Are We Firefighters Ready To Snuff Out Danger (And Hope)?

April 30, 2024April 30, 2024 / Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I woke up this morning, and couldn’t find the fire within me.

It had been smothered again.

I dug through the ashes and discarded dead branches, frantically looking.

I know there is a spark somewhere inside, still burning.

I couldn’t find it.

I looked to heaven, asking for His fire to fall on my life again, to ignite the areas around my life so that I could see the smoke and notice the clues. So I can see where I need to remove the wet branches of our best ideas and where we can lie on the ground, blowing to life that which You have begun.

I called in a friend to help and we took turns, one keeping watch. Dangers lurk nearby. This beginning fire will be snuffed if our backs are turned even momentarily. That is how fear works.

I take off my backpack and my firefighting suit. I was never meant to wear it anyway. But I like to be safe.

It’s cold out here without my extra layers on. I don’t have enough to feel comfortable. But shedding the outer layer has increased my urgency to get this fire burning brighter.

Will you help me?

Our very lives, our joie de vivre, our hope, depend on it.

Can you take a turn blowing on these embers while I do some jumping jacks to get warm? Following His way is not the path of comfort. Our discomfort draws us to Him, to the flame, hoping for some heat from these smoking embers.

When our lives turn to desperation, breakthrough is near.

Why had I ever been satisfied with less?

You?

Do you need to take off your firefighter’s suit, too, the outfit you wear just in case God’s fire will break out of the boundaries we established for this campfire?

Are you, too, afraid of being so close to fire without the necessary tools nearby to snuff out anything beyond the boundaries we establish as safe?

Have you put God in your box?

Do you stand nearby, fully dressed in firefighter’s gear, back to the embers, standing alert to open the fire extinguisher on the embers lest real flames burst forth? It’s dangerous having our backs to the fire.

How is your heart? Do you explain away the unexplainable? Do you say, “I’ll ponder that later,” to the hints of the divine you encounter in another’s life, in your own life?

Are you, too, one of the ones standing watch, back to the fire of what God wants to do through your life? Do your ankles quake, and your whole body shake as you stand, back to the flame, prepared for the inevitable? How are you doing, deep down?

Did our diligence with the fire extinguisher, smothering fires from heaven as they leap outside the bounds of a campfire, leave you exhausted and weary?

Come, friend. Come and sit by this fire. Let’s take off your firefighter’s suit, too.

You don’t need it anymore. Yes, you will be cold and uncomfortable. Let this discomfort push us closer to the embers, to the fires of where His spirit is moving as we seek our and each other’s breakthroughs.

And when you find some warmth, let it spark the kindling in your heart afresh.

Only then does real life begin.

[Jesus] will ignite the kingdom life, a fire, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He’s going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives. He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.
The Message

3 Common Responses To God’s Clues – Choose This One

April 26, 2024April 25, 2024 / Lori Lawe / 2 Comments

My child said she saw an angel.

And so, children sometimes peel back the curtain of heaven for us to quickly glimpse before the curtain is closed again. All we have left is a memory. What is our response to hearing stories that seem to push us into the realm of the divine, whether we want to go there or not?

Will the divine moments that we hear about be wasted on us?

There are three typical responses to another’s spiritual experiences: we become blind, jealous, or thirsty.

Most commonly, we become blind. Like a beautiful pristine camping spot, one mountain range further than we usually travel on our summer holidays, we won’t go there. It is not within the realm of our routine.

And so we are unable to see.

WAS there ever a pristine camping spot one mountain range over, we wonder, years later? WAS it an angel she said she saw? And then we are distracted again by our lunch.

The second most frequent response to stories of divine encounters is jealousy.

Instead of falling on our knees in worship and petitioning for a similar outpouring of the divine in our parched lives, some of us will compare. The soil of our hearts hardens just a little bit. That didn’t happen to ME.

They must think they are SPECIAL, we reason. They must assume they are MORE SPECIAL than ME. Often, that idea hadn’t crossed their minds.

But we’ve already tossed the implications of the divine moment in self-righteous indignation.

The third response, that very few travel, is a recognition of our spiritual thirst.

This heart response is gas for our car. We understand that each of us is offered an adoption certificate into the family of God, which comes with a royal inheritance. And from that identity, we can petition the Father, on our knees before Him, and ask, “Can You please pour out the divine in my life, God?”

We can beg Him for water because we see another who seems to have found a drink.

He always has more water.

I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God.
The Message

God, soften the soil of our hearts equally through the encounters we experience in ourselves and those we hear about from others. Thank you that we can come to You with our doubts too and that You meet us exactly where we are. I pray we stop trying to stuff You into a box.

