Recently I had the privilege of meeting Julie at her home inside the art studio of her son Josh Tiessen  (an international award-winning contemporary artist). My husband and I have admired Josh’s artwork for some time, and to be in his studio was amazing! It was back in December 2022, a thought came to mind to ask Josh if he would consider teaching a group of budding artists a class; one of those students was my youngest daughter. I emailed, and he graciously responded with a yes, and what unfolded was a remarkable experience (you can read about it here). While going back and forth securing a date, I thought to myself how amazing it would be if I could have his mom share her journey on the Seasons of Motherhood series. I knew I wanted to meet her and learn more about her story! Josh connected us, and now I have the privilege of sharing her story on the blog; this summer, our interview will be posted on my youtube channel. I am thrilled to introduce you to a gifted woman with wisdom and grace. As you read through her story, you will see how the hand of God carried her (and her family) through many unexpected trials that ultimately brought them in a direction they may not have ever encountered, but God knew and provided time and time again. Thank you, Julie, for sharing your story on the blog today!

Here is the link to the documentary on Josh and Zac Tiessen – Prodigy Brothers

 

 

 

Dr. Julie A. Tiessen served with her husband, Dr. Douglas P. Tiessen, as a missionary with the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Russia for a decade in the 1990’s. After studying the language at Kuban State University in Krasnodar and gaining proficiency, the Tiessens taught at Kuban Evangelical Christian University, where Doug also served as Academic Dean. They were appointed as Field Director couple for a team that had grown to over forty missionaries and served in that capacity until their return to Canada in 2001. Julie worked as a District Missionary Consultant for two church districts in Ontario, and Doug was appointed Assistant Vice-President for Global Ministries of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada, located in Toronto.

 

 

 

 

HOMESCHOOLING THROUGH HARDSHIP

AND ENDING UP WITH PRODIGIES

 

My husband Doug and I were missionaries in Russia for a decade through the 90’s. After seven years of marriage and thinking we may not be able to have children, I gave birth to our two boys in Moscow. When our first son, Josh, was born, my husband Doug joked with the Russian doctor that we’d be back the next summer. Sure enough, 13 months to the day, Zac was born in the same hospital. The doctor from the year before heard me giving birth and came in saying, “I knew it was that Canadian woman, the Russians are so much braver.” As foreigners, we were paying the big bucks, so I felt free to holler as loud as I wanted!

 

After learning Russian, my husband Doug and I taught at a Christian University, and I was comfortable teaching young adults. But when the western educators visited our field to do a seminar for our missionary team and advised that I would have to teach Josh formal kindergarten, I was completely undone. Between the Russian nanny and I, we had been doing quite well with informal preschool learning activities, but the prospect of ordering curriculum and formally teaching my child was overwhelming! The educators said it was a must, as we would be returning to Canada for furlough the next year. To our surprise, they informed us that kindergarten was no longer just finger-painting, as kids went in reading-ready.

 

So I ordered the Bob Jones K5 set they recommended, which came in a huge box from the U.S. containing multiple thick binders and workbooks. By that time, we had been voted the Field Director couple for a team of 40 missionaries, and I was not sure how on earth I could add this task to my plate. Then God started working on me about taking on a couple of other kindergarten kids of our colleagues who were still in full-time language school… after all, if I was going to do daily lesson prep, I might as well incorporate it into my ministry. It would enhance the experience for my own Josh and provide Socialization 101 for these missionary kids, who had mostly been at home with Russian nannies. The kindergarteners joining us had younger preschool siblings like our Zac, so why not start a preschool too?! (By now, you can see that, as a person with high ideals, I’m a sucker for punishment). As the months drew closer and that big box of curriculum sat there intimidating me, I got nervous and begged for the mission to send us a teacher, but no one could be found.

Our home, with a field office and guest rooms under one roof, was already grand central. Now, it was turned into a zoo every morning, and our introverted Josh especially struggled to share his mom with all those unruly, messy children. Sometimes he took disciplinary matters into his own hands when they wouldn’t listen to his mom. If they hurt his brother, mild-mannered Josh would haul off and lambaste them! He was so relieved when the kids went home each day. After lunch he would sit quietly and do arts and crafts all afternoon. When I finally clued in that this was not homeschooling but a one-room schoolhouse, things went better for all of us. But after that year, I told myself I would never homeschool again.

