A Prayer for Our School Year

Heavenly Father,

     I can honestly look back at this first week of school and say it was the best one yet!  Just like when you formed the Heavens and the Earth and put everything in its perfect order, I know and have known,  that you also put the right kids with me.  I love the fresh perspective they give me every day.  I can’t wait to see what they will teach me tomorrow.  I sat down to be their teacher today and walked away knowing and seeing a little more of the fruits your Spirit provides in me.
    Each year that I get with my children offers me a chance to mold them, pray for them, and love them.  I get the privilege of watching all of their firsts.  I get to see them overcome hurdles and celebrate victories.  It gives me one more year to make up for lost time, my mistakes, my ignorant deeds of the past and other regrets.  This beginning week I get to pray all of that negativity away and strive to hit the mark once again.  With you I can do anything I set my heart to do.  I must just trust and obey and never cease to remember that you love these children even more than I do.  So, when I’m at a loss and don’t know the answer, You do. 
   Thank you God, for 13 years now, I have been a wife and mother first.  Thank you for giving me the courage to home school and for helping me those first years when I was so unsure.  Those days still come now and then, but not as often.  Because when they do I know where to go for guidance.  You have never failed me.  Thank you for a loving, hard-working husband that has supported me from day one and has also never let us down, but has sacrificed and shown his love with actions as well as words. 
    Homeschooling is hard work and sacrifice, I’ve heard it said.  But I think it would have been a much bigger sacrifice to have gone a different road.  Please, Father, continue to bless us and help us with our days of learning together.  Help me to continue to grow in your ways and to show my kindness, patience, gentleness, self-control and all of Your other attributes more and more.  Help the kids to learn all of the important facts and information that is so crucial for their success.  I pray that they look back at their time of growing up and being educated at home and consider it a blessing in their lives.  But, above all Father, help them to learn about You and follow You all the days of their lives.  Forgive me for my wrongs and help me to make them right by your power.  In Jesus’ precious name I pray, Amen.

The Golden Rule...When it's Hard

    I have to admit this, throw it out there and take my chances that someone else can relate.  Earlier this week I was really struggling.  Struggling so much I felt like giving up on some of the things that are exceedingly the most important things in my life.  I was spent and so tired of trying and feeling defeated.  I was just so frustrated.
     Obviously, I was right where the enemy wanted me.  Isn’t that where he does his best work?  I know that and I prayed and had a day of reflection.  I confessed that I was struggling to others and asked for them to pray too.  Then that day I felt like I had the answer.  When you feel like someone just won’t treat you the way you want to be treated, what would Jesus do?  He would love them with action.

photo credit:  Original digital art by Abbey Kreger

“In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.  Matthew 7:12

     I know, very kindergarten, right?  But I’m here to say that…y’all…..it works!  I prayed and worked on my attitude all day and I did just what this verse told me to that day.  It makes no sense to a human.  What the human side of me wanted to do was cry out that I was tired, I was frustrated, you are selfish, you don’t do this, you don’t say enough, you don’t give enough!        Instead, God truly changed my heart and I simply shared an embrace and genuinely made a choice to care that day.  I made someone feel special, I gave love.  In return, guess what?  I got back that love in just the way to reassure me that all is well.  I know now that I am treasured in so many ways.  So simple is Jesus, so wise.  His yoke is easy and his burden is light, I’ve found it so.

Letting Jesus Take the Wheel

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
 in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6

 At the beginning of the summer I decided after much prayer, and what I felt was a prompting from God to go for it, to take on another role in my life.  I’ll have to admit I worried at first.  I already wear a lot of hats on this head, and so I did the only thing you can do when worry creeps in…I prayed and let it go.  I knew that my usual planning time for school was going to be interrupted by this new chore, I didn’t know that our minister of more than 13 years and my boss was going to be leaving at the end of the summer right when school begins.  

    The great thing is, God knew all of this and before I knew it I had friends joining together and planning school for my children, right under my feet. We are going to band together and make it a group effort this year.  I had our regular co-op offering classes that were really going to help me out, core classes that my kids wouldn’t enjoy as much if they had to do it alone at home.  Before I knew it, all of their subjects were covered and I felt like I just sat back and watched it all happen.  Yes, I did have to plug in some things, but it was effortless.  It was God.
     Wow, did I learn a valuable lesson.  I get hung up on details.  I’m one of those people that feels that if I don’t do it, it might not get done.  I think you call them control freaks?  Yes, that’s me.  So, letting go and letting God has been a long lesson for me and I’m not quite finished learning it yet.  But, what a huge step it was this summer.  That’s why I’m writing it down.  I don’t ever want to forget what the  power of letting go feels like.  I want to cherish letting God take control and watch Him work.
     I’m ready to watch my son and daughter flourish under His wings this year.  This has all shown me that this is the year to go with the flow.  I’ve tried many things as a homeschool mom of 8 years now, but that is one I haven’t tried yet.  So far it’s going so smoothly that the control freak in me says “DON’T TOUCH IT, YOU’LL MESS IT UP!”  Yes, I believe I’m convinced that this school year is going to be the best one yet!

