One decade ago, Chinese Guan Tianlang shocked the world when he made the cut at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia. Why? He was only fourteen years old. Sadly, all the prodigious prophecies that were made about him never materialized. He is presently ranked 2,883 in the world and has never made the PGA circuit.
As in golf, some homeschoolers seem to have the stars fall on them when they are young. We parents ooh and aah over homeschoolers who do these great works, especially when we look over at our child who is in the corner picking his nose. While we genuinely want to celebrate these stories, their ending is often not near as grand as the beginning. It is such a temptation for us homeschooling parents to get fixated on the teen and early twenties, thinking this season tells the full story of our homeschooling success … or failures. Life, however, is much more than this season.
Of course, Joshua Harris comes to mind immediately. He wrote the highly successful I Kissed Dating Goodbye in his early twenties, giving an apologia for one of the varied models of courtship, especially when compared to the brokenness of the dating model. That was twenty years ago. As you probably know, he and his wife are now divorced, and he no longer considers himself a Christian.
What do we learn from this?
- Success or failure cannot be claimed in the first twenty-five years of life. There is no end to the examples of sports figures—and homeschoolers—who had great potential early on but ultimately crashed and burned in the important areas of life.
- Any early victories we experience should be laid at Christ’s feet as recognition of His grace and mercy, causing us to walk in absolute humility instead of any arrogance.
- Life is a marathon not a sprint. We need to pace ourselves and never think that past success guarantees future success.
- We should never get discouraged if our children are slow out of the gate. Our children’s spiritual and emotional growth must never come in second behind their vocational promotion, financial growth, or worldly recognition.
What are some practical things that we parents can do to better ensure that our children do not become a statistic in their thirties or forties but continue to become more like Christ every day for the rest of their lives?
- We must continue to put in as good of an effort into our latter years as we did in our early years as parents. Although our involvement will necessarily change, we must always keep a pulse on our children and speak into their lives at the proper time and always with grace.
- We must pay the price when our children are young to explain why things work like they work. We must not get lazy and tell them, “Just because,” but be grateful for every opportunity to point our children to Jesus Christ and how He created the world and everything in it to run according to His word.
- We cannot get caught up with the appearance of the outside of the cup but must always be aware of what the cup looks like on the inside. Our children may do the right thing but only as it serves their personal interest. They may do the right thing when parents are around but act completely different when their parents are absent. We must not be naïve.
- We must continually be aware of their cultural inputs, including friends (physical and digital), social media consumption, music and media, etc.
- We must continue to preach to them the subtle power of incrementalism. We either add value to ourselves and to God’s kingdom a little bit each day or become a little bit more like the world.
- We must remind them how Adam and Eve’s fall distorts everything we see.
- We must continue to grow in our own lives, living as an example to the next generation.
- We must pray, pray, pray, and pray.
Ecclesiastes reminds us that the race is not always won by the swiftest (Ecc. 9:11) but to the one who continues to put one foot in front of the other, every day for the rest of their lives. (Matt. 24:13) While we can celebrate prodigious beginnings, may we live for faithfulness at the end.
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