Never say never, right? We returned to Canada for an extended furlough in order for Doug to get his PhD. An old professor twisted my arm to continue my education toward a Doctor of Ministry, securing me a scholarship like my husband’s. Between studies, we spoke in churches across Canada and the U.S., sometimes up to 14 venues in one long weekend! Our boys were usually in tow, helping to cart curios and costumes and participating in the presentations to children. Then it was back to school on Mondays.

We had planned to put them into public school like we each attended as kids, but someone anonymously paid half for them to go to a Christian school. This turned out to be a softer landing for these two MK’s (missionary kids) who had never lived in Canada. Zac became Canadian the moment we landed, but Josh had a harder time adjusting. We were often met with tears when we picked him up at the end of each school day. 

Josh longed for those quiet afternoons in Russia, where he spent countless hours with his Russian nanny doing art. She had held up stuffed animals, teaching him shading and perspective, with me chuckling at my computer desk in the next room. But as a trained kindergarten teacher, she knew he was advanced. I kept telling her not to correct his mistakes, explaining that Western pedagogy allows children to colour outside the lines. So she gradually let him do his own, and by the time he turned five, she and I quietly believed he might have a special gift for art. We started having him sign his works, referring to them as “Joshy originals.” But once in Canada, in the school system where everyone was required to do the same art projects, his creativity was stifled. And, caught up as we became in the Canadian culture of extra-curricular activities, Josh rarely had time to create his own art at home anymore.

Doug finished his PhD and we anticipated a return to the mission field. Our belongings were about to be shipped from Russia to where we would lead a new team in Kazakhstan, when Doug was called into mission leadership based out of a large office in Toronto. With the prospect of travelling the world to visit all the missionaries, our boys who missed their life of travel and adventure, begged me to homeschool them so they could go with us. 

I resisted for six months… until we found out the third week of August that since we were no longer overseas missionaries our funding would not continue at the Christian school (and we could not afford the full tuition). By then I was aware of the perils of the public system for Christians, so as a last-ditch effort I tried to get them into the local Catholic school where the motto was WWJD. But they would not take our boys as they weren’t baptized Catholic and neither were we.

Meanwhile, I had been facing my own private struggle. After a twenty-foot container of our belongings was shipped home to Canada a few months earlier and Doug was about to start in his new role we discovered that, contrary to the mission leader promising I could continue as Missions Consultant for two church districts, due to a policy on spouses I would be disqualified from that role. I was devastated, as it hit me that the career I felt called to from a teenager had suddenly ground to a halt. 

I saw Doug and the boys off each morning, then cried as I looked at all our belongings, now unloaded from the container and sitting in our living room. What would I do with myself? The mission encouraged my doctoral studies and insisted they still wanted my involvement. However, it soon became apparent that meant being Doug’s arm-ornament at official functions, a far cry from teaching theology to future pastors like I had done in Russia.

With continued pressure from our boys about homeschooling and little else to do but bake muffins to send into the office with my husband, in the final hour, I caved in and agreed to try homeschooling for a year. My one caveat was that we would not do French but instead study Russian, as I was worried the boys were losing the fluency they had before we returned to Canada (a brief foray into Saturday morning Russian school, with its shame-based educational style, had not gone over well).

By then, it was Labour Day Weekend and, living on one ministry income; we had little money for curriculum. I called a woman from one of our supporting churches, the only homeschooler I knew. She gave me a few resources, including a large binder of activity-based lessons they were finished with. Through her, God also led me to an organic farming family giving away all their homeschool curriculum for free! 

When I arrived at their farm, they had it all in boxes and were like, “Please, take it! We’re Unschoolers!” As we shuttled the boxes into my minivan, they regaled me with stories of their children never learning math but running the family business and one of them getting into university without knowing how to spell.

I left bewildered but thankful for God’s provision. And so we were off and running, but not without many tears that first year… mainly mine! Zac’s short attention span was such a challenge. When I got to my whit’s end I would stomp off to my bedroom crying, to the sound of him cheering ‘woo-hoo, now we can play Nintendo!” You have to understand, unknowingly a homeschooler at heart, I had held back the tidal wave of non-educational gaming. But someone recently gifted them a hand-me-down console, so this was like pouring salt in my wound.

