Posted on 09/23/2004 7:04:45 PM PDT by SLB
She lives in a small town in Tennessee, or in a subdivision in North Carolina, or on a ranch in Montana .
She may be 15. Or, she may have graduated from college. Either way, the odds are no boy has ever paid much attention to her. She may wonder if she will ever get married. She is lonely.
What’s her problem? The answer is simple: She is different.
She doesn’t particularly like being different. She may tell you that she doesn’t care; but she does.
Her peers think she is a snob. Her mom says the reason other girls don’t want to be around her is because they are jealous. That doesn’t help much. So she tries to be friendly and kind but that doesn’t help much, either. She may be shunned by other girls and ignored by boys.
She is different. And who wants to be different? Nobody likes others who are different and nobody likes being different.
I have met hundreds of homeschooled girls like this around the world. Each girl thinks she is the only one who is having these experiences. But, there are thousands just like her. If they ever find one another, there would be a huge group hug. And, yes, probably lots of tears. They would finally have found others like themselves who aren’t interested in what girls normally think or talk about. Their talk wouldn’t center around boys or movies or how stupid some other girl is. They would talk about their families and about what interests them and about God and about Jesus. They would pray together and for one another.
That girl from Tennessee who is 15. She’s actually 15 going on 21. She seems to have skipped the teenage years altogether. The girl who has graduated from college without meeting her future husband has been told many times not to worry. “Mister right” is just waiting somewhere in the future. She struggles to believe it and to trust God for her future family.
These girls are different. Not because they wear Christian hairdos or clothing. It really has little to do with externals. But it has everything to do with their Father and what He has done inside them. They are just different, whether they like being different or not. Everyone can tell.
One day I was trying to understand this regarding a young girl who was a friend of my son. All at once the Lord showed me a kind of vision about this girl. Here’s what I saw:
The girl was in her Baptist Sunday school class. All the kids were sitting in a circle. Just then I saw Jesus open the door to the room. He walked directly to this girl and held out His hand to her. She took His hand and got up from her chair. Then Jesus took her out of the class and closed the door. I understood Him to be saying, “This girl doesn’t belong in the same way other people belong. I have made her exclusively Mine.”
I knew this didn’t mean she would never have a family or always be by herself. But the Lord made me understand that He is using the home schooling movement because it is the easiest context in which to raise young people who can be truly “different.”
Why do I keep using the word, “Different”? It is because of the origin of that word. The word “different” is the most exact translation of the Greek work, HOLY (hagios). These kids are different in that the Lord has placed in them something which makes them holy unto Him. They are not really trying to be this way. It’s something He has done. He has separated them from the kind of things normal young people find important. They may struggle with what God has done. They may be terribly lonely. But they ARE different and it is the work of God, Himself.
It is not easy to encourage these girls. Loneliness is no fun and being different can be a real bummer, too. Telling someone to “have faith” can sound pretty shallow, even though it’s the truth. The girl who graduated from college and never had a boy who was a friend ended up meeting “the man of God” she had always dreamed about. They are married now. Another is still waiting, praying for faith to believe it will all turn out as her heart hopes it will.
This is a holy generation. It is a generation set apart unto Him. It is a generation of young people the world has not seen in so long it doesn’t remember what real holiness looks like. The purposes of God rest on our children being willing to walk “in the world” but, at the same time, separated from it. The world waits for a people to show them that a relationship with Jesus isn’t a religious put-on, but is worth giving their lives to, too.
Our girls have been created by the Lord to show everyone what the Bride of Christ looks like, sounds like, acts like, believes like. It can be a burden, but it is precious. We need to deeply respect our girls for what they have been called to be. They need to be encouraged to understand who they are to a world (and, yes, even to a Church) who desperately needs to see the kind of “Lady” Jesus is returning for. We need to give them a vision for who they are that is deeper than simply saying to them, “the other girls are jealous of you.”
I'm with Clare!
I was the one kid that would end up on my own on the playground, and was always picked on by the popular clique. I can remember coming home crying all the time. If anything, homeschooling made me MORE sociable than I was by nature, partly because we hung out with other homeschoolers, who were interested in activities and in actually TALKING instead of just one-upping each other. Not that all public school kids are like that, but a lot are.
My brothers (also homeschooled) are much more outgoing. Just the way they are. But you know, people would STILL look at the group of us and pick ME out as the "normal" homeschooler and say my brothers just somehow overcame the difficulties of homeschooling to become well-socialized, and THEY were the flukes. As if natural personality had no play in the matter...
Also got one on the way (but we don't know boy or girl yet).
Now days, homeschool children have amply opportunity to socialize with other children via the internet. Just last week the wife met up with a group of other home schooled and they toured a museum together and attended Pizza together and had a great time.
I'm glad you got a kick out of that, it was fun to put together.
Got it. Homeschoolers today are reaping the rewards of the pioneering homeschoolers of yesterday. It really is a much better time to homeschool....
thank you for your input!
In my town I've seen different groups of religious women wear the following:
only ponytails
only buns
only false hair..i.e. elaborate curls worn on top or back.
it is an interesting discussion to me.
