The spring morning brought with it the usual routine in our house. Our remodeled attic room became a hectic haven of lessons and paperwork as we proceeded with another day of homeschooling. The children took their places at their desks as the sun shone in through the skylight. Years prior to that day, my husband and I had decided to homeschool our three children. We wanted to be the influence in their lives that shaped their character with the godly principles that we believed in. I worked one day a week as a Public Health Nurse, and my husband, Phil, worked four 10-hour days so he could take Wednesdays off and teach our children. It was a great change in mid-week, and we all welcomed it. Little did we know on that April morning, though, that the biggest change awaited us, and our lives were about to take a major tumble. Would homeschooling prevail?

By the time the afternoon rolled around, we were busy with household chores and the gym class at the tennis court that Phil had arranged for the evening. The phone rang. I knew it would be Phil calling me as was his usual daily custom. I always looked forward to hearing his voice, knowing he's be home in just a couple of hours. His words came quietly but had a distinctive edge to them that I couldn't identify. "I'm at the emergency room - nothing broken, just lacerations." It was the words that followed that raised my blood pressure. "I was unloading the truck and 450 pounds fell on me and knocked me to the ground. I'll be home shortly." I didn't know then that the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach was forecasting the days ahead of us. Something wasn't right. Phil was the food service manager of the local Rescue Mission. He had been having bouts of dizziness and seemed more forgetful and tired in recent times, yet due to short staffing and high demands, he was working harder. There was no one to fill his shoes, and I remembered telling him that I was worried and didn't want him to become the "Rescue Mission Martyr." He just poured his whole heart into everything he did, including homeschooling. He was very creative, and the children loved his ideas for hands-on learning. He built an easel for the time he hired a local artist to teach chalk drawing. The artist did vocal imitations of famous people as well, so the class time became a rollicking afternoon as everyone from Elvis Presley to Ronald Reagan gave our children instructions on how to use their pastels. When our daughter was having trouble with math, Phil made an abacus for her. When he taught on the Great Flood, he somehow worked a lesson on El Niño into it, and the kids were enthralled with the topic.

A short while later, as promised, my husband came limping in the door. The tennis lessons for the evening were called off. After resting, he returned to work the next day. As the days progressed, however, more changes became evident. Phil's memory seemed more disturbed than ever, and he was losing his balance. The evening walks we used to love were now accompanied by a cane. At one point, for days he suffered numbness from his waist to his toes. In the month ahead, Phil saw 17 doctors and was hospitalized at the VA for tests. There were days that we would accompany him to the clinic, carrying books in backpacks while we waited for him to be seen. At that point, he couldn't drive himself to the appointment since he had lost feeling in his right foot and almost had an accident because of it. Others would stare curiously at the children with the books. Questions addressed to me about why they were "out of school" became too numerous to bear. None of us knew what was wrong with our beloved dad and husband, yet the underlying tone of seriousness haunted our days as we tried to put one foot in front of the other and carry on. After the hospitalization, the diagnosis was still unclear. As a nurse, I had to fight back all kinds of imaginative speculation. My mind fought back fears of brain tumors and strange neurological diseases. Phil had been exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam, and fear of his being poisoned from that had always been a secret worry that I never expressed. Could it really be happening?

I was fed up with multitudes of trips to the doctor and no conclusion. We walked on eggshells, and the stress from the unknown was becoming unbearable. I was able to get him to see a well known neurologist at the medical center. One look at Phil's MRI results and he informed us of the diagnosis. He told us that Phil had multiple sclerosis. The sentence was in, and a long-term, incurable disease had come to live at our house. The newer meds for MS hadn't yet arrived, and our only hope was for a miracle from God. The man who had the creative mind and motivation to homeschool our children was falling asleep halfway through the days. I was working more since mine was the only income. Phil was losing patience quicker, forgetting much and having double vision. My job as RN now collided with my decision to keep teaching my children. I worked a lot with Medicare patients and the load of paperwork from that and homeschooling grew steadily, putting more stress on us. The routine, typical days in our household became nonexistent. Phil still taught as much as he could on the days I worked, but there were many afternoons when I called home and the kids told me Dad had fallen asleep on the mattress we had moved up to our schoolroom. I didn't understand his fatigue until one day he told me, "It feels like someone put a vacuum cleaner inside of me and sucked all my strength out." I knew how exhausted I was, and I couldn't imagine how he felt, losing control of all he was and ever hoped to be.

