Guest post by Heidi Kreider.
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It’s twilight in my homeschool nest these days. After fifteen years of homeschooling, I’m down to one student. In a matter of seven days, my second child graduated and then left for a summer at SpringHill Camp in Seymour, and my oldest married and took his bride on a honeymoon to Maine. Aside from boxes of random odds and ends, both of their bedrooms echo loudly when you walk in them. Quiet is the new norm and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

I miss the days of loading the van for field trips and packing our lunches for co-op meetings. I miss cold winter days of school in our pj’s snuggled under blankets reading books like The Long Winter and The Boxcar Children. I miss our endless trips to the library and the search for that one elusive missing library book. I even miss the search for lost pencils and the tears over math lessons (mine) and crumbled worksheets (theirs).

To be honest, there are days when I think I’d like to be done. I think of what I would do with my time and how I would find myself again. I wonder where that would be. Where would I find myself after fifteen years of identifying as a homeschool mom? The irony is that I realize there is nothing I would rather do than to school this one through high school. Homeschooling is in my blood and looking back it’s the one thing I am most proud of doing. Why stop now?

Thankfully, the twilight of my own homeschool let me to the perfect way to find myself again. By offering an hour or two of my time each week to the IAHE, I can still be home with my youngest while she schools high school and I can offer my unique gifts and abilities to help serve, protect, and encourage homeschool families all over the state.

Are you approaching the twilight of your own homeschool? Are you wondering what you’ll do with your time? Consider volunteering with the IAHE. Not only will you be helping homeschool families who can use the blessing of your encouragement and your unique gifts and abilities, you might just find a new purpose as well.