Kimm Crandall was the perfect homeschooling mom: she had her curriculum chosen carefully, her children lined up quietly and obediently in the church pew, and her home-ground wheat bread delivered piping hot from her oven.
She was doing everything “right”. Still, God seemed angry with her, and she felt as if nothing she did would make Him happy with her. As she polished up the outside, she was dying slowly on the inside, bound up by her own good works and suffocating under the lack of grace within the homeschooling community she was a part of.
It’s an important and tender interview, peppered with humor and self-effacing realism. But the beautiful truth here is that Kimm boldly and bravely points us back to the Jesus, the only One who redeems every mess, every moment, and every bit of chaos.
Episode Timeline
3:50 Introduction to the podcast
15:06 Studio Discussion Part 1 – When homeschooling turns from blessing to burden
22:20 Interview with Kimm Crandall, Part 1 – From normalcy to chaos
34:38 Interview with Kimm Crandall, Part 2 – Finding Christ in the chaos
48:12 WrapUp.
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Goooood stuff. Enjoyed the honesty and truth in what Kim had to say.
On a total random side note, one of my boys heard you mention Mighty Joe in the opening (while talking about waterbeds), “Oh these are Mighty Joe’s parents?!?” We have followed Kendra and Preschoolers & Peace for a loooooong time.
Thanks for sticking around, Shannon. God has indeed done mighty things!
I listened to your podcast last night. It was very refreshing! I am always relieved when I’m pointed back to Christ’s righteousness and not my own. There was something you said (in passing) that has bothered me all day. You said that, “Homeschoolers are weird.” Really? That seems like quite a broad brush. “Weird” homeschoolers have been the exception and not the rule in my experience. I’m sure you didn’t mean to put homeschoolers down, but that is what it felt like to me. This road is hard enough as it is. Other than that, I loved the program. You are entertaining and good at pointing us back to the work of Christ.
Hi Renee-
Glad you found the podcast!
Sorry our comment rubbed you the wrong way. It sounds from your email that you’re a brand new listener to HomeschoolingIRL, and so it might be helpful to know that we’ve been homeschooling our own 8 kids since 1997, so if homeschoolers are weird, we’re in that category ourselves. We wrote a blog post on the topic recently, too, and it might help you to understand where we’re actually coming from:
http://www.homeschoolingirl.com/blog/homeschoolers-are-so-weird
We’ll be covering this topic in an upcoming episode, and we hope you’ll weigh in!
Kendra