Then there was Josh, my dream child, the voice of reason trying to parent his younger sibling. He would sit down studiously at his little desk and get all his workbooks done by noon, then cuddle up and listen to me read in the afternoon, which I loved to do… if only Zac could sit still for more than five minutes!

Gradually I clued in about learning styles. I’ll never forget our breakthrough the day we cracked open that first activity binder we had been given. Instead of reading about the ear canal from a book, I let Zac build one in the living room, out of every cushion in the house! He labeled it all on computer paper, and when his dad got home he proudly took him through the ear canal maze. How do you spell Kinaesthetic Learner?! 

I was making dinner and didn’t get any pictures. We actually have very few homeschool photos, mostly dad and the boys on occasion when he did Daddy-homeschooling for subjects like math, science, and shop class. Then there were times we travelled without the boys and they had Grandma-homeschooling… Carmen San Diego geography, Price is Right Math, Wheel of Fortune Spelling, and Jeopardy to cover all the rest! They still watch Jeopardy when they’re on exercise machines and lifting weights. Between them they get most of the answers. We didn’t find out until their late teens that they each had a 99th percentile working memory, probably like all those contestants.

With Zac being such an active child, I was thrilled to find out about a homeschool phys-ed program at the local YMCA. We met two other families with boys into sports like ours (we didn’t really fit with the highbrow learning-violin-at-two set). The YMCA family membership also included swimming lessons and one sport. Our boys chose basketball and fell in love with it, moving up the ranks until only their small size in comparison to the pubescent boys limited them. They eventually joined a rep-level city league with no travelling tournaments, as we were not good with the Sunday-sports thing. Besides, we still travelled to speak in churches some weekends.

Studying part-time toward a Doctor of Ministry in Leadership Studies, I found other well-educated philosophical moms in a monthly Charlotte Mason group, which also housed an amazing library of rare homeschool resources for a small yearly fee. Every month I would unapologetically fill a laundry basket from this library. The boys and I feasted on the highest quality books and videos about scientists, missionary statesman, artists and music composers. 

We viewed all of this as God’s wonderful provision. I didn’t let it bother me at the yearly homeschool convention when I saw other parents with their roll-along suitcases buying up the vendor hall. I would scour the tables as well, but only to purchase one or two choice resources for each of our boys’ specific interests. Oh, and another family from our church that homeschooled for, like, a month, gave us about a dozen Alpha Omega Lifepac Gold kits for highschool. I could go on about other times God provided a haul of resources that we put into our eclectic mix.

My only worry was that, not following one system, we might miss something. When I enrolled our boys part-time at the Catholic highschool and discovered we’d gotten a couple years ahead, I just said “oops!” (and breathed a private sigh of relief). After dozens of emails with the Catholic school board superintendent, they permitted our homeschool-hybrid. Once they saw how well Josh and Zac were managing two grades ahead they were sold, which cleared the way for other homeschoolers that came after us. In the end, the highschool offered our guys full diplomas, after we sent in our homeschool transcripts signed by “the principal” (aka Dad!)

Because our boys hadn’t been in the school system and we couldn’t afford testing, we didn’t know at the time that they were each in the gifted range, and both in the 99^th percentile for working memory. We had wondered why they were so good at Bible quizzing; with relatively little effort they each went on to compete at the  international level, committing whole books of the Bible to memory. BTW, we highly recommend Bible quizzing. Our boys never memorized the periodic table or competed in National Spelling Bees, but they have a more valuable resource—the moral compass of Scripture to guide their lives. In spite of our haphazard hand-me-down homeschooling, as it turned out they had soaked up everything I’d put in front of them and would be just fine. Other homeschoolers I’ve talked with have found theirs were too (all that worrying for nothing, parents!)

