.
And I'm imagining you playing that more active role in their lives as a whole and especially
in their education has been such a joy for you to be able to see that.
It's been so much fun.
And it's so true.
I remember the same experience, especially when we got pregnant with our third child,
who was a girl.
So we had girl, boy, girl.
And having a second girl, it's like, oh, it's not boy and girl.
It's like Cora and Asher and Beth.
There is no mixing of each individual personality.
They are so much themselves.
And I will say, for anybody listening that's sitting there going, but I could never.
But homeschooling, I feel like is really just this surrender to mutual sanctification as
a family that we just kind of give ourselves over to the task of growing, saying, we're
willing to step into realms that we don't know what we're doing.
We're willing to maybe help our children learn something that we don't even know how to do
ourselves.
We're willing to kind of come to the end of our energy and the end of our time, the end
of our capacity.
And there's still many more hours to the day left.
It's lunchtime.
And I need a nap.
And here we've got another six hours of this day to go.
How are we going to do this?
And so I definitely, I know I have several friends who you can just see they were kind
of wired for homeschooling.
They love structure and sticky notes or their very free form.
And they're like, we're going to take a walk in the woods and press leaves into pages of
books.
And I'm like, I have none of that.
I have none of that gifting.
But what I do have is a heart for my children and really a vision of the end goal.
And so my husband and I decided together, we got really clear on what's our purpose
of homeschooling.
And we decided it was, we had two goals.
We wanted our children to know the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul, to know
and love the Lord their God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength.
And we wanted them to be intellectually curious.
We wanted them to enjoy the process of learning.
And if we could pull off those two things, then we would be shepherding them into society
as a productive adult.
They could become whatever it was the Lord was leading them to be because whatever they
didn't learn with us, they could get it.
And so having that clear purpose freed us up significantly to just not be, not know
what we were doing kind of because we, we haven't, we haven't known what we were doing,
but we've enjoyed our children and we've loved them.
You know, you look at the things that people need to navigate as adults and it's far less
about recalling the calculus problems that you did in high school or the conjugations
of verbs.
And it's far more about how do I communicate with people?
How do I listen well?
How do I, you know, stay in my lane and not get all, you know, egocentric or offended?
How do I forgive?
How do I love?
How do I learn new things and adapt?
You know, it's far more those kind of deeper emotional resilience skills than it is this
like knowledge that got packed in a decade or two ago.
Yeah, absolutely, and I'm so glad you covered the side of I can't do that.
That's great that you can do it, but I know I could never do that.
And I don't like to speak in such a broad brush to say that everybody in the whole
world can homeschool without any problems at all.
But I will say that that is much more the case than the opposite.
The people that say that they can't almost assuredly you can.
But I guess that next question is why?
Why can't you?
And to actually process that.
And usually it's something that is either a misunderstanding of homeschooling, misunderstanding
of their abilities, just misunderstanding in general.
Yeah, something I do with my clients and my day job as a counselor is I like to, you
know, to let them know both sides of the equation.
On the one hand, I want to normalize whatever your problem is.
Yeah, it is an issue.
Like I don't want to act like you saying, hey, I struggle with going to homeschooling.
I don't want you to act like that's a stupid question or that your fears and anxieties aren't
real.
They are.
And it is a sacrifice, no doubt.
But on the other hand, you can do it.
You absolutely can.
And it's about making that commitment and then just doing it.
And I love your part there of what is my purpose here?
Because when you strip it down to those two main purposes, I could do that.
That's not that hard.
Yeah, yeah, it's so true.
And I think part of one thing that we've, and just knowing a little bit about your show,
it wouldn't surprise me if you haven't covered this topic over the past months.
But I find one of the things that we are leaning into in our culture is this idea of we need
the expert involved.
Like we can't really, we can't do it on our own.
We have to go and outsource to somebody else.
And so if we start with that framework, then I'm not an expert at geometry or physics or
languages or any of those things.
So therefore, by definition, I must be giving my children an inadequate education if the
goal is to outsource to the experts.
And so that's why it's been so grounding for me to get clear on our purpose, because I
actually am an expert on my children.
And I am the best expert on my children.
My husband and I have been with them since before they took their first breath and have
been studying them with rapt attention, fascinated by everything that they do or frustrated,
you know, deeply emotionally affected by everything they do.
