2011 Issue 1 | FAMILY 3

Issue8 In Multi-Dimension

Jill Carattini - Like a composer willing to labor over his pages, the potter's hands are not afraid to get dirty. Our lives, in multi-dimensional splendor, are marked with the signs of the master ever at work.

10 That GirlHeidi St. John - Do you ever wonder what hap-pened to that spontaneous, flirtatious girl that your husband wrote love songs to? Heidi St. John shares her experience of rediscovering romance in the vortex of homeschooling.

14 The End of Men?R. Albert Mohler Jr. - Is our postmodern, postin-dustrial society sim ply better suited to women than to men? A hard look at the future and the displace-ment of men.

16 Transparent HomeschoolingTricia Goyer - Homeschooling is hard enough to figure out without having to worry about wearing a mask. It's important for us homeschooling moms to be transparent.

18 The Hole in our HolinessKevin DeYoung - Today’s younger evangelicals seem to lack seriousness in the area of personal holiness. Kevin reflects on the possible reasons and reminds of what Christ saved us to.

20 Fill the Earth and Subdue ItJay Younts - With each generation, we need more people, not fewer, to come forward and honor God by subduing the earth for his glory.

24 Rise Up O Men of GodSteve Demme - Finding encouragement from Prov-erbs 24:16, For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises up again.

c O n T E n T S

The Wilson Family Milford, IN

28 You Were Made for the Sea Todd Wilson - Like seagulls who mistake a parking lot for the sea which God made them for, Christians tend to gravitate toward that which seems authentic, yet not what Christ created them for.

30 Dream PostersChris Davis - Often what cannot be articulated has to be seen. Help your child understand their passion and calling by creating a Dream Poster.

34 not Ashamed of a Biblical Starting Point Ken Ham - When determining your views on creation or evolution, no one ever starts with just evidence. We all have presuppositions that deter-mine how we approach evidence.

38 Jerome's Advice to a Homeschooling Mom Rob Shearer - Read a fascinating letter written from an early church father, nearly 1,500 years ago, on the subject of nurturing and training children in education.

42 As Real as it GetsJill Hardy - From full-time pastor to author and speaker, read the adventure of the family behind Familyman Ministries as they travel across the country encouraging fathers and families.

46 climbing the Hill of LiteracyJan Bloom - Learning to read is very hard work. So how can a parent take their readers from decoding words to delighting in reading?

50 controlled creativityJanice Petry - Nothing threatens successful growth like the inability to handle it. Here’s how to guard what God’s entrusted to you until they can manage it on their own.

FEATURES

2011 1

Printed in the United States of America ©2011 All Rights Reserved Published quar-terly by Home Educating Family LLC, P.O. Box 190451, Nashville, TN 37219.

w w w. h o m e e d u c a t i n g f a m i l y . c o m

For orders, inquiries, subscriptions or ad-dress changes visit www.homeeducatingfam-ily.com, write to Home Educating Family, P.O. Box 190451, Nashville, TN 37219, or email at info@homeeducatingfamily.com.

Annual individual subscriptions, $15.95. Disclaimer: Our mission is to publish ar-ticles and information that will help and encourage home educating families. While we may not agree with every statement and detail of each article, our policy is to only publish articles that uphold our Mission Statement and Statement of Faith. These statements may be found on our website.

Production Team

Senior Editor SCOT KELIHER

Managing Editor REBECCA KELIHER

Graphic Design WILLOW BRANCH

Copy Editor SHAWNA RUSHING

Photography KATIE BOLLINGER

1. Cells & Tissue 30-9-334 $1499

2. The Skeletal System 30-9-336 $1499

3. The Integumentary System (Skin) 30-9-335 $1499

4. The Cardiovascular System (Heart) 30-9-337 $1499

5. The Respiratory System (Lungs) 30-9-338 $1499

6. The Digestive System 30-9-339 $1499

7. The Urinary System 30-9-341 $1499

8. The Hearing Ear & The Seeing Eye 30-9-340 $1499

Help your kids excel in SCIENCE!