Keep waking us to a deeper understanding of your love, I pray.

How To Wake Up To Divine Moments – Treasure The Clues

April 25, 2024April 24, 2024 / Lori Lawe / 2 Comments

So, my toddler said she saw an angel one day.

Fast forward about seven years. We had moved to another house by that time. The subject of angels came up over lunch.

“You saw an angel once,” I ventured to that same child, now about ten years old.

I wondered if she would remember.

“WHAATT?” Her older sister demanded. She prided herself, as an older sister’s right, to know ALL of the family stories. How had she never heard this one?

I hadn’t mentioned it in all those years except for telling one friend and my husband what happened immediately afterward.

Who would have believed her anyway?

Children don’t have many words when they are three years old. Would she remember the incident now? And if so, could put more words around the experience? As much as possible, I wanted the conversation to come from her, not directed by me or influenced by my memory.

“Do you remember seeing an angel?” I ventured.

She said, “Yes”

I wanted to test her, to see if she was speaking accurately.

“Where were you when you saw the angel?”

“At the other house.”

I was startled.

Yes.

“And where was the angel?”

She said, “Outside”.

Oh no, I thought, she doesn’t remember. This event happened in the playroom. I was about to clean up the dishes when she continued, explaining more, “The angel was outside”.

Oh! Yes, I thought, the angel was outside the window we were staring at. That made sense.

Without my prompting, she explained that she was looking out the window in the playroom at the time.

She had remembered this very incident, which brought me shivers. This child was officially diagnosed with memory challenges a short time after this event*.

And yet she remembered the details of this event from many years earlier.

“What did you see?” I asked gently.

“The angel was singing. It had gold shoes and a gold sash.”

I sensed that we were standing on holy ground.

“Oh,” I said.

What else was there to say?

And then we finished our lunch.

And what is our response when divine moments encroach upon our lives?

Everyone should allow divine moments, either our own or others, to propel them further along God’s spiritual path for them. But how? The softness of our heart, exposed as one of three common responses, will determine whether we stay stuck in the mud spiritually or whether we are launched further and deeper along our spiritual paths.

In the next post, we will evaluate these most common heart responses after God interrupts the mundane.

He ordered his angels to guard you wherever you go.
The Message

God, thank you that sometimes, for a brief moment, You open our eyes to the possibility of the divine through our or others’ experiences.

Help us wake up to grasp what is right before us when our eyes are opened and our ears can hear. Help us to speak openly about what we have heard and seen. May the unusual become commonplace in each of our lives, we pray.

While we do not place our faith directly in angels, we should place it in the God who rules the angels; then we can have peace.
Billy Graham

What unusual divine moments have you experienced? Or what is a sacred moment that another has told you about that seemed plausible? Has this moment or a curiosity about this experience propelled your spiritual journey?

Blogpost Footnotes

*These cognitive challenges were later healed years after this event through diet, but that is a story for another day.

How To Look Good At Church

April 23, 2024April 16, 2024 / Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Photo source

Now she looks good.

This lady is 82 years old and wears a fancy hat EVERY Sunday at church.

Yes, I DO want to be like her when I grow up!

I even started collecting fancy hats at thrift stores to prepare for my old age. Below is a picture of me as Ms. Lovelybottom, the alter-ego who teaches our homeschooled kids manners. (Don’t ask. That advice is for when I know you better. A lot better).

So, yes! Some of us look GOOD when we go to church! And some of us look REALLY GOOD!

Once, I was featured on (my) blog detailing in the footnote WHAT name-brand clothing and accessories I was wearing! (For those who read that post, please don’t tell them EVERYTHING!) The point is that I am clearly qualified to advise on how to look good at church.

Ahem . . .

There was once a family led by a single mom who attended a church. She had four boys and one girl and EVERY WEEK, they were late. Sometimes, we would see one of the kids swatting the other as they pushed each other through the front door.

There was also a single lady who attended that same church.

Every week, the single lady looked like Mary in the show Downton Abbey. She looked VERY VERY good. AND her clothes were ironed.

And she didn’t push anyone on her way in the door.

She arrived early and unhurried.

But she turned up her nose at the four boys and their little sister. She looked down on them a bit, revealing her skinny, naked heart without much life. Her love was cold.

Through God’s eyes, she didn’t look as good as she thought.

Because God looks at the revelation we STILL HAVE compared to the revelation that we HAVE BEEN GIVEN. (If confused, see the explanation here).

The four boys still had some character issues to sort out, as they pushed each other around, missing their father, who could have modelled gentleness but was absent.