But back to when we were in the elementary homeschool trenches. Being a perfectionist, I felt duty-bound to do all the school subjects, so we went right through the afternoons. In an attempt to copy what the Christian school was doing for music, we bought them cheap recorders. At Christmas, since my great aunt was bedridden in a nursing home unable to go down the hall to hear the schoolkids’ performance, she would be the perfect audience for Josh and Zac’s first concert. About halfway through, as they squeaked out Silent Night, my mother-in-law, a nurse visiting from Saskatchewan, sensed that we were losing her… I mean, Aunt Cathie was literally on her way through the pearly gates! With Josh and Zac still standing at the end of her bed, recorders in hand, we hastily recited her favourite 23rd Psalm and prayed her into glory. By then she was stone cold dead, and the boys just stood there stunned. Finally Zac broke the silence: “Well, at least she’s hearing better music in heaven!” That was the first and last concert they ever played, at least on the recorder.

We were forced to move from the rented home we were living in, as it was slated to be made into offices (it was later torn down, full of black mold). In the transition, extras like Music class fell by the wayside. Eventually I dusted off our beloved hymnbooks to teach them sight reading and singing in harmony, which was like pulling teeth with Zac! Cue more tears from mom. Zac hated our music lessons more than anything. In my wildest imagination I never would have dreamed he’d have a concussion at 13, a left-brain injury causing an overcompensation of his right brain, resulting in Zac composing 16 full-length musical pieces by the time he turned 16! God has a sense of humour, and a knack for bringing beauty out of ashes. All this, without one formal music lesson – the Lord knew we couldn’t afford any.

As for Josh, that poor boy was tone-deaf, and it took both Zac and I on each side singing into his ears to help him go up and down with the notes. Josh is now 27, and we still kind of do this in church! Unfortunately, he also loves to sing in the shower, a sound reminiscent of alley cats in heat. We tease him a lot about it, because he’s one of those annoying people who are good at everything. Music is about the only thing he’s not good at.

With homeschooling, Josh finally had time and space to produce his own art again. However, we could not afford art lessons (are you sensing a theme here?) So I dug out some old cartoon-drawing books my mom had kept from my adolescence, and Josh reproduced every character almost perfectly on the first try. After one particularly exasperating homeschool morning trying to corral Zac, I sent the boys out after lunch to do sketching (come on parents, I can’t be the only one!) Josh sat for three hours on the front lawn drawing our Georgian manor in surprisingly accurate perspective for a nine-year-old. The next month at the Charlotte Mason library I found an out-of-print booklet by a retired Disney artist called “The Seven Laws of Perspective.” Josh began working diligently through it and applying the principles to his own drawings. Almost two decades later, he still uses this resource to teach in elementary and high schools, where he is invited as a guest artist. He recently taught it to a small homeschool group that visited his studio for a morning field trip.

Back when we started homeschooling, our boys were in a church midweek program. An artist picked Josh out of 50 kids and phoned us inviting him to her studio on Wednesday afternoons. Of course, now that we had a flexible schedule this was possible. Val was retirement age with no children of her own, and had never done anything like this before. Since she was not a professionally-trained artist, she would not let Josh call her his teacher, so we called her his art mentor. After a few months she asked whether we would be staying in Canada and if she could book Josh for an exhibition, which required a year in advance. I said “Val, he’s 10!”  She answered in her British accent, “But the world needs to see this child’s art!” 

At 11 Josh had his first public exhibition in a hospital art gallery, and Val showed us how to set it up. Josh paid for the framing with his newspaper delivery earnings, and designed his own posters and invitations on Photoshop, purchased with birthday money. Doug had helped him get started. At that first show strangers began purchasing Josh’s art, and the newspaper did a big story on him. At 14 he had his first official solo exhibition in an art gallery, and as a result was invited by Robert Bateman to be mentored under him in BC at 15. Then, at 16, a McMaster University School of the Arts professor juried him into a year-long mentorship in a free program through Art Gallery of Burlington, culminating in a group exhibition in the main gallery, alongside eight female artists my age!

A whirlwind decade has passed. Over 100 exhibitions later, Josh has sold 170 original works, hundreds of limited edition prints, and has published two coffee table books of his art. He established his own studio gallery and charitable foundation, and was juried in as the youngest member of three international guilds, garnering national and international awards. After exhibiting at galleries in Canada, including the National Gallery in Ottawa, at 17 he began exhibiting in prestigious galleries from New York to L.A., and in his mid-20’s was designated a Living Master Artist. He put himself through a Bachelor of Religious Education in Arts, Biblical Studies and Philosophy (only took him 9 years!) and has recently started a Master of Art History which he will complete in the coming year at the University of Toronto, including this summer in Italy. Let me repeat, we could not afford art lessons. In God’s economy deficits like this really don’t matter when you pray for His provision and guidance for your children.