And so if my job is to, is to sew into them the best information on a language and a mass
skill and a, and you know, as a history lesson, then yeah, maybe I'm not the best person.
But if my job rather is actually to bring out of them their own vents and giftings, like
I've been saying to my kids since they were little, you know, I see this in you.
Does this resonate like my oldest, you seem to really love art.
Is that true?
Yeah, I just love it.
And you know, so what do we do?
We go out of our way to find opportunities to expose her to creative outlets, you know,
to, hey, like what are you drawing right now, bringing her to art camp?
We certainly do out, it's not that we never bring in an expert, but we're very, we're
cultivating an education that is customized for her.
And so when I lay down this idea of, so more, you know, the current educational model is
more based on you put stuff in a child's brain.
And our philosophy, which is not just made up by us, but it's, it's, I forget his name,
I think it's Ken Roberts or Robinson, he's in the UK and he has a lot of really interesting
stuff on education.
I did a deep dive on his stuff about a decade ago when I first started looking in the homes
school, he, he talks about drawing out our child's gifting, identifying who they are
and helping to cultivate that.
And that is something that a parent is, is uniquely equipped to do.
So it really does become a journey that we can start to imagine, Oh, I think I actually
could do that.
I can help them become who they are and better versions of themselves.
So it, it takes off some of the pressure away.
I love that you brought up the trust, you didn't say this, but it is the trust, the
experts, that kind of goes into other COVID issues and all sorts of things.
Yeah, I thought you had to cover that.
There's a degree here of, of humility that, to kind of be fair of to recognize our limitations,
and I'm not saying as homeschool just in general, that we're not all knowing about every
subject in the whole wide world.
Like that, that part of that is true.
There are people that know more about certain subjects than we do, and we can glean from
them in certain ways.
I'm not artistic in the slightest, but if my child is starting to lean that way, I know
them, I'm able to bring that out and maybe I can get them to somebody that can help teach
them that.
That's being able to, to cultivate that, like you're saying, as opposed to, well, I'm just
a dumb, dumb with art.
I can't do anything about that.
Somebody's got to do my job for me.
Not helpful.
Yep.
And it's such a good point too.
I was laughing when you said that neither my husband nor I have any artistic bent whatsoever.
And so we, you know, the argument of, well, I can't teach them because I don't know it.
It assumes again that our children are empty vessels that we put things into, but all we
need to do with my daughter.
She's been copying book, you know, copying pictures from, from storybooks and from, you
know, some, I don't even remember where we got little learn how to draw guides.
She's been doing that on her own steam forever.
And so all we need to do is acknowledge this is a gift that we see in you and let's help
you improve upon it.
So it really, it does, it takes a lot of the, it makes our job a lot lighter because we're
not having to, you know, kids want to learn.
The world is fascinating.
And so we just have to light that spark and, you know, even just a walk around the neighborhood
with your toddler going, what kind of flower do you think that is?
What do you see?
You know, we're drawing out their analytical skills, which funnily enough is what that,
when I was a lawyer, I remember thinking as we started having children, I want to give
my children the education I got in law school because I remember just being so stretched
academically and what they do in law school is they teach you how to think critically.
And so, and this is what the Romans were excellent at with the Socratic method.
Where was that?
The Greeks, well, they both, the Romans took everything from the Greeks, but, you know,
they drew out this deep thinking by asking questions.
And that's what we do just in life with our children.
More excellent points there.
There was something earlier on the, on the expert side, I just thought of this.
I might have shared this on an earlier podcast, but there was a person in my hometown, he's
a dentist actually, and they had their kids in public school, just kind of same normal
stuff.
And in this situation, and I love harping on this because I've mentioned this several
times, I'm in a red part in Oklahoma, like we're red as red as red could be.
And sometimes there's that mindset here of, Oh, well, that stuff doesn't happen here.
Our schools are fine here.
You're wrong.
It does happen here.
And anyways, this kid's daughter had a non binary classmate or something.
I don't remember exactly what something in that sphere.
And the dad was like, you know what?
I don't want my, I don't know.
She's like six or seven.
I don't want my six or seven year old exposed to this.
No, we're not doing it.
And they had no plans.
They just pulled her out and in fact, found like a spot in the dentist office for the
rest of the school year, and they just did home school in the, in the dentist office.
And since that, I think they've, they've gotten a more structured approach.