NEW!Body of Evidence DVD-BASED STUDY

DR. DAVID MENTON • Finally your family can explore human anatomy & physiology in a Creator-honoring way! Medical university professor Dr. David Menton takes two teens on a teaching tour through the major

systems of the body. Menton is loved worldwide for his humorous and insightful talks that leave audiences in hushed awe at the Creator’s wisdom. In this series, Menton employs anatomical props, models, and microscopic images to teach about God’s amazing designs for life. Geared for teens and adults, Body of Evidence is a 16-part (8 DVD) series. Great for anyone studying the human body! Produced in cooperation with the AFA Homeschool Channel. Approx. 40–45 mins. per part. Jr. High–Adult.

SPECIAL BONUS! Get a FREE copy of the 64-page book of self-study questions when you order the boxed set and use coupon code HEFQBK.

Softcover 10-1-490 $599

Free offer expires 8-31-11.

Get the boxed set or order the individual DVDs:

SAVE $30All eight 2-part DVDs

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Extremely knowledgable with a humble spirit and humorous style, Dr. David Menton earned a PhD in cell biology from Brown University. He served as an associate professor of anatomy at Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis) for over 30 years. Now a staff scientist with Answers in Genesis.

1-800-778-3390AnswersBookstore.comPO BOX 510 Hebron, KY 41048

can excell

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4 FAMILY | www.homeeducatingfamily.com 2011 Issue 1 | FAMILY 5

Issuec O n T E n T S

cOLUMnS

2011 1

5 new FeaturesBeatrice Scalf - New Code on the Block

7 Editor’s noteKeliher Family - My FatherA testimony of grace and a lifelong legacy of education, skills, and habits.

26 Work & PlayJill Hardy - Familyman Ministry Books

52 Plus & Minus Carlita Boyle - Math and ArtDo these subjects collide or can they complement each other? Carlita shares the story of artist Giotto di Bondone.

62 This & That Karrie Emms - Spotlighting a few products we feel dads will enjoy!

74 Here & There Karrie Emms - Educational field trips for kids to en-joy with their fathers and connect on various levels.

80 Homeschool GradNatalie Wickham - Moving forward on faith, a candid conversation with Jana Kornfeld

82 Final Words Mary Kassian - The Influence of a Woman The faith of a woman directly affects the atmosphere of her home & shapes the dynamics of her marriage.

54 Views from My Rearview MirrorAmanda Bennett - Hindsight being 20/20, home-schooling veteran Amanda shares her thoughts and ideas on what really matters in this journey called homeschooling.

58 Successful Homeschooling for the Scatterbrain Beatrice Scalf - Find your success in harnessing your tendencies, tweaking them a bit, and setting out to greatness.

60 Teaching Logic Through Picture StudyAngelina Stafford - Using the Common Topics as strategies to teach students how to abstract, to gen-eralize, to classify, to analyze, and to synthesize. In other words, they teach students how to think—no Greek required!

64 Precept Upon Precept, Line Upon LineRebecca Ingram Powell - Don’t let your chil-dren miss out on the treasures just waiting to be unearthed through this lost discipline of scripture memorization.

66 My Father, the Dream chaserLinda Johnson - Memories of an adventurous father who instilled the value of hard work and a job well done, but more importantly taught his children to enjoy God’s handiwork in the midst of the mundane.

70 GeocachingBeatrice Scalf - Discover the joy and possibly a new family tradition in the exciting global scavenger hunt of geocaching.

72 Book clubsGabreial Wyatt - From children’s clubs, cookbooks clubs, to internet book clubs, learn the how-to in forming a book club tailored to meet your family’s interests.

It’s almost cliché to talk about the speed of in-formation nowadays, but we all know it to be true. We want our information, and we want it now! Even those of us that yearn to live sim-ply can’t seem to pry the smart phone from our hands. Technology has heard our cries for im-mediacy and answered with new life to an old idea.

Bar codes, UPCs, tracking codes, and the like have been around virtually since the dawn of the computer. The newest code on the block is the QR code. The Quick Response Code origi-nated in Japan in the 1990s as a way of tracking auto parts in transit. Recently they have seen a rebirth of sorts as a means of marketing to the smart-phone-toting masses, showing up on billboards, postcards, even the Jumbo-tron in Times Square.

