One day we asked the Holy Spirit, through the usual method, if we should home school Kristina. He said Yes. We discovered that our academy, which we had formed three years ago when I had first moved to Indiana, and had attempted home schooling with Kristina, was still active. Eva, now no longer in the workforce, could devote her time to working with Kristina, one on one, with patience that I never could seem to muster. Eva was excited to prepare for Kristina's new educational procedures in which school was out at 2:00 and there would be no homework. I would even get to teach her spiritual enrichment class and music (which I did feel I have patience with).

Eva spent some time getting her lesson planning book created and obtaining the books and workbooks needed for the classroom we would be setting up in our home. We prayed about when we should remove Kristina from the school. We asked God if that should be done in two weeks. Yes. So Eva wrote an official letter notifying the principal that Kristina would be removed in two weeks so that we could home school Kristina. I delivered it the next morning.

That evening was our singing time at the assisted living center. We poured our hearts and souls out to those wonderful saints (as we did every week), singing the old anointed favorite hymns they've come to love all their lives. When we got home, we discovered that Kristina still had MUCH homework to do even though we had started on it just after school. I looked at the clock. It was 9:25 PM. If we were lucky, we'd be done with all the writing assignments by 11:00 or 11:30 PM. Then Kristina accidentally cut herself under one of her fingernails and couldn't write. I took the writing assignments and began to write for her, explaining in a note to the teacher why I was writing. Kristina was very tired, as well. She couldn't really remember much of the Native American legend of how the porcupine got its quills. I went ahead and wrote the answers as I thought she would (if she could). It wasn't really honest but what could I do? Kristina offered to read what I had written so she could tell her teacher that she dictated it to me. This was getting way out of hand.

The last question on the worksheet was the straw that broke the camel's back. "Please write a story," the teacher said, "on how the goldfish became gold. Use whole sentences and watch your punctuation." This was a major writing assignment! We just couldn't do it. Eva and I began to have a heated discussion and Kristina felt broken and defeated. We all did, actually.

We decided we needed to withdraw Kristina from school the next day. Why, then, did the Lord approve a letter that "officially" gave her departing date as in two weeks? We did not understand God's answer. He knew we would be perplexed and defeated by the homework that night. The next morning our discussion continued, as we made plans for Kristina to attend school one last time and have breakfast there with her friends and say goodbye to them.

Sitting on our bed, Eva asked the Lord if she could write a note letting the teacher know that many children might be disillusioned with learning, if they are continually buried in tons of homework. Learning would cease to be fun. Lord, she asked, may I tell her this? No, He said.

We got Kristina off in the school bus (for the last time) and shortly I began to get ready to pick Kristina up after her farewell breakfast with the other kids in her class. I asked the Lord if I could tell the principal what was going on with Kristina's teacher and why we were removing her so soon, after we had said it would be two weeks. He said No. (I submitted to His decision, as Eva had hers, though we didn't know why He was unwilling for us to tell the facts, as we understood them, and help this teacher, in some small way, understand the damage she was doing.) At the school I told the principal that we'd discovered all our ducks were in order to begin our home schooling NOW. I told her that I'd made a call to the superintendent of the school system and there was no need to wait. She kindly said, "Please feel free to bring Kristina back anytime. We will miss her."

Why, oh, why did the Lord have us write a formal letter in which we gave a two week notice before we would remove Kristina from the school, when we would actually be removing her the next day?

Truthfully, I don't know. The reason we rely on God in this way is because we don't know anything. I have no choice, if I were honest with myself, because this world presents too many choices and, even though it may appear obvious which choice should be made, God's choice for us may not be one of the options we even think about. We are so used to having to take care of ourselves, we don't really give much credence to God and His ability to come out of our dream of Him being unavailable to us, even as He wraps His loving arms around us and gives us wisdom not of this world, when we pray.

No, I don't really know why He set us up with such a test in which we had to come face to face with our apparent failure to keep to Kristina's proposed departure in two weeks. But remember when Eva asked the Lord if she could tell the teacher why we felt she was failing Kristina? And remember that I, too, was going to tell the principal a little of why we were pulling Kristina out earlier than expected? When each of us asked the Lord if we should pass judgment, God said No both times. We both submitted to His message through the prayerful coin flips and did not come down on the teacher, who was probably doing the best she could under conditions not favorable for her.

Nature of God: I remain ignorant to the reason God has us do things. But I do know He wants us to trust Him—and I know He wants us to stop being critical of each other and pray for others instead. In fact, my heart leapt for joy when it occurred to me that if we hadn't had been boxed into a corner and felt the need to defend ourselves and share our motivations for taking Kristina out early, we would never have been tempted to lay a judgment in order to save face. In that temptation, though, we asked the Lord if He felt we were justified in laying the cards on the table and condemning the actions of this teacher. He said No. As Jesus went to the cross for each of us, dying for our sins, so, too, must we each pick up our crosses and pray for one another instead of criticizing (or judging) one another. There is no other justice we should wish on other people other than they come to know the salvation given to each of us from the cross.

By our willingness to swallow our pride and not give the teacher a piece of our mind, I believe we passed OUR tests.

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