But again, that shows like this guy's working.
Like they still made it work.
Yes.
And because he was the expert of his child to your point of, I know that's not something
she needs to be exposed to right now.
And I don't trust how they will handle that.
So let me get her out.
And I just love that story because it's, it wasn't this big elaborate.
We have to get all the structure.
It's, let's just read some books in this corner office and make the best of it until
we can figure it out.
And I just love parents taking that over like that.
Oh, that's right.
Well, and it's such a faith growing experience for us as parents to just say, I know the
next step.
The next step is we're not here anymore.
We're going somewhere new and we don't know what it's going to look like a year or two,
10 years down the road.
But we know that we're supposed to make a change.
And I just want to encourage anybody who's feeling that tug of like, maybe we're supposed
to take our kids out of school.
Maybe we're supposed to start with homeschooling.
The beautiful thing about homeschool is you get to change your mind.
It's very flexible.
I've had friends who have unenrolled their children from public school, reenrolled their
children in public school, done a monestory, done a private school, you know, there's so
much flexibility.
And so there's really not this, this kind of like, we don't have to be terrified because
we can change our minds.
And so, and then the other thing is this is just an opportunity to, to exercise our faith
in the Lord to go, okay, I know this next step.
And it's been so precious to watch when we take, when we, when we get out of this rote
kind of lockstep approach of, well, we'll just figure out who the teacher is this year.
And then they'll go on that track and then we'll figure out who the teacher is next year
and then go on that track, you know, to really have these open hands and go, okay, what's
next Lord?
He puts the curriculum and the people and the community and the, and the, you know, kind
of extra special classes in our path.
And it's like, oh, okay, this is next.
And you know, what my, my friend in, in our homeschool community says, says, Moss doesn't
really gather on a homeschool family.
Like we're always rolling to something new.
But I think it's because we've been invited into this journey with the Lord that is very,
I like to say we're kind of light on our feet.
Like, oh, it looks a little different now.
We're going to pivot over here.
And it really, it creates a beautiful invitation to intimacy with the Lord.
Not that there aren't other ways to get that, but it, but it has truly deepened my faith
because I rely on him for the next steps for my children.
I think that's a wonderful part there of, yeah, and increasing your faith as a parent
to rely on him for that wisdom and for the people he places in your life.
And also the, the faith in, in your kids, and that's in my wife and I's journey.
The first step, like there was some faith involved, but it really was a like where there's smoke,
there's fire type of thing of all of these stories after stories of kids being called
a different pronoun and stuff and not parents being told really, no, we're just not, we're
just not going to do it.
But the more that we went into it, that, so that was an initial like a fear reason to
have that initial motivation.
And while that was a good starting place, that's not, that's not sustainable to just
live and, and fear.
And now it's this like, this joy of part of their homework is like memorizing scripture.
Like that's, that's awesome.
All right.
My two year old, so we've been doing some catechisms with my three year old real basic
things.
It's like who made me God made me.
Yes.
And what's great about it, I mean, it's so beautiful seeing her share that, but because
my two year old has heard her do it so much, we ask him who made you and he says God.
I don't think he fully understands that, but he knows it.
And he has got it down.
He does it 100% of the time.
And being able to have that injected in them at such a young age and for it to be so natural,
we're not fighting with them.
In fact, the only fight we have is when we ask my son to do it, my daughter's like, no,
I want to do it.
It's beautiful.
It really is and speaks to that creativity that you can have that we don't have to just
sit here and do public school in the home.
We can make it our own.
It's so true.
Oh, that's beautiful.
On the topic of other people, I'm pretty big on this that not completely doing homeschooling
on your own and you were alluding to that, being involved with other families and things
like that.
What advice would you give, especially to somebody that's really green, that haven't
started homeschooling of where do I find these people?
What should I do to be connected with other people?
There are so many resources now.
Even a generation ago, it was not this way.
But I would just start by saying be encouraged that there are probably too many options,
far more likely than too few.
If you know people who homeschool, asking them is the best first step because then you
already have, assuming you like them, you already have kind of an inkling of, well, if
they like this, then I might too.
That's a great first step.
If you don't know anybody in your circle, I love resourcing.
Even a Facebook post, hey, does anybody know anybody in my town that is a homeschool family
that you could connect us?
Then there are also so many groups.