The 2D code essentially looks like a scrambled mosaic of black and white tiles, all unique. They are scan-able images that redirect an In-ternet capable smart phone to the desired des-tination. For instance, recently, at a trade show, I used the camera on my Android powered phone (iPhones and BlackBerrys have scan-ning apps as well) to scan a QR code that took my phone’s Internet browser to a contest entry page at the vendor’s website. Instead of having to write my name, address, phone number, email, etc. on a slip of paper and leave it in a fishbowl vulnerable to every potential identity thief in the convention center, I typed in my information via the vendor’s secure website. Contest entries, though, are just the tip of the iceberg!

Since most of us have our phones at all times, marketing departments everywhere are using this to their advantage and ours! QR codes are popping up on magazine covers in the check-out aisle so you can subscribe easily, on stand-alone displays of featured products for a quick 50-cent-off coupon, on product packaging to take you to a quick recipe finder website, even as a way to direct newcomers to Facebook and Twitter pages! Any way that a business can get the word out, you are bound to see a QR code attached.

Soon, you’ll be seeing these very exciting little codes throughout our magazine just ripe for the scanning, not only for Home Educating Family, but also for our advertisers. You’ll be able to access special code-only content via your phone – kind of like a backstage pass at a concert. All you need for this special access is a smart phone with a scanning application downloaded and installed.

So, what to do when you come across one of the little guys? Here is a short, 3-step “how-to” on QR codes:

1. First, and foremost, decide if the code is accompanying something about which you want more information or a contest you wish to enter, etc. Deciding this includes knowing whether the QR is from a company or product you trust. If not, be cautious about releasing your information. Most are going to be from trustworthy sources.

2. Grab your handy smart phone and open your scanning application.

3. Center the code within the reader frame and hold still for a second or two. Once the code is read, your phone’s browser will whisk you away on a trip through cyberspace to the web-site programmed into the code.

Viola! You have arrived. Now that you are a trained QR coder, here’s your first to try. Scan this QR to go to our Facebook page and “Like” us. Enjoy!

New76 Prepared for the Fight

Matthew Bullington - With one fifth of a student’s life spent attending a college or university, the decision of choosing between a public or Chris-tian college can be weighty. Matthew shares some straightforward advice on how to wisely guide your child.

Codeon

the Block

Fan Us!

Beatrice Scalf

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2011 Issue 1 | FAMILY 7

After I married and began having children, my father’s influence on me did not wane. In fact, I tried something new again, scrap-booking. Then, I went a step further and started to scrapbook digitally, learning layout and design. It was through these skills that the Lord called our family to publish Home Educating Fam-ily Magazine.

My father’s influence on me has been significant. I think like him, I train my children the same way he trained me and my siblings. I’m passionate about the same ideas my father is pas-sionate about, and more importantly, I am committed to family the way my Italian father exemplified commitment to our family.

In this issue of HEFM, we are featuring the family behind Fami-lyman Ministries, the Wilsons. With a crew of eight kids, Todd and Debbie Wilson use down-to-earth sensibilities to strength-en families by spurring on the man behind them. With this in mind, we’ve created this issue to energize families, from dad down to kids, with a diverse selection of articles!

You’ll discover how to restore romance in your marriage in “That Girl” by Heidi St. John and how to dialogue difficult issues with your children in “Transparent Homeschooling” by Tricia Goyer. Al Mohler, Jr. takes an honest look at the “The End of Men,” Rob Shearer unearths a hidden treasure in the letter “Jerome’s Advice to a Homeschooling Mom,” while Steve Demme relates to the homeschooling father in “Rise Up O Men.” These are just the beginning of a packed issue focusing on families and fathers.

That day, when my father adopted me, he did much more than rescue me; he gave me a lifelong education, skills, and habits. But more than all that, he gave me the privilege to understand firsthand what it means to be adopted into the kingdom of God and have a heavenly father. I am grateful for my father and his testimony of grace. I hope this issue inspires you to leave the same lasting legacy with your children.

ed

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Daddy, Dad, Father – these words conjure up a variety of imagery and emo-tions. For me, these words bring an overwhelming sense of gratitude. You see, at the impressionable age of eleven, I was adopted out of a children’s home by my father, Ron Scarlata. Although I would not come to know Christ for many years, his actions were my first glimpse of salvation and redemption. But that was only the beginning.

