My daughter was born singing. My son was born tapping. Ok, that is a bit of an exaggeration as they were not literally singing from day one, but truly from the earliest of ages beautiful music have been coming out of my daughter’s mouth and my son has been playing a beat on everything thing he comes into contact with. While they wash dishes, while they play sports, and while they do just about anything, there always is a song on her lips and a rhythm on his mind being played out on anything he can bang away on. There is a 24 hour a day musical performance of some sort going on everywhere they go.
As neither my wife nor I are musical, we realized early on that this desire and ability to make a joyful noise came from God. Not in a bragging way, just us acknowledging that since we can’t sing off key much less on and we can’t sing and clap at the same time, our then small children singing beautifully and keeping a complex drum pattern with relative ease had to be something that was not from us. It made us grateful and awestruck that it is God that gives gifts and talents and not just genetics.
The thing is, though, the 24/7 conga line in our house does not stop. Each day for the hours while school is in session they do not suddenly turn off the songs and beats so that there is a “work atmosphere”. Walking through the house during an average day, I will hear one child working on math and singing along with Lauren Daigle at the top of her lungs in one room while the other child is doing a history assignment tapping away or with a guitar in his lap. Sometimes they are in the same room with headphones on blissfully unaware that they are singing over each other as they work.
Each of them continue throughout the day to express and enjoy the gifts that God gave them while doing the work that school requires to the best of their ability. And we get to hear and enjoy it as well. Though we have to ask them to lower volume at times, it is a blessing to hear songs of worship sounding out through the house throughout much of the school day.
If we had them in school, public or private, this would just never happen. First, they would just not be home most of the the day to hear. But also, due to understandable class room issues for the teachers at school, they could never be allowed to work on their assignments while singing or playing a musical instrument with a class of 30 other students. It would disrupt the class for everyone involved and nothing would get done. God’s gifting conflicted with the requirements of effective class room teaching. They may study music for a period a day or sometime during the week, but otherwise they would be required to be quiet and still for most of their daily lives, silencing the songs and stopping the beat that God put in their hearts.
That would be a great loss for our family as their music has added so much joy and melody to our lives.
As they have gotten older and their musical talents have become more refined in addition to our families enjoyment, the fullness of God’s plan with them also became more apparent. When He called us to plant a church, though we started off planning with a calling and….a calling, that was about it — we quickly realized that at very least we had a percussionist and a vocalist ready to lead worship, if necessary. He had shaped us into the Christian Von Trapp family, ready to go and plant a church at a moments notice and we did not even realize it. While God was shaping me and preparing me to teach His Word, He also had given them gifts and had prepared them over the years for the time that they would be used for His glory. They now both use their talents to serve the Lord in worship each week.
We were able to follow God’s path as He was laying it out for us because we had the freedom to do so at home, even though we did not understand it all at the time. Music was not at all part of our decision to homeschool and it is only now, years later that we see the benefit and see the downside we avoided.
It is just one simple example of why we love homeschool and the freedom it provides.
As I always say when discussing schooling, both here and in person, God leads people differently on this issue so wherever He has you and your kids that is awesome. There are pros and cons in everything. We are just happy with our choice and the fruit and want to pass on our experience.