I'm on Facebook, Instagram, if you're not other social media platforms that you have.
There are homeschool groups for your town or your city.
Looking at different, just Googling homeschool curriculum and seeing what each website looks
like.
Keep in mind it's a sales pitch, but they have their people in mind.
Whether it's are you looking for something that's more kind of, some of the key categories
that you'll see pop up, Charlotte Mason is a very common one, which is more using whole
books, getting in nature, journaling, unschooling is, let's just wake up and kind of see where
things lead us.
What is the child, very child led learning?
The type A part of me doesn't really lean that direction.
I don't know much about it, but I'm just giving kind of the highlights to get people started.
Classical conversations is what I use, which is it's a hybrid of a community and self-directed.
You have one day in community and then you spend the other days at home.
Classical conversations is a classical model, but there are other classical models you can
use as well.
The classical model says basically, first we're going to learn the words for things,
and we're going to memorize.
Just like you were talking about, our kids are little sponges when they're in those ages
that you're describing, kind of two to upper elementary, mid to upper elementary.
They just take in everything you say and they can parrot it right back to you.
They don't know the meaning and significance like you said yet, but that's okay.
They don't need to.
It's not time yet, developmentally.
And then in their upper elementary to middle school, they lean into asking a lot of questions.
Why?
So, it's about progression and here's why.
And we can see this progression even in younger kids in their area of expertise.
If you've ever had your 3-year-old talk your ear off about the pros and cons of a certain
color of play-doh, or why I like being outside after lunch instead of inside, they can move
into this expert area earlier on in certain categories of their lives.
But classical conversations really is more how I learned in law school.
And so for me, it was a very comfortable, sweet home for me.
And I've done several different things.
But there are homeschool conventions.
There are different, I mean, we went to what's called a co-op, which is just a group of homeschool
families that get together and maybe they take turns teaching lessons to the kids.
Maybe it's more of a play group.
But the idea is creating some form of a school collectively.
And I found it because I somehow got the name of a homeschool gymnastics class.
And then I show up to the class and all the other moms knew each other.
I was like, how do you guys know each other?
Oh, we're part of this co-op.
You want to come visit?
And so that was our home for two or three years.
And it was a great little place to land.
So again, it's that balance of take your steps, go to the homeschool convention, go to the meetup groups,
and then watching the Lord direct and recognizing you don't have to be anywhere forever.
You don't even have to be there long.
And don't be afraid.
You know, your kids aren't going to be weird.
They're going to be just fine.
And there are innumerable resources.
And I'm happy.
I know we'll talk about my contact information at the end.
But if anybody has any questions that you just want to have an ear to connect with,
I'm happy to be that for folks as well.
And you just mentioned that right there.
My wife and I have, I guess you can, in a sense, we have already homeschooled by doing little things here and there,
which is great.
But we didn't, you know, we haven't had this planned up for a long time.
Our kids aren't very old.
So by no means are we experts on that.
There's that expert word.
But we are experts on our kiddos.
But I say all that to say that that has been the vast majority of experience I've had with anything in the homeschool community.
It's like this massive family.
And I believe it when you say that, hey, come ask me and anybody else that's in your church or in your home,
if you ask them, they're probably going to help you out.
So don't be afraid to ask.
Yep, it's so true.
And at the end of the day, when I first started, I wanted someone to, I used to kind of say to the Lord,
just tell me what to do and I'll do it, God.
I just want the rulebook.
Like tell me what to do and I'll do it.
He doesn't work that way.
And so at the end of the day, you're going to start shopping different opinions and you're going to find that if you ask 10 people,
you get 10 different approaches.
And it's going to drive you bonkers if you want to have a rulebook to go by.
But as, you know, as uncomfortable as it can be to sit with, God knows how to lead you through your children's education.
And you don't need to know.
Just like I remember when my children, when my first was born, I was so worried because I was like, I'm going to mess her up, Lord.
I didn't come from a Christian home.
I don't know how to raise her to know the Lord.
And then she came and I was like, oh, I kind of just need to hold her and like change your diaper and feed her.
Like, OK, I can do this.
And, you know, if he had started us out with an 11 year old, it would have been a really steep learning curve, you know,
but we grow with our children.
And so home school is meant to be the same, especially if we start out when they're teeny tiny.
Yeah, you sit down and you do a catechism question and they're playing Play-Doh and you're kind of showing them a letter and you make the letter with the Play-Doh.