And their little sister, looking up at the four boys, sucking her thumb, her unwiped nose and big curious eyes peeking over her stuffy? She looked over at her brothers and smiled. They are learning.

Some of their rough edges rub off as their hearts register a few more millimetres of God’s love each Sunday.

The siblings’ incremental, growing love for each other infects the well-dressed woman too. The boys are making her look good as they grow and learn to direct their God-given energy and love to each other well. Eventually, they also serve her, in love, helping her with some outdoor work one Saturday afternoon.

And soon they are all – the little girl, the four boys, the well-dressed single woman – looking much better in their hearts, where it matters to God.

And that’s how we look good in church.

We keep going every Sunday and let the annoying people there refine us, grow us, and stretch us.

It’s the idiots (um…including us!) that make us look good at church.

And God looks at our hearts and is pleased with the growth.

We glean a drop or two more of understanding of God’s love for us, which gives us patience and a sense of humour to pour a drop or two of love onto our neighbours, especially the annoying ones.

Our hearts look better than they WOULD HAVE if we had stayed home each Sunday.

And there is a little more love in the world.

But having a nice hat helps, too, of course.

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

How To Be Brave At The Dentist’s And Doctor’s

April 19, 2024April 18, 2024 / Lori Lawe / 1 Comment

I was having considerable dental work done, about a 3-hour appointment.

I brought my audiobook so “I can pretend I’m somewhere else,” I told the dentist. I was listening to a dramatization of people who were persecuted and even martyred for their faith. That audiobook helped to put my own relatively minor suffering in perspective.

And yet, as the dentist said, “This is the part when I’m like a woodpecker,” and placed a metal rod on my teeth which he then proceeded to hammer on like a mallet, I felt slightly… uncomfortable.

I sensed Holy Spirit in the room, almost like He was sitting beside me, wanting to hold my hand.

It used to be surprising to me when God wanted to speak or envelope me in His love.

But not anymore.

At that moment, I briefly remembered some ridiculous things my daughter feared. One summer, for example, she was scared of house flies and would not go to the park or eat outside without screaming as this terrifying flying animal approached her. I brushed off her fears and told her to move on.

And yet that’s not how Holy Spirit treated me with my concerns, which are so tiny in the scope of life.

Every time the dentist gently smashed me in my face, I could sense my adrenaline rise, and then I could sense Jesus comforting me. Like a roller coaster constantly about to head uphill, he smoothed out the hills and valleys of this experience so that my roller coaster ride was less bumpy. As I fearfully clutched His hand, He calmed me repeatedly so that the essence of this experience was the peace of His comfort.

He seemed to be holding my hand.

When the ordeal was over, the dentist and dental assistant commented that dental work would be much easier if more patients were as calm as I was.

I couldn’t have been more shocked.

“Who, me?” I wondered, looking around.

God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us.
The Message

And God, may I be the comforting presence to another’s fears next.

And so, what are the easiest ways to be brave at the dentist’s or doctor’s?

I have no idea, unfortunately, however three clues we can glean from this recent experience are:

1. Listen to audiobooks about people who die for a cause they believe in while people are deliberately maiming you. It helps! Try this one to get you started.

2. Practice picking up the clues of God’s presence in your life, and talk to a trusted friend about your questions and experiences.

3. Ask Him to comfort you and hold on tight when Jesus surprises you by showing up in your life.

God, may You comfort everyone reading this at their upcoming medical appointments more intimately with your soothing words, voice, and tangible arms of love. We pray for strength for today with the challenges each of us faces. Help us to learn how to more fully lean on You when life’s challenges come, we pray.

Stumbling Under The Burdens Of Life? Easiest Traveling Ahead

April 18, 2024April 16, 2024 / Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Our good-natured, fluffy golden doodle bared his teeth and lunged at our bunny.

Our bunny would have had significant injury had I not automatically reefed on his leash, so he bit the air next to the bunny instead.

Our dog had never before tried to bite our bunny. We were teaching our dog to lie submissively when the bunny was near. The two animals often touched noses, and sometimes, tail wagging, our dog licked the bunny.

But not on that day.

Immediately before this incident, I relayed a dream I had the night before to my husband and daughter. It was about a bunny mauled by a dog. The bunny was dead, or so I thought, but when I picked it up to bury it, I realized it was still breathing, but barely.

Was there a link between this odd dream I relayed and the bizarre, similar real-life event that happened only five minutes later?

We don’t want to be too quick to assume every dream is from God when processed pizza is the source most often.

But nor do we want to toss all our dreams, assuming God can’t speak through them.

How can we know when God may be speaking in a dream?

When we see something similar happening twice, it can be an indicator to stop, pray, and ask God.