Our lack of finances did not stop God from providing what Josh needed to excel in the gift He had given him. We just had to take some initiative and humbly accept help. Val not only mentored him, but took great delight in finding an easel for him at garage sale, put the first real canvas into his hands, and introduced him to Curry’s Art Store, where he was a kid in a candy shop! He used his paper route money to buy paint and canvases, and the clerks would smirk at this little boy they could hardly see behind the counter… eventually realizing he was doing more than finger-paint on those large canvases!

Although we couldn’t purchase professional art supplies for Josh, or instruments for Zac, we faithfully drove our boys to their newspaper routes, teaching them a work ethic and financial stewardship through tithing, saving, and careful spending. Later, Josh used money from his painting sales, and Zac used earnings from his job in the music department of a Christian bookstore to buy instruments and gear to start a music studio. Both of them were eventually endorsed by art and music companies to receive (and promote) art supplies, instruments and audio equipment. 

Having a music studio enabled Zac to study online through Berklee College of Music (the Juilliard of jazz and contemporary), being awarded a celebrity scholarship and earning a couple of specialist diplomas. This, in turn, helped him launch a career in guitar performance and teaching, followed by mixing and mastering for musicians from all over the world. He now composes, performs and produces orchestral soundtracks for documentaries, movies, video games, etc. Reaching the professional industry standard to do this was only made possible by an insurance claim after Zac had his computer, software and hard-drives stolen—devastating at the time, but God used it for good to get him to where he is today.

Aside from limited finances, we had other hardships that imposed upon our homeschool. Great Aunt Cathie wasn’t the only relative we ushered into heaven. Including two grandparents, we had 10 people close to us die in the space of 3 years (the last one was our 10 year old Boxer, but we decided he would count). Twelve years later, we have an aging Boston Terrier that we call our “therapy dog,” which is not an overstatement. I can’t emphasize enough how much a pet is one of the best homeschool investments you can make. I would even suggest that our pooch has kept the need for girlfriends at bay, better than our “I Kissed Dating Good-bye” brainwashing program! But I digress…

Back to losing 10 loved ones. With our boys, we prayed over several of them before they breathed their last. Eventually we started joking that we had a new family ministry: if anyone wished to speed their crotchety relatives on to glory, they could just call the Tiessens! Sorry, that was macabre, but it was comic relief from all the grieving we did in those years. I sluffed around the house in pajamas and cried every day for a month after my father died. Finally, Josh asked if there would ever be a day again that I wouldn’t cry.

We were the executors in a couple cases, so there was the added distraction from homeschooling of cleaning out houses, distributing belongings, and settling affairs. Our boys were learning firsthand about loss and grief, and as a result were becoming expressive with their love and affection to everyone around them. How much more valuable is that than parallelograms?

In the final months when my dad was winding down from congenital heart failure, I told the boys we might not have Grandpa for very much longer. They hugged him extra long and said they loved him one evening when he was leaving our home. Afterwards, I told them how proud I was, saying we never know when it might be the last time we will say good-bye to Grandpa… and that night it was. 

Since then, they never fail to hug and say “love ya!” to us and our close relatives every time they say good-bye in person or on the phone. Losing so many people we loved made them appreciate everyone they still have left. You can’t learn that in a textbook. You see, the longer I homeschooled the more I understood those strange “Unschoolers.” Life happens, and so does learning. If we are intentional as parents, in the process faith becomes foundational and character is built, which are ultimately more important than academics.

Don’t get me wrong, our family values education. My husband has a PhD and I earned a Doctorate. We ended up doing the previously unthinkable, “home-colleging” our two guys who both completed their post-secondary education online. Seeing them now in early adulthood, yes knowledge and degrees may be helpful, but eternal values are what’s keeping them on the narrow path and guiding their lives. Their characters continue to be forged through the fires of adversity, with us having time each day to weather the storms together. That’s been the key, and home education has provided it.