After adopting me along with my three siblings, my father became a Chris-tian. Despite his tough Italian background, grace did much more abound. His drastic change was evident to all, as I still have the memory of sleeping downstairs, and hearing his footsteps above me at four in the morning as he poured his coffee and began studying the Bible. Those sounds and the smell of coffee brought reassurance to me, and to this day it is how I order my day.

Then I became a teenager. Oh, what’s a father to do? Well, my dad took us to work. He taught us a strong work ethic as well as Algebra. My father became a homeschooling pioneer. He challenged each of us to be diligent in all we did, to think outside the box, and to be honorable to our commitments. Daily, he would come into my office - I was sixteen at this time - and with a small steno pad Velcroed to my desk, he wrote a list of to-dos for me. When I was finished, he would check my work and mark it off the list. To this day, I’m a list maker, and now I write the Well-Planned Day Planners.

When my father needed a program to run his company, he handed me a book and asked me to develop a database. When new technology emerged, he would purchase it and ask me to learn it. My father challenged me and taught me not to fear the unknown, but to be excited at the possibilities. Today I know several computer languages and am a software developer.

My

the kelihers

Fatherlifelong education, skills, and habits

grace did much more abound"

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8 FAMILY | www.homeeducatingfamily.com 2011 Issue 1 | FAMILY 9

I find there is something inspiring about the labored work of a genius. Beethoven wrestled notes onto the page. For him composing music was a messy, physical process. Ink was splat-tered, wax burned, erasers wore holes in the paper. What started as a clean page became a muddled, textured mess of a masterpiece ever in progress.

At times when I consider the Christian notion of myself as a creation I am jarred by the finality of it: "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." Upon calling on Christ as Lord, the Christian holds that she has been made into something new. Before we have even tried to live well, before we have even labored as disciples, the marred and muddied scene of our hearts has been shaped into something else. The Father sees the masterpiece of the Son.

Though I stand amazed at this grace, it is also easy for me to stumble at the thought of it. I imagine God handing me a clean paper and asking me to hold it in a world full of ink and dirt. And I immediately wish I would have been more careful. I picture the white page given to me and think of all of the smudges and eraser marks I've added to it, some of them from lessons learned the hard way, others merely from bumping into life as I walk along.

by Jill Carattini

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InMulti-Dimension

If truth be told, life is far messier than we would like it to be. People get angry and depressed and sick. We struggle with remaining hopeful in the dark and seeing through bouts of self-deception. Our lives don't turn out how we planned them, and the roads we choose aren't as straight as we would like them to be. Even so, the Christian claims God is faithful through the mess. More than this, the Christian claims the mess to be the masterpiece. "For we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28).

To an unknowing eye, Beethoven's scores would appear mud-dled disasters. But mindful observers have called his master-pieces works of "three-dimensional" art. There is a texture and a character to his manuscripts that display an artist who went beyond merely writing the notes, but compelled himself upon the page, in order to make a symphony. All the more, a life in Christ is fleshed out of us. Scuffs and blotches are wrought with the work of one who descends into the mess of life to shape us. Like a composer willing to labor over his pages, the potter's hands are not afraid to get dirty. Our lives, in multi-dimensional splendor, are marked with the signs of the master ever at work. "In Multi-Deminsion" by Jill Carattini, A Slice of Infinity, originally posted 4 February 2011 (www.rzim.org). Used by permission of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

An important manuscript long thought lost was rediscovered hiding in a Penn-sylvania seminary on a forgotten archival shelf. The recovered manuscript was a working score for a piano version of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Grosse Fuge," or grand fugue. Apparently, grand is an understatement. The work is known as a monument of classical music and described by historians as a "symphonic poem" or a "leviathan"—an achievement on the scale of the finale of his Ninth Symphony. The work is one of the last pieces Beethoven composed, during the period when he was completely deaf. The markings throughout the manuscript are in the com-poser's own hand.

