Home Education Magazine has a great article by Deborah Markus called Being a Cheerful Rebel. Sometimes being a nonconformist feels great, and sometimes it just feels lonely. Sometimes you love explaining your lifestyle choices to others, and sometimes you wish they'd just mind their own business. But ready or not, the questions will come, and Markus has some good suggestions for preparing to meet them. My favorite is
Don't Apologize: Stand strong. If you don't seem firmly convinced of the rightness of your course of action, why should anyone else? Especially someone who's never heard anything but conventional wisdom on the subject, all of which disagrees with you?
St. Peter knew something of the pressures of being outside the mainstream, and he had good advice, too:
Always be preparied to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence; and keep your conscience clear.
