You know how when you’re pregnant, every other thought is about the growing life inside you? Or if you’ve just bought a car that is new to you, you begin to see Honda Pilots everywhere you look? Your worldview is skewed toward your circumstances, and you have a special lens that pigeonholes your thinking.
Well, I’ve been pigeonholed for a long time in the world of kids and education, two of my favorite subjects. We’re moving from a homeschool year into a new public school district, where four kids are split between three schools.
It is fascinating, this world of mine that stretches and intersects, pushing me in and out of situations I would’ve never dreamed. We’ve been a moving family, a band of gypsies, raising eyebrows everywhere we go.
I was the person who swore we’d never uproot our kids, that they would enter school and not be budged till they graduated. Yet here were are—my oldest has been in seven different schools in ten years, along with three interspersed years of homeschooling. (He’s doing great! Haha.)
As a teenager, I remember the emphasis placed on “knowing God’s will for my life.” Church camps and youth leaders preached it, yet it was the secret sauce I couldn’t touch, because it didn’t seem God wanted to speak to me. He was as silent as a stone.
But I’ve gotten the feeling over my life that God was really speaking to other young Christians-turned-parents, because most of the friends I have now seem to have a great handle on God’s will.
Homeschool. That’s God’s will for them. (I can say this because I’ve tried to lean into it myself, but it is awfully prickly.)
And as I’ve seen many edge more and more into what that will entails, I’ve scooted further and further back from wanting to have any part in it, even though it is wonderful to sleep past seven in the morning on a weekday, or have the freedom to travel in October or February.
The startling truth is this: when I walk into my kid’s new classroom, at a new school (as I have done nearly a dozen times before), I see people who need Jesus.
I see parents who need Jesus because they don’t know how to talk to their kid, even in public. Parents that need Jesus because they are overwhelmed and undersupplied, and ought to know they can “cast all your cares upon Him, for He cares for you” (1Peter 5:7).
I see kids who need Jesus because they lack authority and direction. Perhaps too few adults in their life have the bandwidth to instill order, therefore they lack the attitudes of respectfulness and the understanding of consequences.
I see teachers who are already carrying too heavy of a burden of not only teaching academics, but teaching behavior and serving as respite parents. They need Jesus, because He said, “take my yoke upon you, learn from me…and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29-30).
I see my kids growing up, each old enough to serve as a light in the darkness. Even these tiny candles of humans can, by simply walking into a room, make the darkness a little less dim.
I see me, my particular traits and experiences that suit me well as a go-between, an oddball teacher-and-kid supporter, a person who loves drinking Living Water and can spot a thirsty soul in a heartbeat.
I’m uncomfortable in my own skin by nature. I’ve forever, in every social situation, felt like a seventh grader at a new middle school. And yet, this is my biggest muscle—developed from walking into school as the new kid, new mom, new teacher—over and over. (Who better to substitute teach? Ha!)
So back to God’s will, and knowing it, and the cozy lens through which we view our lives. I’m thinking each of us has it wrong. Where we emphasize knowing “what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will”, we shouldn’t separate it from the first part of the same scripture:
Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God…Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 12:1-2
Where I’d been wrong was thinking His Will was a pattern, probably a good stay-in-this-lane, straight-and-narrow, self-learned plan that would certainly pay off in all the ways I’d anticipated it as a good Christian girl.
Sure, it wasn’t a bad idea, but it was still conforming to an idea. One where I could make lots of excuses to not stray from, one that was temptingly comfortable. One that didn’t require much transformation by the renewing of my mind.
I think it boils down to this, if I can be direct: we mostly get it all wrong. We’re like little Pharisees, not much concerned with who a holy God is and how we ought to try and please Him—but obsessed with our little rules and how they apply to our life—as if it were really ours to begin with.
We think life is about filling a big box, packing it full—relationships, learning, diversions, celebrations, kids, college degree, job, marriage, success, memories, money, nice house, things—and the winner at life has the biggest, fullest box.
But what if life is more of a box that has presents in it and God lets us pull them out, one by one, and open them. And what if those gifts are all for Him, but he still lets us open them and use everything inside?
What if we get to pick either the first or second box scenario? The first box (flesh/self) comes with a warning that at the end of life it’ll all be tossed in the garbage, but the second box (renewed mind) promises ultimate joy and will go on into forever?
It really is about Him, after all, the wild One who fits no patterns, who follows no man, who loves enough to leave the ninety-nine and find the lost one.
And how much more does knowing who He and what He is about matter than voices and patterns?
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Matthew 6:33