One of the few privileges we had in the early homeschool years was travelling with our kids in Canada, and to other countries where we visited missionaries as part of our leadership ministry. Each time, I would attempt to craft geography and history around our travels, taking out stacks of books from libraries. Like we had done in Russia—going to every ballet, symphony and circus that came to our city—wherever we went we would expose our boys to the arts and local culture. You can’t buy that kind of education at a curriculum fair. Each family has its own unique resources. You just have to pray you’ll recognize and utilize them as God’s gifts to your children.

Realizing we could not provide everything ourselves, we also used other people resources… like Doug’s sister, a specialized nurse who assisted an eye surgeon. I had her dissect the cow’s eyeball with our boys, while I gagged and took the video! We saw how much joy it brought Charlene to do this, so we asked others to share their professional skills when they visited. People loved this and, as they were doing it, even relatives who weren’t crazy about us homeschooling, finally GOT IT!

Amidst those moments of triumph, there were still more hardships. About a month after Doug began his new international leadership role, he started coming home about once a month with flu-like symptoms. I began calling it male PMS, as he would recover after a few days and be fine for another month or so. He had been struggling with symptoms that started popping up the last couple years in Russia, from when he would pull off 30-40 ticks each time our mission guard dog went hunting with its owner. It took 10 years and 18 Canadian specialists before Doug was diagnosed with Lyme Disease, which had progressed to the chronic stage affecting tissues and organs (including his brain).

By then Doug had been off work for two years, put on a sick leave by our mission doctor when his organs were shutting down after he came home from a conference and lay bedridden for six weeks. By God’s grace, Josh and Zac were away for six weeks on a pre-teen mission trip to Honduras with Teen Missions. It was not an ideal experience for them, and I later realized how crazy it was to let them fly down there at barely 10 and 11. But God knew it would be worse at home, so he spared them our darkest days with Doug losing his health and career.

Homeschooling through this unfolding tragedy gave us time and togetherness to process feelings of loss and abandonment. We pretty much fell off the missionary map, as we were of no further use to the organization. We went from being the couple they put in mission magazines and videos, to feeling totally forgotten. Doug and I each went through periods of suicidal ideation, as we not only lost careers and a ministry we felt called to since we were teenagers, but our colleagues who had also been our closest friends. They were still busy in ministry and had no time (or reason, perhaps) to reach out to us.

That was 2006 and Doug has never returned to work. For two years we had no income, while we fought to get him on disability. From homeschooling on a shoestring, I went to feeding our family on a shoestring. Those were terribly hard years. But God did some mini-miracles, like a new friend whose humble home was a clearinghouse for day-old bread and prepared foods from a local grocery store. That largely sustained us for about four years. We often wondered where the next monthly rent would come from. God used creative means, like our car being totalled by no fault of our own and insurance paying a couple thousand more than we would have gotten selling it. The list could go on and on.

On the downside, a Bible college teaching position for me to support our family fell through at the last minute due to a hiring freeze, with our household packed up and ready to move to New York state in two weeks! Shortly thereafter, we were informed that we would have to vacate the rental home, so we didn’t even bother to unpack and lived that way for another eight months into the winter with no heat, while desperately praying about what to do next. Our small group from church pooled their money and paid for one month rent. It was all SO. VERY. HUMBLING, beyond what we’d ever experienced as overseas missionaries.

Doug’s uncle convinced us to stop throwing away money on rent and purchase a house, offering his $30,000 veterans bonus for a downpayment. After we found a modest home in a town we could afford early in 2008, investments plummeted and the uncle reneged, reassuring us the money would be there after he died since we were one of three benefactors of his large estate. He later got dementia and removed us from his will before he died. It was a month-by-month battle to keep our house until Doug started receiving long-term disability, but somehow we never missed a mortgage payment despite (unbelievably) losing a SECOND inheritance to dementia! We still declare God is good but, honestly, it’s not been easy and sometimes we just held onto our faith by our fingernails.

Suffering has a way of making you review your theology, and we did that together as a family with teenagers. We believe God used homeschooling in our lives to keep our faith and family in tact. Doug and I were open about our internal struggles, and this helped prepare our boys for their own health hardships, which would come on the heels of an amazing discovery.

