The Convivial Homeschool: Gospel Encouragement for Keeping Your Sanity While Living and Learning Alongside Your Kids

By Mystie Winckler

Thirty daily readings to build up your confidence and cheerfulness as you homeschool.

Homeschool days can be long and hard. It's easy to lose sight of what's actually happening in the midst of the day to day. Even when we lose our vision, God does not lose His. While we attempt to teach and disciple o

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simplified Organization LLC
• Release date: Nov 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781737451716

Mystie Winckler

Mystie and her husband Matt live in Moscow, Idaho, and have five children, including two adult sons and three kids they still homeschool. Mystie is the author of The Convivial Homeschool and maintains SimplyConvivial.com. With her blog, podcasts, and private community, Mystie encourages moms to tackle their responsibilities with joy by reminding them to repent, rejoice, repeat.

Book preview

Praise for

The Convivial Homeschool

For the many years I have known Mystie, I have seen her diligently and daily seek first God’s kingdom while meeting the challenges of homeschooling her children. Her faithfulness over the long haul has equipped her to encourage moms in duty, diligence, and joy. This volume is a wonderful resource of wisdom for moms everywhere who struggle and wonder if they are doing enough.

Cindy Rollins, author of Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love and Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, and My Journey toward Sanctification

With humility, dry wit, and wisdom, Mystie Winckler lays a feast of homeschool encouragement that is biblically based and meaty. Skip the fluff and go right to the good stuff.

Pam Barnhill, host of the Ten Minutes to a Better Homeschool and Your Morning Basket podcasts

Mystie Winckler has the heart of a homeschooling mom, and she is generous with it. You’ll probably wince in sympathy a time or two when you realize you’ve had the same experiences she describes, but these short chapters will give you food for thought and fresh insight. This book will help you keep your eyes on the things that matter most, which is exactly what a homeschool mom needs to stay the course on this long journey.

Karen Glass, author of In Vital Harmony

God doesn’t just want to inform your kids through homeschooling. He wants to transform them. And what’s more, He wants to do the same for you. In her debut book, Mystie Winckler seeks to recalibrate your heart and mind toward the good work God is doing in and through you. As a home educator, you’ll be encouraged and equipped to continue on in obedience but also to enjoy the journey along the way.

Jamie Erickson, author of Homeschool Bravely: How to Squash Doubt, Trust God, and Teach Your Child with Confidence and cohost of the Mom to Mom Podcast

The Convivial Homeschool: Gospel Encouragement for Keeping Your Sanity

While Living and Learning Alongside Your Kids

Copyright 2021 by Mystie Winckler

All rights reserved.

To request permissions, contact [e-mail].

Paperback: 978-1-7374517-0-9

Audiobook: 978-1-7374517-2-3

Ebook: 978-1-7374517-1-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021917755

First paperback edition: November 2021

Edited by Harmony Harkema

Cover art and layout by Melinda Martin

Photographs by Jordan Edens Photography

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016.

To Ilse and Geneva:

You’ll thank me

when you’re thirty.

Get the accompanying guide

Three Steps to a Convivial Homeschool Day

free at

simplyconvivial.com/3steps

Contents

Foreword by Sarah Mackenzie

Introduction

Part 1: Guilt

1. Ideals

2. Intention

3. Goals

4. Sin

5. Guilt

6. Personality

7. Fear

8. Tantrums

9. Conviviality

10. Repentance

Part 2: Grace

11. Gospel

12. Grace

13. Resistance

14. Rest

15. Maturity

16. Accountability

17. Curriculum

18. Temptation

19. Encouragement

20. Fellowship

Part 3: Gratitude

21. Gratitude

22. Virtue

23. Peace

24. Patience

25. Kindness

26. Gentleness

27. Faithfulness

28. Self-Control

29. Discipleship

30. Love

Appendix: Guilt, Grace, Gratitude

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Foreword

I am a naturally positive and upbeat person, yet nothing has challenged my optimism quite like the day-to-day business of homeschooling a band of children. Tending to the daily tasks of raising and teaching children over days and weeks and seasons and years has tested my mettle and caused me to doubt that I’m really cut out to homeschool my six kids.

I met Mystie just before my twins were born. I was overwhelmed (to say the least) by the tasks of mothering and homeschooling my older children while also keeping house, preparing meals, and caring for my little ones. Mystie modeled a commitment to being a cheerful beacon of light in her own home, regardless of her circumstances. That model and her friendship proved to be a steadying ballast for me.

When I wondered if I was cut out for homeschooling at all, when I worried I wasn’t doing a good enough job at it, when I doubted that any of my endless mother-work mattered, I needed someone to remind me of the truth.

The truth that my home ought to be, at least sometimes, a small foretaste of heaven. That such a merry, festive atmosphere in the home always starts with me. And that a convivial home—one that is cheerful, bright, and pleasant—is about serving with God’s perfect love, not carrying out a perfect plan.

Home education doesn’t make promises. But it does offer something equally rewarding—a tremendous opportunity to grow, connect, and build deep and meaningful relationships. It’s our privilege and honor to do all of these things in a convivial home. Such a home is a foretaste of heaven, indeed.

Right here, right now, I invite you to be merry, to live fully, and to love well. To create a convivial home of your own. And to read this book as a whisper in your ear, reminding you of what’s true and good.

The work you are doing in your homeschool matters.