I worried about the children being somehow gypped out of their learning. Instead, they developed strength of character that only life could teach them. We became dependent on help from local churches for food. At one point, I even had to swallow my pride and go to the Salvation Army to help with our rent. Instead of our attic, the world became our classroom. Field trips to places like the zoo were treasured moments, uninterrupted by phone calls from neurology clinics and labs. Schoolwork became interrupted by the need to pack when our landlord decided we should buy his house. We were in no position to buy the house. Life took another major twist when we could no longer stay there. Our pastor came with the entire youth group and helped us move most of our belongings, including a piano, into his mother's barn for storage. We took our little family and set up house at a Bible camp on Lake Ontario, 45 minutes from my place of work. For a modest fee, we could abide in a one-room cabin since we had no place else to go. The cool breeze off the lake served well in the July heat for Phil since MS is exacerbated by high temperatures. The kids were done with the school year by that time. There happened to be a vacation Bible camp going on for kids for two weeks. We knew the people in charge, and they gave us a deal so our children could attend. That was wonderful! It took their minds off the gravity of the situation and allowed Phil to rest. I continued to go into the city to work on some days, worrying all the while about my family back at the lake.

That summer we became nomads. We could only stay at that camp for two weeks because it was rented out to another family after that. We went from camp to camp and ended up staying at a home next door to a friend from our church. The man who lived there had just gone through a divorce. He lived alone in a huge house and opened it to us, giving us the run of the mill while he made a loft above his garage for himself. Three months later, we found a house to rent in a nearby town. Phil's condition worsened, and a doctor at the VA told me that my husband had multiple lesions on his brain and would probably have to be in a nursing home by the time he was in his mid-fifties. I chose to keep hoping for a miracle. I continued to homeschool my children, who, at first, were the only ones that helped me care for their dad as he digressed to the point of becoming totally dependent. I found every opportunity I could to get the kids involved with other homeschoolers for activities and socialization. Finally, I was able to get help from home health aides. Our children learned to work with many interruptions. In so doing, they learned to persevere. The adversity brought new lessons beyond the mere academic curriculum we had once set as goals. They learned compassion, empathy, fortitude, diligence, and patience. They saw firsthand how God provided for us every step of the way, even down to making a way for us to have a home of our own, fully accessible for disability.

Many people told me repeatedly that "something had to go." That "something" they referred to, of course, was homeschooling. Yet, with each year that passed, I believed in it even more. I stayed the course. My husband could no longer speak or walk or feed himself, yet I knew he would have wanted us to continue as well. The lesson on the grace of God was profound in our lives, and it was nothing we could learn from any book. We pressed on, challenging as it was. When my children were 19, 17, and 14 and Phil was 50, he went home to be with the Lord. He died at home with the presence of hospice, and more importantly, the presence of God and his loved ones around him. He is missed deeply.

Almost five years have passed since then. Our daughter finished school at the age of 17 and then completed cosmetology school. She also completed her associate's degree towards her goal of becoming a teacher. She is married with a 4-month-old daughter. Our middle child graduated from homeschool at the age of 16, received his associate's degree, was listed in Who's Who Among Students in Junior Colleges, received his BS in Human Development from Binghamton University, and is now an officer in the US Marine Corps. He is working toward his goal of becoming a pilot. Our youngest also finished school at age 16 and took courses at the community college while finishing homeschooling. He is a lance corporal in the US Marine Corps in the field of intelligence and anticipates his second deployment to Iraq. He has a goal of working for the CIA. I homeschooled my children for 14 years. Those years have come and gone, yet I support homeschoolers whenever the chance arises. I have sown the seeds and watered with many tears over those years, and truly God has given the increase and produced the fruit in my children. It all comes back when others remark on their character. I thank God for the opportunity and the grace He gave us to persevere through the pain.

Frances Hansen is an RN and works at a Syracuse, New York, hospital. Her other articles can be seen in the Home Education Magazine and The Journal of Christian Nursing.