How Do You Make Big Decisions When You’re Still Afraid?

You know how life moves at a speed that rarely allows any blanket of perfect peace to wrap fully around us? Especially before we make some tough decision? To move houses, change churches, or take the job. It takes courage to entrust it all to Him — and it takes still even more courage to entrust the journeys of our children. Today’s guest knows this challenge intimately. Rachel Kovac is an author, speaker, and homeschool advocate with children in various stages of life. Her new book, Their Future is Shining Bright, helps you home educate your teens with confidence, purpose, and connection. It’s an absolute joy to welcome Rachel to the farm table.

It was a pleasure to sit down with Rachel in the belltower of our 1896 old stone church. Don’t miss our conversation

Guest post by Rachel Kovac

The evening before I began homeschooling, I sat down at the kitchen table to prepare our first lesson with a stack of books, a pen, a notebook, and a good dose of fear and trepidation.

After a winding path of disappointments and unforeseen detours, my husband and I had found ourselves considering homeschooling, though I couldn’t shake the sense that I wasn’t cut out for it. I began teaching in the summer, partly because it would give us something to do when it was 100 degrees outside, and partly because if it didn’t work, I could still enroll Jude and Indigo, who were eight and six at the time, in school in the fall. 

It seemed like a low-risk experiment on paper, but in my heart, it felt monumental.

There’s a common platitude that we will know if a decision is right for us based on whether we have perfect peace about it. Yet some of my most important decisions were made in the presence of worries, doubts, and questions about my own capacity and abilities. Whether it was growing our family, moving across the country, or choosing our parenting style, I often felt some hesitation.

Homeschooling was no exception. I questioned whether I could give my children the education they needed, whether I was truly up for the challenge.

Through it all, my husband encouraged me with a truth I’ve held on to: We all sometimes struggle with fears and doubts, but those feelings don’t disqualify us. Courage shines not in the absence of fear, but in our willingness to move forward in its presence. The word courage comes from the Latin cor, meaning “heart,” reminding us that true courage is rooted in love. Love fuels our ability to step into the unknown, calling us to rise to the occasion and act in alignment with our deepest convictions.

Fear becomes courage when guided by love.

Fear becomes courage when guided by love.

Serendipitously, the lesson I was preparing that evening was a story by Arthur Scott Bailey about the little nestling Jolly Robin and his siblings, who needed to be coaxed out of their nest in order to learn to fly: “So long as they stayed in the nest they could never learn a difficult feat like flying.” And there I was, being nudged out of the nest that was my comfort zone, hoping we could fly, and knowing we had to try.

My fears began to dissolve, and a feeling of peace settled in. God met me in that quotidian moment of stacked books and lesson plans in a children’s story, and gave me what I needed.

Courage, I’ve found, rarely arrives all at once. It comes unexpectedly, wrapped in the ordinary: an encouraging word, a prayer offered, a story read. It finds us where we are—not once and for all, but again and again—offering just enough light to keep going. 

It does not originate from within us alone; it is a divine gift.

God intimately knows our hearts and demonstrates his love for us by attending to us in the details of our lives. Augustine captured this profound truth when he wrote, “You . . . care so much for every one of us as if You were caring for him alone.” This divine care is marked by deep tenderness, as the prophet Isaiah reflected: “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.”

Such is the nature of God’s care, marked by nearness, patience, and practical love.

In the ancient world, a good shepherd stayed close to his flock, especially during lambing season. He slept in the fields, ready to help with difficult births or protect the newborns from danger. If the ewe was recovering or slow to move with her young, the shepherd adjusted his pace. The flock was led, not driven. Shepherding was not about efficiency, but about presence and compassion. 

Such is the nature of God’s care, marked by nearness, patience, and practical love. It seeks us when we feel vulnerable, weary, or unsteady, and carries us when we can’t keep up. 

As He gently leads us, He gives us a model for attending to our own children.

Homeschooling, like all labors of love, invites us into a journey of growth that changes us in ways we can’t yet imagine.

When making big decisions, in all kinds of areas of life, we often long for certainty, for a clearly marked path or a predetermined formula. But while information equips us, it’s not an end in itself. The most transformative experiences often ask for something more than knowledge: trust.

In the end, it’s not perfect confidence that sees us through, but love.

Trust that the love guiding our choices will also sustain us in the challenges ahead. Trust that, in our doubts and questions, we will be found by the one who holds us and our children in his arms, close to his heart.

Sometimes, like courage, the answers we seek don’t arrive in a single, grand revelation. Instead, we find them as we walk forward in faith, a step at a time. And then, one day as we look back, we see that the path had always been there—that all along, we had been led.

In the end, it’s not perfect confidence that sees us through, but love.

Love that rises with new mercies every morning and carries us day by day. And it is in this love that we find our courage and our strength.

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BellTower Stories

What a conversation about trust, parenting, being present to our children, regardless of age! Rachel Kovac joined us in our 1896 bell tower of our old stone church for a moving conversation about her new book, Their Future Is Shining Bright. And if you ever thought about home education, but had concerns — especially in the high school years? Or know someone trying to navigate education challenges with their family — share this AMAZING, INSPIRING conversation! Come join us in BellTower Stories as “the bells are the voice of the church, with tones that touch and search” —Longfellow

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{Our humble thanks to Tyndale for their partnership in today’s devotional}