I'll never forget the smiles I got from veteran homeschool moms when I shared the ambitious plans for my first year.

"We're going to memorize the book of Psalms in September, and work up through Pre-Algebra by January... Excuse me, are you laughing?"

I was hurt and confused at their responses. A few couldn't stop laughing long enough to explain the humor of my words, but motioned for me to call them soon. A few weeks later, I laughed too. After I stopped crying.

The painful memories of how my daughter's personality and my well-laid plans collided are still vividly fresh. One day in particular stands out in my mind. Here's how it went...

A long sigh whistled through my lips. The math lesson went over like a lead balloon. The baby cried through Bible time. At the height of our scientific hypothesis, my seven-year-old begged to go outside. "Can I just go back to school?" she asked with a frown. "This is too hard."

Comments like that are not allowed in our home, and usually I would have reminded Ashlie that, with the right help, anything is possible. Today, however, the words stuck in my throat. Perhaps with the right help my daughter could comprehend why some subtraction required a little assistance from the tens place...but the right help I was not.

I watched out the window as she jumped on the trampoline. My four-year-old ambled up beside me with a smile, stopping to kiss her baby brother in the swing. "Don't worry, Mommy," she said. "I don't want to go to school. You're a great teacher."

I smiled weakly, wondering if she'd think the same thing when her turn came to learn subtraction. I stirred a packet of kool-aid into the pitcher, wondering if I went to the school board today, how long it would take before my second-grader could be reenrolled into the system, undoing my grave mistake. Her presence at my side broke up my thoughts.

"That's a homogeneous change," Ashlie said, as I stirred the sugar into the red liquid.

"What?" I asked, in a mixture of shock and irritation that she would so easily understand something she wasn't supposed to know yet, while we struggled with the scope and sequence prescribed for her grade.

"You know. Homogeneous. The same. Once the sugar dissolves into the water, it will become a solution. The parts can't be separated again. It was on Magic School Bus yesterday, remember?"

I didn't remember. All I knew at that moment was that something was happening and that I didn't plan it. I took a deep breath and kept stirring. "Do you remember anything else from the show?"

Ashlie reached for an apple and took a bite. "Yeah. The states of matter. Liquid. Gas. Solid. That," she said pointing inside the pitcher, "can be all three--water, steam and ice. Kind of like God."

I stopped stirring. Breathe. "How so?"

He's three people, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but one God. The water does different things, but it's always water. God moves in different ways, but He's always God." She took another bite of fruit. "The homogenous trinifee."

"Trinity," I corrected, unable to think of anything else to say.

"Whatever," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "Are the chicken nuggets done?"

I nodded, unable to speak. In a moment, God erased all my fears about my inability to teach my daughter. I wasn't the one teaching anyway, He was! A giggle swelled in my throat as I stared across the room at all my "curricula." The Lord, and not me, would be the teacher in our school.

I eyed my baking pin with caution. If she'd learned about the trinity from making kool aid, what would happen when we made cupcakes?

Out of curiosity, I decided to put off that call to the school board. That was four years ago. Every meal, visit to the grocery store, and reading of the newspaper since has been a learning event. I'm glad I didn't miss it, especially since I'm the prize pupil in the class.