Created in God’s Image

Revealing Your Child’s Purpose and Destiny

Through the Christmas Story

Now You Can Have Step-by-Step Help to Guide
Your Child in Identity Directed Learning

• How to use Scripture, great literature and art, and family devotionals to speak blessing into the unfolding life of your child.
• Seven ways to use the Christmas story to speak character formation.
• Three ways that never fail to engage children in learning spiritual truths.
• The key ingredients in family devotionals that focus on “Who Am I.”
• How to create a family album of blessings.
• Christmas activities that develop insight and understanding of why each person is unique and loved by God as we are.

“Train up a child in the way he should go,

And when he is old he will not depart from it”

Proverbs 22:6

Dear Homeschooling Parent,

Once, a long time ago a child was born. His arrival was anticipated with great joy, but the circumstances surrounding his birth were fraught with difficulties. This troubled his parents. What did it all mean? What should they do? In time he grew strong and beautiful and showed a talent for many things. This pleased his parents. Others began to notice his gifts and said so. What would he become? His mother kept all these things in her heart and pondered them…

Do you marvel as I do at how this could be any child’s story. Of course, that special child was Jesus. How like our own children! Except that this child was destined to save the world from their sins.

Ephesians 2: 10 says we each have “good works which God prepared beforehand for us.”  

Before time began God had my child and your child on His mind. He chose each and prearranged a life for them to live---just as he did Jesus. I don’t know about you but that thought is staggering and humbling…and raises questions.

How can I know my child’s purpose and destiny? How can I help him or her fulfill it? What if I do it wrong? What if my child does things that are wrong?

And most important of all: How can I cooperate to bring about this marvelous destiny planned by the Author of Life himself?

          My Big Aha! Moment

I asked myself many times how can I help my daughter become all she can be. My husband and I raised her initially as we had been raised. Yet we wanted great things for her.  Our training didn’t seem adequate to this big job. Was not until I began to study Charlotte Mason’s educational philosophy that things began to change.

My big aha! moment as a homeschooling parent came when I understood what Charlotte Mason meant when she said that children are born persons—complete and full of endless possibilities. Children are not incomplete adults; they become adults. What they lack is not maturity but guidance, nurture, and opportunity. Your role as parents is to provide those things.

That realization opened a window in my soul that has never closed. Since that time I have made it my purpose to bring parents into a fuller understanding of this truth. In the courses I teach, I come to this theme again and again.

The full meaning of the person can only be known by God; yet, as Christian parents we have a mandate to raise our children for this life and the next. How do these two seemingly irreconcilable ideas together?

          The Character Connection

Later I read in Mason’s Parents and Children …
“The child brings with him into the world, not character, but disposition.”

That word “disposition” is what Paul is talking about when he says we each have “good works which God predestined for us.” We come into this life with predispositions to certain ways of being and thinking. It is character formation that shapes that disposition to “good works.”

Charlotte Mason tells us that the development of character is “the one achievement possible and necessary for every person.” That’s pretty clear.

          The Stakes are High

We want the growth of worthy character to be a certain outcome because the stakes are so high. If God has predestined a child, or to use Charlotte Mason’s term “disposed” them, then the only response must be to shape that disposition by developing the child’s character.

          Identity Directed Learning

In recent months I have been making a study of character development, and taking my own prayerful look at the sacredness and beauty of each individual. I am persuaded that the reverence for the life of each individual is one of the cornerstones of personal and spiritual development. If you are struggling with one or more of your children—or simply want what’s best—this may be the missing piece for you.

          Identity Directed Learning is an approach I have developed which helps children recognize and cooperate in their own unfolding story.  Christians don’t speak much of “destiny” anymore, mainly because it may sound like something unbiblical. Nothing could be further from the truth. We need to look again at the concept of destiny. The Bible is full of hints that each one of us is created for a specific time and purpose in God’s unfolding plan.

          Why I Created This Course

Because the stakes are so high and because I know as parents you understand the beauty and sacredness of each of your children, I created this study of the Christmas Story. Christmas is the perfect time to do a family devotional study because Jesus’ nativity mirrors your child’s own emerging story.

The study uses Charlotte Mason’s timeless principles woven together with the Scriptures and crafted with care to be easy to use and yet profound and lasting in impact. Read about on and join me this December 1.