Yes, They’re All Mine

By Leslie Bertucci

In 1996, God led me and my husband Johnny to make the decision to start homeschooling our children. At the time, we had a fourth-grader, a first- grader, a 3-year-old and a 7-month-old.

It was the beginning of a great adventure that continued for 17 years.

No, I never did become an expert homeschool teacher. Yes, I would do it all again.

Although, at the time, I remember feeling like I could never accomplish all that I needed to in a day, I look back and realize that many things I thought were very important didn’t turn out to be so important, after all.

And many things that I did just for fun provided my children with some of the warmest memories of their childhood.

I also learned how to juggle four kids and a full grocery cart at Wal-Mart, and how to answer strangers who asked me things like, “Are they all yours?” and “Why aren’t they in school?”

As often as I could, I considered these comments as invitations to evangelize about our openness to life and letting God plan our family; to being, as Pope St. John Paul II said, the first and best teachers of our children.

Above all, I made sure my children knew that I was fiercely proud to be their mother, and I didn’t care who knew it.