Scuppernongs

After finishing up our first year on a good note, I was feeling much more confident about our decision to homeschool. We had endured the state mandated standardized tests that showed the boys were right on track, but considering my general disdain for standardized tests, I took the results with a grain of salt. The further we got from public school, the more natural things felt. And the more I learned about the origins of the current antiquated system (yikes!), the more grateful I felt for the opportunity to keep the boys home, where they belong.

In planning for our next year, I'd settled on a curriculum called "My Father's World". As a unit study, it covered everything from literature to geography, science to art. And it could be used for all three boys. Everyone I talked to said they loved it. I was fortunate enough to stumble upon some used books in a curriculum sale and then filled in the blanks on Amazon. All summer I was feeling pretty prepared. But insecurity was lurking just around the corner.

At football practice I'd hear parents talking about how their sixth graders were going to use scientific calculators this year and thought, woo. We'd had to back track with Cole to undo the damage that the "Everyday Math" curriculum had done and were not nearly at a place needing a fancy calculator yet. (Come to think of it, I'd never needed a scientific calculator in my entire life and had somehow managed the household finances for over a decade. Go figure.)

As the summer wound down my anxiety level went up. The stack of books on my bedside table had hardly been touched. The big expectations I'd had for The Well-Trained Mind were diminished when I read a book mocking people who believe in training their childrens' minds that way. Who could I trust?

The answer came unexpectedly.

One day, a couple of weeks before our new school year was to start, we were reading a book together and came upon the word scuppernongs. Scuppernongs? We all scratched our heads and wondered what in the world a scuppernong was. I said I'd look it up later on and we continued the story.

Just a short while later it was lunch time. After making a sandwich I logged into facebook to check in on my friends. As I scrolled down the page reading everyone's status updates, my eyes were caught by a photo. It was a picture of some grape-like things in a bowl and it said, "This is why I love my brother! He sent me some scuppernongs from Georgia!" Holy cow. That was weird. In my entire life I'd never heard of such a thing and now it had come up twice in one morning. What were the odds?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was no coincidence. It was the Lord sending me a message. He was letting me know that He was the one who had started us on this journey and He was going to see us through. He would provide the knowledge we needed, when we needed it. Homeschooling was not about me and what I knew, there was a much bigger picture to remember. I could breath a sigh of relief when I felt like panicking at the prospect of being responsible for the boys' education because it was not on my shoulders at all.

A few days later as I recounted the story to a friend, I decided to look up scuppernongs to read more about them. What was this strange fruit with the funny name anyway? I had to smile when I read that the oldest cultivated grapevine in the world is the 400 year old scuppernong "Mother Vine" growing on Roanoke Island, North Carolina. (Wikipedia)

Although I love the sound of Mother Vine, Father Vine would be more like it. May we continue to grow in Him as we continue our journey together.