Rachel Starr Thomson
Graduated: June 2001
In a Separate Place: Homeschooling’s Greatest Gift
by Rachel Thomson
I was six years old when my parents decided that homeschooling was the way to go. I’d attended kindergarten at a Christian school and it hadn’t been an especially uplifting experience (my clearest memories are of missing the bus and playing with McDonald’s toys under a picnic table during recess). I was enjoying the freedom of summer vacation when my Dad picked me up, set me on his lap, and said, “You’re not going to go to school any more.”
That was fine with me. After all, I was six years old, and I had better things to do with my time than miss buses and sit under picnic tables. Thus unwittingly I set out on the greatest adventure of my life–life itself, homeschool style.
What has it meant to me to be homeschooled?
It has meant that life was full of wonder. When the neighbour kids were in school, I was out wandering in our northern Canadian backyard, listening to the trees talk to each other, following animal tracks in the snow, watching a great blue heron dip and soar over the pond. While other children learned about rain from textbooks, I looked out the car window in the Smoky Mountains and saw the thunderheads building; I smelled the rain coming, felt it in the air, and stood on the top of a cliff with rainclouds beneath my feet and purple lightning flashing above me. I learned about stars and planets and galaxies by the side of the road in the middle of the night, when Dad had pulled the car over because Orion could be seen so clearly we just had to get out and look.
It has meant security. While the pressures and demands of school increasingly fragmented the lives of my friends’ families, my parents and siblings and I lived life all jumbled up together. We worked together, prayed together, sang together.
It has meant freedom to be who God made me to be. I was writing novels when my friends were too busy diagramming sentences to know how to use them–lost in the trees but unable to see the forest. Without the dubious influence of peer pressure, I’ve discovered that I like Old English folk songs better than pop music, that femininity is nothing to be ashamed of, that I am unlike anyone else in the world and that it should be so.
I graduated from highschool in June 2001 in a little church in the Californian desert. My parents gave me a certificate for completing highschool and another one “For Trying Hard.” Nearly one hundred friends came, representing many tribes and nations, and they blessed me. They prayed for me, they sang for me, they reminded me of God’s calling on my life.
In remembering that day, I remember anew the greatest blessing homeschooling gave to me, and it is this:
I was fourteen when God reached down and touched me. The Saviour I had always believed in called me to move beyond salvation and follow Him. At the time, most of my peers were struggling against a bog–in Christianese we call it “the world”–that sucked them down with hundreds of tiny concerns and cares, until they couldn’t hear God for the world’s buzzing. Like me, they were Christians who had grown up in Christian homes. But they lived in a hostile environment where a thousand voices jabbered at them.
This wasn’t the case for me. I wasn’t immune to the world’s influence, of course not. But when God’s voice spoke, it was as though I was standing on a mountaintop while my peers were trapped in the mire. Homeschooling had set me apart. It had given me a foundation. It had shown me the difference between the temporal and the eternal, so that when the Eternal called, it was not hard to choose it.
My friend Mark Arndt, who like me has been homeschooled most of his life, says “Homeschooling is an advantage. But what good is a headstart if you’re not going to run the race?” I realize that being homeschooled is not something to be proud of, but something to be thankful for. I will always be grateful for the headstart homeschooling gave me. One day I hope to give the same to my children. When God calls them, I want them to be out where they can hear.
This morning I worked with some of my younger sisters and brothers (I have eleven), teaching them to read and write. Earlier in the day I spent an hour with my Bible and a notebook. As I serve others and follow God, I am daily more aware of the foundation homeschooling gave me. Scripture awakens my sense of wonder. The Holy Spirit continues to make me into the woman God intended me to be. The security of love and family still enfolds me, and all aspects of my life are “all jumbled up” together under the Lordship of Christ. I love to learn and I love to understand. All of these things are tremendous assets to me–not just as a former homeschooler, not just a young woman, but as a Christian.
For this I am truly thankful.