In fact, such markings are a particular trademark of Beethoven, who was known for near obsessive editing. Unlike Mozart, who typically produced large scores in nearly finished form, Beethoven's mind was so full of ideas that it was never made up. Never satisfied, he honed his ideas brutally.

And a look at the recovered score portrays exactly that. Groups of measures throughout the 80-page manuscript are furiously canceled out with cross-marks. Remnants of red sealing wax, used to adhere long corrections to an already scuffed up page, remain like scars. There are smudges where he rubbed away ink while it was still wet and abrasions where he erased notes with a needle. Dated changes and omissions are scattered throughout the score, many of these markings dating to the final months before his death in 1827.

The Father sees the masterpiece of the Son.

Before we have even tried

to live well, before we have

even labored as disciples,

the marred and muddied

scene of our hearts has been

shaped into something else.

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."

by Jill Carattini

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10 FAMILY | www.homeeducatingfamily.com 2011 Issue 1 | FAMILY 11

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Who Is “That Girl?”Do you remember “That Girl?” You know the girl I’m talking about: her spirit is unfet-tered, her hopes are high, her schedule is uncluttered. That Girl is a dreamer. She still flirts with her husband. She looks in the mirror and is filled with awe at the body that God has given her. She does not see stretch marks; she sees the unmistakable signs of motherhood. She does not lament over impending physical changes in her body, because she does not know that they are coming.

Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to that spontaneous, flirtatious girl that Jay wrote love songs to. Even though Jay and I have a wonderful, strong mar-riage, it is still easy for me to think of myself in the light of the grocery store checkout line magazine covers. You know, those magazine covers that tell me how I should see myself. The trouble is, magazines lie. The culture that we live in has its priorities all wrong. You need new thinking if you are going to be the woman God created you to be.

A few years ago, I began to pray specifically that God would help me be the girl that Jay married. I am not saying that I was ask-ing to be nineteen again—goodness knows I don’t want to go back and re-learn some of the lessons of my twenties—but I needed to see myself with new eyes. As much as I longed to be, I knew that I was not That Girl any more. Between pastor-ing, pregnancies, newborns, homeschooling and home making, I had somehow lost sight of the girl that I was when we were first married. My husband noticed, too. Time and stress had created a certain distance between us. Most people wouldn’t have noticed it because from the outside, we had it all together.

“If a woman is beautiful before the age of forty, she had something to do with it. If she is beautiful after the age of forty, her husband had something to do with it.” ~ Anonymous

In our case, the distance showed up in many ar-eas of our marriage. Jay was at work too much, and I found myself caring less and less. We stopped leaving little notes for each other on the bathroom mirror. We kept right on going as if nothing was different. You see, that “dis-tance” I am talking about didn’t happen over-night. It took me a few years of being too busy and Jay being too absorbed in his work before we started to notice.

For my husband and me, our marriage has never reached a crisis point. But like many cou-ples, we had taken our marriage for granted. Slowly, we had become so involved with other people and with raising our kids, that we had little time left over at the end of the day for each other. We had stopped dreaming together. With a full-time ministry position at a growing church and young children to raise, LIFE was in full swing.

One morning, my husband’s parents offered to take our children out for breakfast, so Jay and I took the rare opportunity for uninterrupted conversation and headed to our favorite coffee shop. After a few minutes of sipping lattes and enjoying pumpkin scones, I sensed that Jay had something on his mind.

What he said surprised me.

“I miss you, Heidi. Are you in there some-where?” he asked.

“You miss me?” I did not understand what he meant, until he began to talk about things I had not thought about in what felt like for-ever: date night, weekend getaways, long drives for no reason. He missed the woman that lit candles in the bedroom and who wasn’t embar-rassed by the sight of her own body. He too sensed the distance between us, and it was troubling him.

Please understand, Jay is my closest friend. He was not criticizing me: He really did miss me. He missed That Girl. Frankly, I knew exactly what he was talking about.

