Beginning our Charlotte Mason Homeschool Journey

I absolutely love this picture of my beautiful son.  It just shows his love of books and as a mom, that sparks my imagination for his future.  Loving books and reading is the foundation of a successful education, and that opens up so many opportunities for a successful life.  

My son, now almost 11 yrs old, has always loved to read. I read to him while I was pregnant, and every day since he's been born until he could read on his own..... which wasn't too many years.  (He was reading sight words at 3 and full books by age 4. By age 6, he was into small chapter books and no longer wanted to wait around for me to read out loud to him.  He could read much faster on his own... )

While my son does have a list of difficulties when it comes to school work, or life in general (See my older post "Joshua Naphtali"), reading has never been a problem.  As I begin to look forward to this coming homeschool year, he'll be starting 6th grade work in most areas, while I will encourage him to choose his literature from the upper middle school level.

In the end of our homeschooling journey, I would like to see my son love and appreciate his education and life just as he loves books currently.  I want him to see the endless possibilities in his future when he has that good foundation of a quality education.  I want him fully prepared for college in all areas, educationally, socially, financially.
Socially, I want him to appreciate and respect others with Jesus as his example, regardless of his personal opinions of them or theirs of him.  I want him to value relationships above common interests, and see that no true friendship is "all or nothing"; that all people are different and will  have differences at times.  I want him to appreciate the differences in others and never lose his love of learning.  I want my son to see God in everything, and to seek God in every area as he begins to take his own life forward. I want him to love God with all his heart, soul, and mind.
Emotionally, I want him to be comfortable with how God made him and respectful of how God made others.
I want him to pursue his interests and make positive contributions to society.  I also want him to be able to manage his own household - cooking, cleaning, laundry, finances, etc.
In essence, I want him to be a well rounded, loving, respectful, individual who is a positive contributing member of society.  I desire for him to have his priorities in line with God's word in his entire life: God first, others second, self third.  This would mean seeking God in every area of life, and humbling himself before God.  I ultimately want my son to see that God gave him all his grand ideas and passions and interests, but they were given to him to serve and glorify God, not himself.  I want him to pursue his passions, but with God as his focus rather than worldly things like fame or money.   I want him to see that with God, all things are possible, and without God, he can do nothing.

Does time heal?

Does time truly heal all wounds? Or is it the experiences we have as time passes that heals?
I believe God works on His own time schedule and it's so vastly different than ours that we can not even begin to comprehend it. The book of Isaiah tells us that God's ways are higher than ours, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. 

I once heard a preacher speak of God's time like a wheel within a wheel, where the two circles are connected by multiple bars. The places where the bars connect with either circle represent events in our life, and the wheel is constantly rolling. As the wheel rolls, the outer circle moves are a slower pace than the inner one, but the bars connecting them are stationary. I'm not really giving this illustration justice, but my point is simply that we look at time as a chronological time line of events - a horizontal line could easily be drawn and marked with dates and events.  That makes sense to us. But God sees infinity. He sees the infinite past - even before He created the world - and He sees the infinite future. He sees it all at the same time.