And then they want to go like build with blocks for a while.
And that's your school day.
And it took 10 minutes.
You know, that's it.
That's great.
And then they're like, OK, I'm going to go to school.
This next question is kind of intentionally vague a little bit.
And I'm not expecting one straight answer.
And you kind of addressed it in what you just said.
When somebody is, again, especially new and you're right, there are a billion different
curriculums and co-ops and all those things.
And in a sense, public school is kind of nice that you don't really have choices.
Here's your teacher.
Here's your classes.
Go do it.
And it takes that guesswork out.
So for those people getting started, do you suggest to like, hey, I have these two options.
Like, do you just say throw a dart at it and try which one's best?
Like, what advice would you give as far as making that first decision and how long should they stick with it?
Yeah.
So I would say take a look at your personality and try to find a curriculum that feels like it's going to, I almost want to say, like, settle your nervous system down.
You know, if you're, so I'm more of a type A. So I started with what they call box curriculums.
And so that's a couple examples are Sunlight, S-O-N, like the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Sunlight and My Father's World.
Both are Christian curriculums.
There are others.
I think Rebecca is one.
And those, essentially, you buy a kit that has your daily lesson plans and it's got all of your books and all of your worksheets and everything that you need for a whole school year all packaged up.
So that's what we did really first when we were getting started.
As we said, okay, this is where we're going to land because this is going to help my type A personality calm down.
Okay, I've got the boxes.
I just go through and check the boxes.
I've got the worksheets.
I check the worksheets.
What do we read?
This is what we read.
That was great for my personality.
If you're a little bit more artistic and outside of the box, you know, looking at the more kind of free form options might feel really good.
And so I feel like it's, you know, I think that for me, the big box was like someone holding my hand.
Just take these steps.
Most, most curriculums that you buy, which though, you know, you're, you can kind of craft your own thing.
You can literally put a kindergarten first, second grade curriculum together buying workbooks on Amazon.
You know, it doesn't have to be as complicated as we often think.
And so it was more expensive for us to start from scratch and say we're buying the whole box curriculum.
Still far less than private school.
That was always my line with my husband, look, it's less than private school.
He's like, we weren't going to do private school.
We're not actually, we're not really saving money in this argument.
But, but we, we started somewhere where I felt comfortable.
People who have a little bit more kind of tolerance for practice than I did when I got started, you know, maybe you're building things through workbooks.
One thing I will say that really helped me was at least in our state, North Carolina, you don't even register as a homeschool until your oldest turn seven.
And then you don't add your children to the homeschool register until the year that they turn seven.
So in my mind, I was like, oh, she's four.
Like this is all freebies, you know, no one's even watching.
And so it was nice to start early and kind of get a little bit of practice.
Oh, and what I was, so that's, I was like, where was I going?
When most of those big box curriculums will give you a trial period of like a free, free returns for a significant amount of time.
I want to say it's I've never availed myself of that, but I want to say it's like two to six months that you can actually return the curriculum.
Say this isn't working and they'll refund your money.
And so, you know, I'm just from my business world.
My recommendation with my people is depending on what you're trying, try it for at least 30 to 90 days.
And so I don't know that there's any sort of great rule of thumb, but you want to give it some time to kind of you want to kind of sell it first.
First, you buy into it yourself as a parent. This is what we're doing. I believe in it.
I'm ready to commit to this for the short term as the best next step.
Then we have to kind of sell it to our children, but I want to go, but I want to do, but I want to know you're not the teacher.
You're not, you know, and so that there we get to exercise discipline and authority.
And those are things they need to learn to.
But I watched. So for us, we did we did two years of sunlight.
We did a year of my father's world in kindergarten and then two years of sunlight.
And that second year of sunlight was my son's was my second born's first year doing curriculum.
And he hated it.
He didn't want to sit still.
He wanted to run around.
He wasn't retaining any of the information. It wasn't engaging.
And before we had really started officially homeschooling, we had we had bopped into classical conversations for one year when my daughter was four.
So she was four. I had a two year old.
I had a baby and then we had one on the way by the time we got to the end of the year.
So we were crazy.
And I totally didn't understand what the point of it was.
And I totally didn't understand the model.
And I didn't ask questions because I was embarrassed,
which is one thing I would say ask questions.