My point was simple from the beginning, the home schooled are only as good as the home that schools them. I'm not talking about what you would consider 'bad' parenting, there is no violence or drugs or any kind of lifestyle you'd probably disapprove of.
The parents of these kids have made them so insulated from anything outside the home and spoon fed them until they have no will or minds of their own. They begin their day with the mother reading to them for 2 HOURS! 14 and 17 year old and they sit and listen to their mother reading pure milksop to them at that age. Literally while they visited us they sat in their place till you told them to do something, till you led them by the hand to whatever it was they were supposed to do next. The brains have just been sucked out of these kids. Life is going to be MORE than a challenge for them if they ever leave the hermitage.
As usual any perceived criticism of home schooling is responded to with 'well what do you suggest' defensiveness. What I suggest is that people who home school might want to be careful that they aren't creating children that won't be able to live in this world.
Amen to ALL your excellent comments!
And I would invite you to actually READ what I posted! The 'local home school support group' in the area the kids I am referring to has done nothing but strengthened the hands of parents who are destroying their children by making them intellectual and emotional cripples. You just don't get it, I'm sure that there are terrific home schooling parents, what I'm saying is that there are SOME who abuse the experience and who should NOT be home schooling.
Again I call many of you bumptious and arrogant and you all prove it with every insulting post like yours.
I'm surprised you feel I'm defensive. I was trying to understand your ideas, while politely sharing my own. Asking for your ideas and expressing interest in same, listening to another point of view and expressing my own thoughts, is defensive? If that's the case it seems that anyone who disagrees with anyone is "defensive." :)
For the record, I agree with what you say, insofar as the homeschooled are going to be only as good as the home that schools them. I just wasn't quite understanding where your main point was at in the overall context of the conversation. I was picking up on a different shading, whether or not homeschooling is synonomous with a quality education, and suggesting that more often than not, it is, while agreeing there are exceptions. Perhaps we are not actually disagreeing on these points.
I will be the first to admit that not every home school family does a bang up job, but at the same time those families have the "right" to do so and if you do not like them exercising that right you should have experienced what it was like to grow up in Germany in say 1939.
Thanks for the imput. I will e-mail in the future. I had surgery on my hand yesterday and have to hunt and peck at the keyboard, so give me a week to get out of this cast. Thanks again.
As for being different. The description of the girl at the beginning of the article sounded a lot like myself. I went to public school. (remember anti-homeschoolers always think that it's the homeschooling that makes children different) The quirks that used to be my shame for the first 12 years of school were things that people in the "real world" liked about me.
Everything about me has been changed since I accepted Christ thirty years ago in my twenties. I know I am saved because I know the Bible and I know that Christ spoke the Truth and the Apostles passed it on to me faithfully. all Scripture is profitable. Scripture says Scripture is accurate and literal.
I don't need to hear voices and I don't need to be influenced by others who hear voices. Been there done that and it is all false. I've watched folks who believe like you chew each other up for years. Literally destroy each other with their false godliness.
No thanks.
I hear my Masters voice every time I sin. I just don't hear words in my head.
I was in fact baptised by such people and learned a lot from them. I struggled with the evil that also worked so freely through these people for YEARS. I finally sorted it out. All of them had an extreme need to control others and used their so called gifts to do so. Again. No thanks. Never again.
I feel led to share more with you.
(Truthfully it's probably just my own ego that desires to show you the 'error or your ways'.
The virgins and the oil: This is a favorite verse used by you sheep beaters. I used to use it on my self. There are several others. The pruned vines. The lazy servant. Many are called but few are chosen. etc etc etc.
The virgins with ample oil are those who are saved. Those who have accepted The Blood of Christ as ENOUGH. Not His Blood plus our labor. Or our striving. Or our vigilence. The Blood is enough. The virgins with defecient amount of oil are the unsaved. Period.
When I was a sheep beating member of the Body I ran hear and there doing works. Truth is I was not ready nor was I called. I was as Moses slaying the Egyptian in his own strength when what he really needed was thirty years in the desert alone with God.
Quit striving in your own strenghth. When God needs you to do something He will make it plain. Perhaps He will speak to you as He did Moses through a burning bush. Probably not. Most likely he will simply put someone in front of you who needs to be served. Like your wife and kids.
The fact that you think a born-again-purchased-by-His-Blood Christian could be low on oil tells me you don't understand even the written word. So how can you think yourself a prophet who hears the word of the Lord above and beyond Scripture?
could you please add this mother of 3 home schooled girls to your ping list?
Thanks
There are a number of homeschooled kids in our church and it produces fine young people.
And this crap about how its important for socialization and thats why they need to be in public school is bunk.
The church is their peer group.
Most of the memebrs of my church will not let their teenage children date without chaperone. Cause like my preacher says, two young people alone is a formula for disaster. he said dont be suprised if pregnancy results. If you let em date alone.
It is true, and isn't it amazing! Look at Adam & Eve.. God joined them, (and were they ever-sharing "dna" from the same rib!)!
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