For example, this happened in the ancient texts of spiritual wisdom.

When Pharoah had dreams of spiritual guidance, he had two dreams with a similar meaning, although the content was different. Same with Joseph. And God uses this pattern with me, I’ve noticed.

God says things twice to get our attention, sometimes.

So what was He saying through the bunny and dog dream, if indeed He was speaking?

In the whirlwind and confusion of my unprocessed thoughts, concerns, and worries, one person in my life seemed to be rushing into a situation, like a bunny, moving fast. And it was dangerous for her.

Help her, God seemed to be imploring me.

Help her to see the danger that she cannot see.

So I phoned her, and spoke my heart, and warned her.

And she listened.

Will she heed this warning and slow down? That is not a weight for me to carry. We all must live our own lives, choose our paths, and face our monsters we meet on the way.

Whenever you hear me say something, warn them for me. If . . . you warn [them] and they keep right on . . . You’ll have saved your life.
The Message

We held hands for a moment, walking together along our shared paths, her and I. And I spoke the words that seemed to be birthed by the heart of God through my lips; however garbled these words may have emerged, and however tainted with filth from my own life.

And we parted ways, with a wave, her and I.

So we look around in wonder as we journey because we don’t know who may touch our hearts with love next.

Because I wonder who will be burdened by God to blow like the wind so I move a little to the left or right, as God whispers to their souls? Who next must speak to me what it seems He is whispering to them about my life?

And life’s journey becomes a little easier to travel.

Roll A Dice or Ask God?

April 16, 2024April 9, 2024 / Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

What is the best way to make decisions? Does God play a part in our future decision-making? And if so, how?

Do we sit alone in our bedroom, eyes tightly closed and hope for a magic genie or an angel to answer questions about our careers or other important life decisions?

Or do we say a quick prayer and then do what seems right in our eyes, ignoring God until Sunday morning?

Or is there a middle way, where He sometimes speaks and where we sometimes hear Him?

I choose the rolling a dice option.

Roll the dice. My degree major is . . .

Four years later, I exited college, holding that degree certificate and wondering whether to turn left or right at the next fork in the road.

Can I borrow your dice?

We expect to make decisions this way.

This is mostly because we’d never heard of strolling through life any other way.

The chatty stranger I met yesterday recalled that when he was in his late teens, his mom announced that she wouldn’t have a son of hers playing video games in the basement! (There may have been an interesting story there, but he skipped that part.)

Regardless, it was time for him to find a job.

He flipped through the local college career guide like a Sears catalogue and chose “Millwright.”

The term had a nice ring to it.

Thirty working years later, he was sitting in a local coffee shop recounting this story to me.

It was time for his daughter to flip through an updated Sears catalogue, close her eyes, point to a career option and . . . BINGO! What career lay under her finger when she opened her eyes? Better dedicate the next 40 years to that option….!

What if there is a better way?

There is.

I recently chatted with two local teens from our church at a sledding party. We discussed their futures between the “Yahoo!” and crashes.

For a few minutes.

I had been thinking recently of offering to pray for discernment with her, to sort out the youth’s fears from her passions, to think through whether red herring motives, such as a desire for excessive money, praise of others, or prestige, were the sneaky drivers in their car, leading eventually to a crash when these idols failed 5 or 15 or 20 years later.

To pray and listen together.

We didn’t make the time for that, but it was on my to-do list. Way, way down on my to-do list. But on my heart.

When I spoke to one of them yesterday, I felt Holy Spirit guiding the questions.

And then, as she spoke about something else, Holy Spirit whispered, teacher. She’s a teacher.

I was startled.

So was she.

Fear of being good enough at explaining things had been holding her back. However, she was offered a part-time teaching assistant job at a local school she hadn’t applied to yet. I encouraged her to update her resume, apply for this part-time job and check it out.

She had been procrastinating, letting fear hold her back.

Then the teen confided that many years ago, while praying, a young girl told her that she thought God was saying she would be a teacher, also.

Hmmm . . . maybe God IS like the potter, shaping us, moulding us, knowing who we are.

It sure beats rolling a dice.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help.
The Message

Whether she chooses to work through her fears is her decision. My role was only to plant a seed. She may dig up the plant and toss it aside or water and nurture it if she senses God also guiding her in this direction.

And if I was wrong, then she can slap me in the face and we move on! (Actually she doesn’t slap me in the face. She has to love me!) But if I got it wrong, as I strain to understand and practice listening to God with my broken ears, I chalk it up to a learning experience and try again tomorrow.

We’re learning together how to walk in faith.

And sometimes, when we pray for and love one another, what He says is amazing.