In Josh’s late teens, the world’s foremost child prodigy expert found him through a Huffington Post article that, unbeknownst to us, listed him as one of the top ten art prodigies in the world, and the only male art prodigy in North America (a distinction he apparently still holds to this day). Through Josh, the professor also found Zac, whom she recognized as a brilliant musician and composer. From Ohio State University, she hightailed it up to Canada with a blizzard chasing her, to perform extensive testing… IQ, AQ (autism quotient) and DNA on all of us. She then added both boys (not us!) to a group of thirty prodigies of various ages worldwide who are being studied, and visited our family a few more times. She included a chapter about Josh and Zac in her book “The Prodigy’s Cousin” and recommended them to a producer who came and filmed a documentary called “Prodigy Brothers” which garnered accolades at film festivals. With prodigies occurring only one in 5-10 million, it’s extremely rare, especially having two in one family.

God’s hand of blessing was on Doug and me in our ministry, and has been passed on to our boys. They retained their missionary heart, and delight in using their gifts to glorify Him and further His kingdom. Both of them serve in church ministries, plus speak, exhibit art, and perform music at churches, community groups, and Christian arts events, even homeschool conventions. Josh is a regular arts columnist for a young adult magazine called “Love is Moving,” and his essays are published in academic journals of theology and the arts.

Even with the blessing on our boys, the most tragic part of our family story was still to come. Not only did I eventually join Doug in falling ill and being diagnosed with Chronic Lyme Disease, so did our two prodigy sons! A year after being discovered, they started having symptoms that mimicked MS, Parkinson’s, and ALS. They had been breaking bones easily since childhood, which was what eventually alerted our medical specialist. In their late teens they began going downhill at an alarming rate and were destined for wheelchairs like other teenagers with the disease.

The large church we were attending initiated community fundraisers so our family could be treated in Florida (since it is not available in Canada). We were at a clinic for several hours each day receiving IV infusions stronger than chemo, over the course of three months. It was brutal, but we got through it together as a family. The treatment stopped the downward progression of the disease but did not completely eradicate it. We still spend $3000 each month to keep us all on our feet (with assistance from family and friends compelled to take care of us as ‘veteran’ missionaries wounded in the line of duty). Thankfully, Josh and Zac have been well enough to study part-time and work full-time. As for Doug and I, we’re kind of washed up! We call ourselves the “deadbeat doctors,” grateful that God has given us a sense of humour to help us through what can fairly be called longsuffering.

Homeschooling through hardship—in addition to making us a close-knit family, I cannot stress enough the importance of being members of a caring faith community that upheld us in prayer and helped us in practical ways. We wanted to pull back and hide, and there were times when Doug especially did that. I used to sit through church worrying that he’d take his life before we returned. But keeping our boys involved in a healthy church was my main priority… over sports, art, music, etc. Sunday church and youth group, now young adults group, are non-negotiable while living under our roof, no matter what age they are. This has made all the difference in building a strong foundation of faith and keeping them in circles of like-minded family and friends. We never apologized for prayerfully and carefully curating their social lives until they were mature enough to make wise choices on their own.

In closing, I hope you’ve felt inspired and encouraged, especially those of you who may still be in the thick of homeschooling amidst a lot of hardships, worried about your kids missing stuff and wondering how they will turn out. May God grant you grace and peace for the journey as He has done for us. You may not end up with prodigies like we bizarrely did, but with your faithfulness and God’s help, He will bring you through as a family. As a once-reluctant homeschool mom, I can now honestly say you are doing the very best by choosing to do life together!

 

 

 

 

2 responses to “Seasons of Motherhood with Julie Tiessen”

1. Oh Julie, thank you for this amazing account of your’s, Doug’s, Josh’s and Zac’s God journey. We only knew a little of your struggles and challenges after returning from Russia, Nevertheless we always thanked God for the joy of knowing you and living life together in those first years in Russia. With you we/I celebrate Josh’s and Zac’s God given talents, gifts and succeses. I so enjoy every post about/from Josh and Zac. Always love all your smiling faces. The joy of the Lord is your strength! Praying that our awesome, faithful Lord and Savior keep you all in His love and care now and forever. Until then, much, much love to you all, Carmen

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   • It is an amazing account of God’s loving care through many trials!

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