It’s funny how certain conversations stand out as unforgettable. I remember that conversation in the coffee shop as clearly as I remember our first kiss and the day Jay proposed to me.

I think it’s because that conversation forever changed the way I viewed my role in our mar-riage. Jay didn’t miss me literally—I was there all the time (at least physically). He missed That Girl. When I finally stopped to think about it, I missed her too!

The next few weeks provided many opportuni-ties for me to think about the girl I was versus

the girl I had become. I also had time to think about how quickly time was passing. Had we already been married for ten years? If the first ten went by fast, I could only imagine how fast the next ten would fly. As I write this book, it occurs to me that the next ten years are already gone; we recently celebrated our 20th anniver-sary.

The Homeschool VortexSomehow, I had been sucked into the home-school vortex. Do you know what I mean? It’s a place where time doesn’t just stand still, you ac-tually forget that time is going by! My days were all about the children, curriculum, and crock pots. From the moment my feet hit the floor, I was “all homeschool mom all the time.” As I struggled to figure out how this homeschool thing looked (and I think I made every mistake a busy homeschool mom can make), I forgot to nurture That Girl! I now understand why the famous “denim jumper” became the required uniform for so many homeschool moms: that’s what they’re wearing in the vortex!

Now, I’ve met a few busy homeschool moms over the years who claim that there is no such vortex, but I have been inside it. Trust me, it’s there. And if you think it’s not there, you are setting yourself up to fall right in. In fact, you may be inside it and not even know it!

The homeschool vortex is tricky because most of the time, you’re in it before you can say “Classical Education!” There is no time for ro-mance inside the vortex because in the vortex, Latin is more important than lingerie. Legal-ism is the official language and laughter is lost as homeschooling becomes more and more wearisome. Believe me, it’s possible to be inside the vortex and not even know it.

I am forever grateful that my husband threw me a line and pulled me up out of that place. At the time, I was too exhausted to appreci-ate what my life would have looked like if I had stayed there even one more minute, but I am sure that I would never have found That Girl without the patient, loving pursuit of my husband.

Romance RedefinedIn the months that followed, I did some soul searching. I realized that if I wanted to be That Girl again, I needed to recognize that my hus-band—not our homeschool—needed to be my priority. It was time to revisit our romance.

The longer I’ve been married, the more my idea of romance has changed. When we were dat-ing, my idea of romance was an “I love you, baby!” phone call before a test or an impromp-

ThatGirlby Heidi St. John

Book Excerpt: The Busy Homeschool Mom's Guide to Romance

How many homeschool moms does it take to screw in a light bulb? Heidi St. John, wife, homeschool mom of six, the oldest of whom is now in college, author, and speaker, doesn't answer that question, but she does offer good suggestions and advice to every homeschool mom on how to be "That Girl" whom her husband loved and married. In the normal order of things, before there can be a "homeschool mom" there has to be a "homeschool wife." Therefore, the best homeschool mom is one who makes her marriage a priority, especially since a stable family unit is the bedrock of society. Heidi also reminds homeschool moms that the best homeschool wives are those who don't neglect their relationship with God. In fact, she says that "in the setting of homeschool-ing, having my devotions with the kids has turned out to be the single most impacting thing about our homeschool journey."

The ten chapters in this book deal with such subjects as the need for quiet time, romance, "white space," the dangers of too much so-cial networking, "homeschool headache," the importance of communication, paral-lel living vs. partnering, and related topics. Her emphasis is upon the necessity of mak-ing the marriage work, not being "all home-school mom all the time." This is important not only for mom and dad but for the kids as well. I can't imagine a homeschool mom who couldn't benefit from reading it.

The Busy Homeschool

RomanceMom's Guide to

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12 FAMILY | www.homeeducatingfamily.com 2011 Issue 1 | FAMILY 13

tu meeting under the streetlights that lit up our college campus. My beloved would leave love notes for me and I would find them in the funniest places: in my car, inside of textbooks, under my plate in the cafeteria. He went all out and I loved it!

Twenty years and six kids later, my idea of romance has changed. Jay’s has too. My hus-band is as attractive to me with dish soap on his hands or a grinning little girl on his lap as he was when he sang the lead in his rock-n-roll band, Saint John, probably even more so be-cause we now have years of shared experiences that serve to strengthen our romance.

