{photos by Ethan Hall}

Here we go…. setting out on another year of schooling. Preparations at our house just got bumped into super-speed mode. Due to scheduling changes in two of my older children’s work on a local farm’s butchering crew, we are having to start school a week earlier than we had planned. (Hopefully you can’t hear the panic in my voice as I say that.)

There are all the typical considerations: scheduling our days, deciding what should happen when, figuring out how and when we are going to get meals on the table, figuring out who is coming and going and at what times of day, loading software on the computers, (are the computers even functioning?), gathering all the books and putting them in place, getting enough pencils and notebooks, and cleaning up all the work spaces. Underlying all these practical considerations is the sinking feeling of “Can we even DO this?” I mean, it’s just little old me against nine months of five children needing to be educated, and three children who are too young yet to be educated but who will be in the middle of it all. Not an unfamiliar feeling, this being my thirteenth year of setting out on this journey. You would think by now I would not even get that feeling. But, truth be told, it’s the same every year.

In the midst of all this, God gave me some unexpected encouragement. I thought I’d share it with you, because I suspect I am not alone.

It happened while I was changing a diaper.  I heard my husband’s voice from the kitchen, and he wasn’t even talking to me. He was talking to one of the children. I don’t know the context of the conversation. I asked him later what the context was, and he said he really couldn’t remember. Here is what I heard him say: “You know, when the Israelites were in the wilderness for forty years, their sandals never wore out.” Just like that, I heard something that I am going to hold on to this coming school year.

Deuteronomy 29:5 (ESV) “I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet.”

Sometimes on this homeschool journey, my sandals get pretty worn. But they have never worn out. God has kept these sandals going for twelve school years thus far.  I serve the same God who literally preserved the Israelites’ sandals for forty years. So, actually, it’s not just little old me after all. It’s me, God, and these “sandals”…… for another year.♥