All of Us Learning Together
Every year I am impressed with the homeschool families I meet through the annual production of the Homeschool Dramatic Society. Every year the play comes together by God’s grace and by the hard work of Mary Evelyn and a passel of actors, actresses, their families, and backstage workers, which always include former HDS members who have graduated from high school and still want to be connected with the play. We had wonderful matinee and evening performances yesterday. Today we repeat that, and tomorrow night we do it one more time. Then on Sunday morning, Ray and I leave for church, packed and ready for our big adventure. After Ray preaches, we plan to point our car northward (off the Interstate as usual) and spend the first night of our big adventure in Madisonville, Kentucky.
At some point each year, Mary Evelyn and I pose for our director/assistant director picture. Here we are in 2015 when the play was a story about Jesus called Touched by the King. Back then Mary Evelyn was still performing in them herself.
And now for 2025:
I assume that this year will be like every other year. Most of us will be happy and sad at the same time, happy that it’s over, sad that it’s over (especially the seniors and their parents), and looking forward to next year. All of us will know more about what it was like to travel on the Oregon Trail. We will have a better understanding of what it was like to be a human being and for a human being to trust God in happy times and sad times. The song lyrics will be playing in our ears.
We have learned as we have sat down and walked along the road with our fellow HDS folks. I am deeply grateful to have been able to do this with our daughter Mary Evelyn for the past 26 years and now with all of her children. In between practices and performances, we have lay down and risen up with each other. God is kind to let us share life in the present with others and to learn about life in the past through a plethora of experiences. This is a wonderful way to learn and a picture of the learning God described in Deuteronomy. I hope every family will remember this experience and learn from it new ways to educate their children at home and along the way.
You shall therefore impress these words of mine
on your heart and on your soul;
and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand,
and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.
You shall teach them to your sons,
talking of them when you sit in your house
and when you walk along the road
and when you lie down
and when you rise up.
Deuteronomy 11:18-19