I don’t know about you, but when my husband sees a need and goes out of his way to meet it, I can barely contain my love for him! His love, lived out in practical ways, is romantic. Why? Because true romance is love lived out. And real life includes dirty dishes and piles of laundry.

When I stop and think about it, the reality is that it was not the notes, the flowers, the moonlight, or the poetry that I really loved; it was the thrill of the being pursued. That was the way we lived out our love: Before dishes and diapers, there was date night.

Now, as a busy homeschool mom, the thrill of

the pursuit includes ordinary things. Here’s the tricky part: the homeschool vortex is a no-ro-mance zone. If you want to be That Girl again, you’ve got to start back at the beginning. You’ve got to start romancing your husband.

Yes, the homeschool years may redefine how that romance is lived out, and yes, it will re-quire more effort on your part. But trust me, busy homeschool mom, the blessing you will receive as you pursue your husband will be worth it!

Don’t Scare the MamaEvery home has its quirky little rules. In our house, quirky rule #246 is: Don’t scare the mama. For some reason, I am one of those individuals who does not recover gracefully from a child jumping out at me in the dark. I can think of a thousand scenarios over the past twenty years that have ended up under the “Don’t scare the mama” clause in our marriage. For the sake and sanity of the mama, any prac-tical jokes involving plastic spiders, pretend injuries, or other potentially scary scenarios get left at the door.

That rule really is all about me. In the interest of allowing me to live to see my grandchildren get married, I’ve asked my kids to help me keep my adrenaline at what might be consid-

ered normal levels. Sometimes they forget and I wind up the unwitting victim of a practical joke, but for the most part, we have come to an agreement.

My point is that there are some things you need to do just for you. Take care of yourself. Busy homeschool moms who are burned out, stressed out, and tired are not very romantic. If you want to find That Girl again, you might need to take a look at some things about you that need to be addressed.

Only you can determine how much rest you need and how much stress you can take. Only you can decide how many activities you can take on before other people around you start to suffer the consequences of an “over-done” busy homeschool mom. If you feel better about yourself as a person, and more confident in the way you look and feel, That Girl will be easier to track down.

Everything I Needed to Know About Romance I Learned in Third Grade

It started in grade school. I will always re-member recess at the little private school that I attended in Portland, Oregon. Like all school children, we had a recess routine. If it wasn’t raining, we played our favorite recess game, “boys chase the girls.” The rules were pretty simple: the girls ran around screaming, the boys captured them and carried them back to the big wooden fort in the middle of the play-ground. Several boys stood watch over the fort to make sure some sneaky little third-grader didn’t get in and release the captives.

Even at such a young age, the thrill of the chase was on our minds. We loved it. Once the girls were captured, they made “soup” out of water mixed with mud and basically called for help until the recess bell rang. It was third-grade bliss.

This grade school game went on for at least two years, but one incident still stands out to me: At some point, the boys quit. Yep, that’s right. They quit. The girls were horrified. The boys sent a representative to inform us that they had decided they were tired of chasing the girls. They wanted the girls to chase them for a change.

We did, but it wasn’t as much fun for either the boys or the girls. After a day or two, the boys decided they would rather chase the girls, but that occasionally, they would like for us to chase them. I didn’t know it then, of course, but this is exactly how God made us to be.

At the end of the day, romance is about pursuit. I like to use the word pursue as a verb when I think of romancing my husband. When I pur-sue him or when he pursues me, it is love in action. That pursuit says, “I love you!”

Most women yearn to be pursued by their husbands. I believe that this is because God has created us uniquely to be responders. Yet pursuing my husband felt foreign to me, which brings me back to those instinctive feelings I noticed as a grade schooler. The only difference between then and now is that I had forgotten that determined look that flashed across little Johnny’s eyes when the boys had decided that they finally had enough! One-sided relation-ships are wearisome. When I put my grown-up self back in the playground for just a moment, it made perfect sense. Why wouldn’t I pursue my husband?

