Back to School
We send Parker and Drake back to school next week. The summer break is over, but we’ve learned even more about ourselves and our boys this summer than ever before. This is one of the growing years. If you’ve paid attention to our pictures, you know that Parker has grown about 6 inches in 6 months. Drake is keeping up the pace, even though his teeth are falling out faster than Parker’s legs are lengthening.
When we send them to Raa and Gilchrist this fall, we go with them. We’re the kind of parents that figure out ways to volunteer so that we can be around the action. When you’re the parents of boys, you’re always asking parents of girls to fill you in on the details. Kelly is president of Raa PTO this year, and I’ll admit to you—she’s very good at this kind of thing. I get to be “Kelly’s husband” and “Parker’s Dad” and it gives me a little perspective on their vision from Sunday mornings when roles are reversed.
This year, I’m not sending them as missionaries, however. Even though we are sent by God, I’d like to consider our school campuses as places where God is already sowing seed. When I look at folks like Lea Marshall, our new and returning drama teacher at Raa, and people like Amy Rigsby, a new teacher at Sabal Palm, I know that God is there. We’re not in a foreign land. These people are pursuing a calling in education that is fruitful and rewarding in ways that can’t be measured by a wallet.
We are, however, living out a different Way. We should not be naïve to think that somehow everyone shares our worldview. We are guests in someone else’s territory. We know that our world is primarily ordered by idols of competition, violence, envy, and jealousy. We are not measured by the grades on the page, even though they matter to me way too much in our home. Our success is not determined by a scoreboard, although we love to lower our swim times. We’re just trying to go as normal (whatever that is) servants of Jesus Christ, sharing the good news through word and deed, and making a difference to people we meet.
So this fall I send them on a mission – with a purpose, to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. To love God with the mind is to learn science, to write good essays, to calculate algebra, and to connect the dots. It’s to pursue truth, knowing that all truth is God’s truth and is a great gift from Him. This year, we will learn and hopefully grow closer to Christ through struggle, suffering, and success. With a lot of grace, trial and error, we’ll learn something.