Parenthood is full of adventures; our latest excursion is exploring the world of education. We knew when we moved away from Cookeville, this decision of how to educate our children suddenly became more complicated. Without the familiarity of our lifelong surroundings, we re-evaluated our plan. I will honestly say that we did not have much of a plan to begin with, but we were comfortable with our kids going to public school since we had attended and graduated from public school in this rural community. Now the deck of cards had changed. We were in the city, and we were leery to say the least. Suddenly crime rate, morality, liberalism, materialism, and quality of education appeared to be in jeopardy. We were comfortable before and saw no need to be alarmed by any of these issues. After much prayer and looking at our options, we ended up moving to one of the more wealthy parts of Nashville, since the general feedback I received from internet search engines and talking to a few local residents were that they had the best public schools. This reassured me, briefly.
After the holidays passed, my daughter’s kindergarten registration was again in the horizon. As I prayed about the situation, I felt that God did not want me to just ask other families what they were doing. He was calling me and my husband to search scriptures, take tours, read books, and study our children. God has been forcing us to focus on what we want our family to look like, from the inside out, and analyze how a child’s educational experience shapes their spiritual, emotional, and physical self. After all, if we roam through parenting without strong and focused intentions, what will we produce? Mature Christian leaders? Maybe. Probably not. I am going to lay this out in multiple posts over the next several weeks. This is mainly because we are still in the middle of discerning His will for us, but also to break down the process in hopes of helping other parents as they embark down this road. This is an individual journey, and I trust that God will lead us all down different paths. However, I am convinced that He desires all parents to walk hand in hand with Him.
