Longing for Home

My family has just ended a super busy season in our lives. Those of you with more than one child in more than one activity can relate, I’m sure. I’m not complaining. It’s been a good kind of busy with one child spreading her wings into the world of high school sports; while the other plays in a recreational league. Same sport, same day, same time, different towns…sigh.

On one recent evening, as we were walking in the door from a day of practice juggling, my oldest daughter let out a deep, heavy sigh and said, “I’m just ready to be home for a while.” It made my heart happy to know that my fourteen year old longs to be at home in the comfortable surroundings that speak peace and security to her.

It’s in the daily conversation, family meals, and impromptu afternoon teas that a building of four walls becomes a home. It’s in knowing that those within those four walls love you fiercely, enjoy your presence and accept you for who you are that a child/teen/adult can flourish and find respite in a world full of busy-ness. It’s those quirky inside jokes and late night heart-to-hearts that bind hearts together.

As homeschooling parents, we have the opportunity to create not only a learning environment but a growing environment where our children are allowed to discover, create, and mature. Each home, each family looks different, but at the end of the day, we all want our families to feel secure within the four walls that our love has built.

Our children are only young for a short time; we have but a few precious years to prepare them for the world ahead. Choose your methods wisely, investing yourself and your time so that one day, when they’ve grown, they will often have the yearning “to be home for a while.”

Joesette Huffman is a dynamic speaker, blogger, wife and homeschooling mother of two. She is is active both in the online homeschooling world and in her local homeschool community and church, as well as a volleyball coach and co-op leader. You can find her weekly at Learning Curve.