Grasping the Obvious

     Why is it so difficult to understand one another?  Or to give each other the benefit of the doubt?  Why do we feel offended, ashamed, angry, scared, or alone?  Pride is a reason.  Sometimes I pray and feel deserted.  How full my heart would be if my pride never got in the way.  How much more would I get a glimpse of God!  It’s a blindfold to the soul, hiding me from the love I long for the most.

     Those times that I’ve longed for Him to be present and to show me something and I felt like I walked away empty-handed, it wasn’t His fault.  It was my corrupted mind shielding His offering from my unseeing eyes.   My hands are always full, so if I feel empty, it is simply ingratitude for what I have and don’t deserve.  Every day that I live He provides more than enough.  His grace is sufficient for me.
     He’s constantly explaining myself and others to me.  He’s always by my side trying as hard as He can to guide my steps, to whisper in my ear, to offer His hand, to soften my heart.  I simply need to step out of His way and let Him do His work.  I need to know that I have what I need for today.  For this day, I am fed.

Times are A-changin'

     Is this the life of a teen-ager's mom?  I knew it was going to be a challenge, but I had no idea of all of the feelings that I would have.  I heard about the smart mouth, the rebellion, the disrespect, the “know-it-all” mentality, etc. and all of the things that would happen to my kids.  I’ve seen glimmers of all of these, but no one told me what would happen inside of me.  The little girl that once followed me around trying to get my attention all day is now the same one that disappears for hours at a time into her “cave” of a room and doesn’t seem to need me anymore.  I have to admit it makes me sad.

     It reminded me today of this…

Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover.  When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom.   After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends.  When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him.  After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.  Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.  When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

   “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”   But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
   Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart.    And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

     His parents were anxious when he disappeared.  They weren’t ready, but he was.  They knew that and they trusted God once he told them what was happening.  In the same way, my daughter is ready for a new phase in her life.  She isn’t leaving anytime soon or anything, she will still be with us and hopefully she will try to follow his example to live obediently with us.  And I, like Mary, will treasure that in my heart and I will pray that she will grow in wisdom and her own God-given stature in her life with Christ.  I will pray and trust and try to get used to this new time in our lives together.  I never read this story the way I did today as a mom of a thirteen year old.   It just proves to me that God’s word never changes but we do and what we read yesterday could speak to us completely differently today.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,  so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.  

2 Tim. 3:16-17

Well Done...Good and Faithful Servant

    As I walked in a few minutes late because I arrived just on time and the parking lot was completely filled, I had no choice but to bypass any back pew and walk straight down the middle aisle and find a seat near the family, I was in awe.  So many people loved him!  So many!  I can’t say that I was surprised, it just made me think.  It must have been on the mind of the person giving the eulogy as well, for he stressed the fact that the building was full several times.  What an awesome testimony of a life well-lived.

     Later on, when I got home and was cleaning my house, I thought about the sweet brother we lost this week who went to be with Jesus.  Just like the speaker said, heaven must have gotten a little bit brighter.  I did begin to reflect on his passing from a personal standpoint.  I haven’t lived and loved enough.  I want to so much.  Not because I want to earn anything, but because it must be a wonderful life to really live like that.  By not doing it, I’m not missing out on praise, or pats on the back or recognition, I’m just missing out on life.  I’m missing out on the full life that Jesus promises if we live for his glory and his glory only.
    I would like to love better, love without fear.  Love just for His sake.  Give and never worry about getting, love so much that receiving love would be the last thing on my mind.  Love like that is a full life and I saw a glimmer of the affect it can have on a family today.  It can touch the hearts of so many people and be passed down for generations.  There is a strength in love that like God’s word says, “covers a multitude of sins.”  Sacrificial love... I need to love like this.  

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  

John 15:13

Making Way for the New

     It’s the time of year that we purge our home.  School is wrapping up, fun is around the corner, and it just seems right to start the summer fresh.  So, while in my daughter’s closet cleaning and filling trash bags to the brim, one after the other, I couldn’t help but feel like it was wrong to throw so much away.  We do this serious purging only once a year or so, and she has outgrown so many of the things that we were taking out, but it still just seemed like so much, so wasteful. 

     God has shown me a great deal in the past year and a half.  His promises, that I always have had, have finally become mine.  He has revealed to me that His love is enough and that I only need to go to Him for my needs, no one else satisfies like Jesus.  While cleaning He revealed something else.  In order for me to have a place to store these truths in my heart and mind, I have to let go of the old.  The things I have outgrown need to be purged.  It’s not wasteful, it’s time.

    You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. 21Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.  Eph. 4:20-24

     As long as I continue to store my old ways, lack of self control, impatience, self-pity, selfishness, the list goes on.  I can’t possibly take down the new ways from the shelf and try them out.  They are waiting in limbo for a place to call their own.  Sure, I use them sometimes, more than I used to, but until they have a permanent place, I won’t readily reach for them.  I’ll keep reaching for the old raggedy, worn-out methods that are cluttering my heart and mind.  It’s not wasteful to dispose of the old, sometimes it’s necessary.