After our son started high school we began to have some concerns about the influence some of the kids were having on him. I have several friends that home school, but we had never felt that that was the direction that we were supposed to go with our kids. After we started seeing that some girls were aggressively pursuing our son, we acted quickly and pulled him out to home school him. At that point we had tried several things and didn’t see anything changing, we saw it as the only option to keep our son’s heart.
The next several months were difficult for both me and our son. He was really craving time with friends and the home school effort took a lot of our time and energy. Throughout the whole time we home schooled, we were praying about a better option for him. I remember, very clearly, a conversation with a friend in California where she encouraged me to look into a Christian school in the area. I told her that we couldn’t afford to send him to a private school, but she let me know that most private schools have discounts and financial aid. My husband and I began praying about this option and came up with a figure that we felt we could afford each month. I called the school and gave them our financial information and, as God would have it, they gave us a price of the exact amount that we felt we could afford.
The next hurdle would be for us all to agree that this was the next step for schooling for our son. I was the only one convinced that we should move in this direction. They had an Open House one day, my hope was that we could all attend, but I went alone. After the Open House I was really impressed with the administration, faculty, staff, and students, and even more convinced that this was where God wanted our son. I called my husband and he brought our son to the tail end of the Open House. I was praying the whole time they were there that if God wanted him to attend, they both would really like it. They came away liking it, but not completely convinced that he should attend there.
Once again, I was brought to my knees in prayer. Ultimately I wanted what God wanted, so I laid it before Him, asking that He bring us all to an agreement on the path that He desired. My husband felt strongly that we shouldn’t force our son to go somewhere that he didn’t want to go, so he ended up asking him to pray about it and let us know where he felt God wanted him to go. I was so convinced that the Christian school was the way to go, that my first response to this was fear. I feared that our son would choose to go back to his old school and that he would once again be negatively influenced by his peers.
As I took this before the Lord, with His mighty power, He turned my heart around. It took several hours of prayer, I was stubbornly holding on to my position. What God told me was that I could trust Him with our son at the old school and I could trust Him with our son at the Christian school. He asked me to let it go and let my husband lead. As hard as that was, I left our prayer room that afternoon and told my husband I was 100% behind him and that I was trusting God with our son and with whatever the final decision was.
Well, as I thought, our son chose to go back to his old school. He said he prayed about it, I’m not sure I trust his “listening to God” skills at this young age. But, God gave me the ability to trust Him completely. I was sad, but knew that I could trust God with my son wherever he went to school. The next morning, one day before we had to make the final decision, my husband woke up and told me that he felt strongly that Reagan should go to the Christian school. We discussed our dilemma and decided together that it was best if we tell him that we were sorry, we had changed our minds and were going to make the decision for him to have him go to the Christian school.
The following day I called the school and committed to have him attend there. Within days they were requesting that he start coming to basketball practice even before the semester started. He agreed and immediately felt a part of the team and a part of the school. The students accepted him and loved him so quickly. By the second day of school my husband asked our son “If you could go back to your old school now, would you?”. His response, “No way”. To this day, he is so thankful, as are we, that God led us in that direction.
In the middle of tough decisions or hard circumstances, it is so hard to not try to control things and make them go the way that we want them to. It is so hard to just lay it all at Jesus’ feet and trust Him alone. It is stories like this that remind me to do that over and over again. Growing up I always heard “God has a plan for your life”, but until I lived faith building moments like this one, I didn’t fully understand what that meant. His plan is so much better than anything that I can ever dream up for myself or my family.
Jill Johnson 
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