Nobody's nobody's going to be like, I can't believe you don't know that, right?
You're not supposed to be an expert homeschooler, all right, ever, ever.
Your children will leave the house and you will not feel like you were an expert homeschooler.
But I but years later, fast forward to that second year in sunlight,
I was like, we're still singing those songs that we learned three years ago in classical conversations.
And my son had picked up the songs.
And, you know, there was a song about the different continents because in classical
conversations, it's all about vocabulary.
We're going to learn the grammar of what these things are.
And I didn't I didn't know any more about classical
conversations at that point than I did three years prior.
But I was like, huh, I think you'd like singing.
And that was literally all it was that brought us back to classical conversations.
Two years later, Johnny, I finally make it to our kind of training,
our practice, we called a practicum, but it's basically where you get to
because this was all during COVID.
So there weren't in-person meetings and everything.
So finally make it to a training.
I've now had two years of classical conversations, one when my daughter was four
and then one with everybody in in the classroom.
And during practicum, they walked us through the learning process,
the model of how they teach, which is what I told you about,
at first the words, then the questions, and then the and then the arguments.
And I started crying sitting in that room because I realized this is law school.
Here I am walking my children through a process of learning how to think
that I went through in my twenties that I committed to the Lord.
I said, I want to teach my children how to learn this way.
I don't know how to do that.
I'm not a law professor, but I want them to learn through asking questions.
I want them to be really good, critical thinkers.
I want to help them be strategic because ultimately because of what we know of God,
when we ask good questions and we're like open hearted and willing,
you know, like curious, willing to hear the answer,
which is why I want intellectually curious children, they will find God
because he is the only truth.
So I don't have to be afraid of, you know, are my children going to believe or not?
I'm going to teach them how to ask good questions and think critically,
and they will ultimately find the Father every time.
And so I just burst into tears realizing here we are.
Here we are with all my imperfections with, you know, it's not like I sat down
and set out and said, well, I want them to learn, you know, to ask good questions.
And I want them to learn to think critically.
So we're going to choose this curriculum because this, nope,
the Lord brought me into it because we remembered a couple of songs about continents.
And so that was a really long way of saying ultimately, start where you are,
be patient with yourself, and then trust the goodness of God to knit this thing
together in a way that's very profound and fortifies your faith in ways that,
you know, just a handful of other things in life do, you know, parenting being one.
And so it's just another layer of that, that strengthening of our faith to go.
He did this for me.
Oftentimes in examples, both in my personal life and then also with my clients,
I'll use a sports metaphor.
That's just the way my brain kind of works.
And I always think of some of the best, best quarterbacks out there.
And when they're throwing the ball and they're, they're trying to get their
receiver down the field, there is an inherent risk that when they throw the ball,
that the other team could get it and intercept it.
And that would be a mistake.
The best quarterbacks, though, despite there being that risk, they do it anyways.
And sometimes they do make mistakes.
They do.
They don't throw interceptions.
But if they're so focused on not throwing interception, their goal is to not do,
or to not be bad.
They're not as good because they're not having faith in trusting the game plan,
trusting their, the play, trusting their, their teammates.
They have to have that faith there.
Now that is a microcosm, tiny little thing of showing faith in God, who is much
bigger than a quarterback or coach or anything like that.
But when we're so focused on our little aspects there, we're missing it.
We're missing the faith in, in God.
And at times we might feel like we're playing it safe of, yeah, I'll put
them in public school so I don't mess it all up or I'll do this over here
because I could really mess it up.
And the reality is to not sugarcoat, like, could you make mistakes that could
be bad in homeschool?
Sure, you could.
But you think the teacher can't make mistakes too?
Of course they can.
So it's having faith in God ultimately.
And knowing it's not about you, it's not about your effort.
It's about knowing your kids, knowing God and putting them in the best
position that you know how.
Oh, it's so true.
It's so true.
And, you know, I think so much of it comes down to really what, what is the
Lord, where is the Lord leading?
And so I was talking to a friend earlier today and we just kind of kept
coming back to it.
All comes back to the Father.
It all comes back to the Father.
You know, we want to know the right answer.
What should I do?
The right answer is only known by one and that's the Lord.
And so when our hearts are well attuned to him, when we're kind of leaning
our heads against his chest every morning to listen to his heartbeat, you know,
where are you leading me?