—Sarah Mackenzie

Author of Teaching from Rest and The Read-Aloud Family

Introduction

It doesn’t take long in the homeschooling gig to find yourself feeling overwhelmed, tired, defeated, and failing. We had visions of creating a home where everyone loves to read and learn, speaks with kindness, and does their work without complaining. It turns out our kids never seem to get with that program. Worse still, we find that the program is actually for us as moms, and we daily fall far short of our high hopes and dreams.

It’s as if we’ve been on a bus all our lives. We’re reading our newspapers, staring out the windows, checking out the haircuts of the passengers around us, and bumping along pleasantly. We arrive where the ticket said we were going to go, so we get off. It might be different than we expected, but we’ve made it, so we shrug and move on. That’s college graduation for many of us.

Then we decide to homeschool. Instead of putting our children on the bus (metaphorically as well as literally), we decide to buy a minivan and drive them around ourselves. After all, we’ve been down the road before, so surely we’ll be able to get to where we want to go, even though we’ve never driven before, and even though we actually want to end up someplace different.

At first, it seems easy enough. Driving isn’t too hard, really. Then there’s a four-way stop, and we don’t know whether to turn right or left or go straight. Then we realize we’re about to run out of gas, and we don’t know where to fuel up. Then the brakes start squeaking, and so do the passengers.

Then there are speed bumps and roads under construction. Ack! The weather turns cloudy and rainy, and the sun hides. We have no map, no GPS, and no idea how long it’s supposed to take. Wait—did we even know where we were going in the first place?

Sometimes homeschooling feels like this, and it’s not just about knowing the destination. The fact is, we’re now driving when we’ve only ever been bored passengers before. To drive the car is completely different from hitching a ride. When was driver’s ed, and how did we miss it?

When we take on the responsibility of being in the driver’s seat of our children’s education, we fall prey to many new temptations and traps. Actually, they aren’t so new. They’ve been around since the first family: the temptation to doubt that God’s Word is good, to add our own commands and promises as if they were God’s, to compare and envy, to isolate and build our own little kingdoms.

We’re generally caught in the trap of these temptations because we are trying to find our own ways to wisdom and perfection rather than submit to God’s way, which is long and difficult, requiring faith and trust rather than sight and formula. God’s way to perfection is through sanctification in this life. Perfection won’t come until Jesus returns.

Sanctification means giving up our self-defined paths to success and submitting instead to God’s path. Sanctification means accepting God’s provision, not relying on our own ability. Sanctification means growing in the fruits of the Holy Spirit as we’re rooted more and more firmly in Christ through His Word. Sanctification is God’s will for our lives, and He uses everything in our lives to do that work in us.

Too often, we begin homeschooling thinking of it as our good work that we will present to God. When we realize that all our good works, including our efforts and education, are nothing but filthy rags, we’re tempted to despair and give up. However, discovering truth is all part of God’s goodness and grace.

Homeschooling becomes, by the Spirit’s work in our lives, a good work He is doing in us rather than one we are doing. In the end, we will thank Him for bringing us to the end of our rope and then restoring us. He is not going to be thanking us for a job well done. We will be thanking Him, with our children, to the praise of His glory.

Each of the thirty chapters in this book is meant to provide a ten-minutes-or-less reorientation of our hearts and minds so we can shift our focus from what we are accomplishing to what God is accomplishing. Thirty days make a month of readings or a term of school days or nearly a school year if you read one chapter a week.

You can find a free reading guide to use yourself or with a group for all three of these schedule options at ConvivialHomeschool.com. It is my hope and prayer that in reading and meditating on these chapters, you will rest assured in the triumph of the gospel in your life, in your home, and in the world, not because you or I have it figured out and can make it happen but because God is making it happen both despite us and through us.

It’s okay that we aren’t amazing, because God is, and so is His grace to us. The more we recognize our dependence on and assurance in Christ, the more we can walk in humble confidence, knowing He is enough so that we don’t have to be.

In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Ephesians 1:13–14

Part 1

Guilt

Not what my hands have done

can save my guilty soul;

not what my toiling flesh has borne

can make my spirit whole.

Not what I feel or do

can give me peace with God;

not all my prayers and sighs and tears

can bear my awful load.

Thy work alone, O Christ,

can ease this weight of sin;

thy blood alone, O Lamb of God,

can give me peace within.

Thy love to me, O God,

not mine, O Lord, to thee,

can rid me of this dark unrest,

and set my spirit free.

Horatius Bonar, 1861

1

Ideals

Sometimes, chasing your dreams can be easier than just being who we are, where God has placed you, with the gifts he has given to you.

Michael Horton, Ordinary

My husband and I were not originally planning to homeschool. After being homeschooled in the eighties and nineties, back when there were only three curricula to pick from, we thought homeschooling had left us with a lot of undeveloped potential. We were also twenty and overconfident. The school we tried to start didn’t make it past year one, so with my first newborn cuddled close, I started researching how to homeschool better.

My parents never said they had done the best job, only the best they could. When I was a discontented twelve-year-old, venting some complaint about what I would and would not do as a parent, my dad told me that he fully expected me to parent better, not because I was better but because that’s how God works. He became a Christian in high school and was building a family life he’d never experienced. I was supposed to receive what I’d been given and take it the next step, just as he had.

As my oldest son turned four, I applied an important lesson I had learned from my dad and checked out five library books on the topic that would be my new hobby: education. Then I checked out five more. Then I bought a few. I

Reviews for The Convivial Homeschool

[Amy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Mystie’s encouraging words hit their mark from the very beginning of this book!