In fact, when I stopped to think of what that would actually look like in practice, I felt like a little wire in my brain short-circuited. What did that look like, anyway?

If I was going to be That Girl, I needed to find what made my husband tick. I had to actually ask Jay what he needed from me (besides sex, and we’ll get to that in just a bit) in order to feel loved—no—cherished. I wanted him to feel how much I love him by everyday actions. We all need to feel appreciated. Husbands in-cluded.

Turns out, men are not nearly as complicated as busy homeschool moms. (Can’t you just hear the angels singing?) A busy homeschool dad, on even his worst day, does not come close to having the same estrogen-enriched needs of a busy homeschool mom. We are women; we like to talk it out at the end of a hard day. More often than not, though, by the time we’re done mixing our commentaries with the unique joys and stresses of homeschooling, we’ve forgotten to pursue, or even include, our husbands!

I think on some level, we expect our husbands to be just like us. We assume they want us to show love to them in exactly the way we want them to show love to us. Praise God for His amazing design in making men and women so different!

Simply put, most husbands, at their core, are pretty easy to please. For the past twenty years, I have been a student of my husband. Here are a few things that made it to the top of the list of ways to romance your husband—from the perspective of a busy homeschool mom:

Prefer your husband in all things. Jay is the phone call I take when I think I can’t take an-other call. He is the dinner date I make before I put anything else on the calendar. He is the reason we have white space on our calendar. Our marriage is the priority in our home, and our children know it.

Actively communicate that you respect your husband. (Respect means a high or special regard.) I fear many women do not grasp the importance of this crucial aspect of the mar-riage relationship. We communicate respect to our husbands when we trust them to meet our needs; from asking for directions when lost (or not) to providing for our families.

Men tend to have a great need to be respected and the Scriptures are very clear that wives must respect their husbands. The way we be-have from day to day with our husbands says a lot about our love for them. When was the last time you told your husband how much you re-spected him? Here are a few ways you can show him your respect:

Verbally: Try to minimize complaining. Com-pliment him instead.

Physically: Find out what his top three needs are. Ask your husband what he needs from you in those three areas, and then make a conscious effort to meet those needs. Don’t be afraid to ask tough questions—that’s how you get to the truth of the matter!

Spiritually: Encourage your husband when you see him leading your family. If he is not the spiritual leader in your family, pray for him. Talk to him about it in a way that helps him see the importance of his God-given role as the leader in your home.

Emotionally: I’ve learned that I can respect Jay by recognizing that we are totally different crea-tures, especially emotionally. Men don’t give a lot of weight to feelings. They are more likely to respond to facts. For example, let’s say your

husband wants to buy a new car. Rather than get upset and become emotional and irrational, write out a budget that clearly explains how much money is needed to meet your expenses each month. Let the facts speak for you, and then respect your husband by allowing him to make that final decision.

Make time. Remember, your calendar will reflect your priorities. Most busy homeschool moms don’t choose curriculum with their hus-bands in mind. But I’m here to tell you that if your curriculum leaves you cold and exhausted at the end of the day, it’s time to find a curricu-lum that is more suited to helping you put the priority on your marriage.

Be That Girl. You can do it. Be the girl your husband fell in love with. Were you spontane-ous, funny, sexy, and giving towards your hus-band when he chose you? You still are those things. And even though now you’re a busy homeschool mom, he still needs you to be That Girl!

Revisit your romance. In other words, get back to basics. What is it that makes your husband’s eyes light up? Is it a post-it note on the bathroom mirror? Is it an invitation to an intimate rendezvous? Every busy homeschool mom was once a girl who worked to gain the affections of the man she married.

Do you have a vision for bringing romance back into your marriage? If you don’t, you should! Ask the Lord to help you be the girl your husband married, and commit yourself to being a student of your husband. If he likes M&M’s, put them in his lunch box. If he en-joys basketball, find out what time the game starts.

And be there. You’ll be amazed at what a differ-ence your efforts to keep the home fires burn-ing will have on your on your husband.

Remember, you are That Girl!

Waysto Romance Your Husband

There is no time for romance inside the vortex because in the vortex, Latin is more important than lingerie.

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