God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
Help me accept our schedule is about to be nuts. Summer is family interdependence, melting into each other, and learning life together. Next up: jarring tardy bells, horrible flash cards, afternoon practices, and late nights of fractions. These will blow our family cocoon to smithereens.
Give me the courage to change the things I can;
For ten of the twelve hours we’re awake, our day will be super busy.
But maybe this year can be different. Maybe we could hold our schedule a little looser. Maybe we could practice perspective. I don’t remember one single grade I got in Second Grade. Could we chill out on finishing ALL the homework? making ALL the practices? Could we teach our kids that busy schedules don’t mean putting on sunglasses and blocking out all the light?
Maybe we don’t have to live under the ticking of an imaginary timer. Maybe we don’t have to rush through every meal and every bedtime.
and wisdom to know the difference.
Lord, give me the wisdom to know hyerorganization will not make the school year transition easier. Color-coding my kids’ closets, buying designer school supplies and bistro lunch boxes, and making personalized lunch notes will not make it easier to untangle ourselves from each other and our summer of freedom. All these offer the false promise of closeness, but they never deliver what my kids really need.
Give me the wisdom to know the kids want long bedtime talks more than Pinterest anything.
Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time;
Even during the busy school year, millions of jeweled, perfect moments will appear right when we need them. Bedtime is sweeter after a hard day of work. After a long week of learning fractions, sight words, and the geography of Russia, the kids will be so ready for a family weekend. By Friday night, all of us will be exhausted and ready to melt back into our family cocoon–a little smarter, a little more who we will become, a little more confident.
accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; taking, as He did, this sinful world, as it is, not as I would have it;
The school year is not as I would have it.
Pulling into our driveway after a late soccer game, our van filled with cranky kids, Chick-Fil-A bags, and grease-stained history worksheets is not as I would have it. I don’t want to live constantly irritated with the child who leaves shoes all over the house but can’t find them when school starts in three minutes. Trying for the balance between volunteering fifty hours a week and totally unplugging from school is a dance that still makes me trip, and this is not as I would have it.
Maybe the pathway to peace is cluttered with all of this. Maybe this year I’ll get better at not falling down so much.
trusting that He will make all things right, if I surrender to His Will;
If summer is when our family bonds, the school year is when the kids grow into themselves. As it should be.
One day our kids need to move out of house. They need to grow into teachers, and wives, and salesmen. The kids have to learn what they’re good at and what they like. They learn those tough lessons of independence in the trenches of school. They learn those during long days of mastering fast facts, social politics, and teachers’ bad moods.
that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen.
We are entering the spiral of difficult learning and huge emotional payoff, but it’s the right spiral.
During difficult moments these next few months, we can always relish the fact there’s no Back to School Night in heaven.
Or fast facts.
Deep breathing!!