Where are you directing me?
Then, then we're, then we're being faithful.
And I will, we'll say to some, you know, you might have some listeners where
they're like, our kids are in public school right now.
Our kids are in private school right now.
Like there's no shame on this end.
You know, I mean, there can be the, the key question is what is the Lord
leading you to?
And we just need to watch, watch our, I could never, right?
Oh, I could.
Like, like we, we, we might miss a significant blessing if we're walking
in fear and saying, well, I can't possibly or I shouldn't, or it's not a good idea.
You know, God, God equips us by like as we walk, right?
He doesn't equip us beforehand.
We want to know that the grace is going to be there to catch us once we step,
but we have to be willing.
You know, I mean, I just like, it's like the, the age old, you know, story.
We've all talked about a million times of Peter getting out of the boat.
He didn't know the ways we're going to hold him until he put his feet out there.
And the other men didn't do it, you know, like we can look all we want to
at how he went down a couple of seconds later, but he is the only human being,
you know, fully, fully human and not fully God human being who has ever, as far
as we know, who has ever walked on top of the water.
And he was able to do it because he was willing to step before he knew.
And, you know, we, we are called, we are invited to the same.
So if you look at your schedule and you're like, I don't, I mean, my husband
and I are both entrepreneurs.
We had four children in six years.
I had health challenges, mental health challenges.
My husband's had health challenges.
He's had surgeries.
We've lost two parents.
We have, you know, before my dad died, he lived out of town and I would travel
and help him.
I could list a number of reasons that we couldn't do it.
And I can tell you, we did, in many seasons, we did it very poorly.
I will say in my estimation, I think I did a really bad job.
I'm not very consistent.
I kind of, I would get up and be like, oh, I've got this other stuff to do
or the house is messy or the baby needs me.
And, and yet still we have, we have a family that knows each other,
that has worked really hard to understand and love each other well.
And we are growing.
And there's something to be said for that.
So, so I would say that the two pieces are no shame for wherever your feet
are today and rather than determine from a very like limited view, whether you
can or you cannot ask instead, Lord, are you inviting me to something deeper?
Yeah.
No, I think that's just so important because it's taking us out of the equation,
our doubts, our fears, all of that.
And yeah, God, where, where are you leading me?
Where are you leading my family?
And, and listening to that and not a, I can't do this.
I shouldn't do this.
It's not prudent or whatever.
Mm hmm.
Those aren't good reasons.
Um, it's, if God is leading me there, great.
If he's not, or if I just don't know right now, okay, well, then we'll take time.
Um, but not out of a spirit of fear that, that doesn't, that doesn't lead to anything good.
That's so right.
That's exactly right.
Well, and, uh, I am so glad that we didn't have tech issues and all sorts of
problems to interrupt our conversation this time.
Me too.
It's great.
I know that there's people that are listening to this that like, oh, I have all sorts of
questions or, uh, they want to stay in contact with you.
So, uh, how can they be in contact with you after the show?
Yeah, I'd love to connect with your people.
So I'm on Instagram and my handle is she considers a field, which is a reference to
the proverbs 31 passage where a woman considered the, what the righteous woman
considers a field and she buys it.
And I also have a Facebook group with the same name that you can find through my
Instagram or through the link in your show notes.
If you do that, Johnny, and, um, that's a group where I basically just cultivate
a conversation among women of faith.
Um, it's a combination of, um, of really just let's talk about wholeness.
What does it look like to heal and then, um, and then grow and then serve in our
communities.
A lot of times we just want to go straight to service, but how do we heal and
then grow and then serve and, uh, really sit at the feet of the father.
And then I'm also, I'm a strategist.
I love collecting all kinds of different tools to equip women of faith to just be
more effective in their families.
I grab kind of entrepreneur materials and mindset stuff and I love to share that.
So that's on both of those platforms.
And I would love to talk to your people and then anything homeschool specific,
because I know we really focused on that conversation, which I love.
Um, just message me, ask me any questions that you have.
I'm happy to be a support to your folks.
Awesome.
Well, yeah, I'll definitely include all of that down in the show notes.
So definitely check her out.
And yeah, Hannah, thanks again so much for sharing with us.
Oh, thanks so much for having me, Johnny.
This is a pleasure.
Absolutely.
All right.
And thank you to everybody that tuned in today and we'll catch you on the next episode.