Like the time God directed my career through the prayer of a friend.

Thank you, Jesus, for loving to answer us when we call to You! Help us let You steer our cars. We pray you blow your healing wind on our ears so the muffled sounds make sense to our hearts with broken motives and unhealed desires.

Anger, Not Indifference, Expresses Love

April 11, 2024April 10, 2024 / Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

The bible story pictures tend to most often portray Jesus sitting on the grass, Buddha style, with some children frolicking nearby, spewing truths that people fell over themselves trying to catch.

Which would be true.

But Jesus also got angry.

Anger fueled by love that erups within our souls like a volcano sometimes contains the seeds that can eventually heal culture.

TED: How To Make Peace? Get Angry by Kailash Satyarthi

Examples of the rumble in my soul:

Smartphones and other devices distract us from the search for God that stirs our souls. We yawn, and these devices sing us a lullaby and tuck us into bed. Hours and hours of these distractions put the raging monster, capable of transforming an entire cultural landscape to sleep with its soft coos and gentle caresses. Sleep, little babe, sleep. And we obey.
For those of us who claim to follow Jesus, which almost one-third of the people on earth claim to do, we are told we are part of God’s army of brave warriors. But we too often look at the armour next to us on the ground, asking “Isn’t it too heavy to lift, and how does one fasten these garments anyway?” We lamely look around and see some using their swords with skill, defeating the evil of the mind, and they beg us to join them in the fight. God whispers to us but we don’t hear Him. We are looking for something – our ears.
A generation of tots lined up in rows, and we calmly watch as they march in neat little rows, each one off the edge of the cliff. “What can we do anyway?” we mourn a bit to each other amidst sips of tea. And so, a generation is led to the pit of pornography addiction and masochistic internet violence as a common cultural pastime. They spend the next decades trying to struggle out of the steep-sided, sand-covered pit of secret sexual addictions*. And we turn our backs so that we can’t see them fall.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOM

Are we ready, yet, to wake early and cry out from the fetal position, begging for wisdom, ears to hear, and a living heart in exchange for our hardened coal-shaped ones?

And as we are comforted by Jesus, is He asking us to comfort or to challenge our secular or church culture or to change our actions? He gives us a drink of His medicine that hurts us and then heals us of the diseases caught by our culture. Anyone thirsty?

What mountainside is He asking us to allow to be transformed by righteous anger spawned by love for God, ourselves, and others?

How does God want to transform our righteous anger into love in action?

And volcanos affect others. And so another person picks up the ash-laden, dirty piece of paper spewed from one of these God-inspired volcanos. Can they make out the letters, which are dirty and half missing?

Yes, they read it . . . “Climate injustice is linked to poverty,” says one scrap of paper. And with a gentle nudge from our Saviour, a rub on the back, telling her it is okay to be angry, another explosion, and another and another, for the ash from one volcano encourages the next to explode.

Love for God, for our fellow human sheep, those both lost and found, beget love in prayer and action.

And are we afraid?

Afraid of who we would be, of what we would do if we stopped holding in our anger, stopping sucking in our stomach like a weightlifter, stopped smiling to show off artificial, TV-worthy teeth?

What if we didn’t care what they thought of us or what we looked like? What if we looked more like John the Baptist, eating whatever we distractedly found along the way, dressed in ripped rags from our fierce single-minded pursuit of God, and covered in ash from being so close to the explosions?

Because when God looks at us, sometimes He is looking for the fruit that the seed of anger produces in our lives.

So we can exchange our anger for love in action.

And that is how culture is restored.

Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, “Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!”
The Message

Blogpost Footnotes:

*For a secular example, see Chapter 4 of The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge

Anger, Expressed As Love, Is Hope For Culture

April 9, 2024April 8, 2024 / Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

God is very different from who I thought He would be.

I’m a lot different from who I thought I would eventually become when I first started longing to know more about God, too.

At Sunday school or elsewhere when we first heard about God, He often appeared as a “turn the other cheek” when an enemy tried to smack Him kind of a guy.

And since we are made in His image, I had a vague impression that the ultimate goal of the spiritual life is to become the kind of person who lies down so people can wipe their feet on us.

If that’s the case, then I was blown away by what God spoke into the recesses of my heart that day. God, are you who I think you are?

Of course not,

is His inaudible answer, and in his fury at the audacity of the question, He erupts as a violent volcano, splashing the earth with ashes of his love.

A volcano . . . erupting . . . love? I can explain because I am a mini-volcano formed in His image. I haven’t exploded yet. But I can feel the rumble, and I know it is coming.

And he is edging me on.

Don’t be afraid of your anger,

He spoke gently into the recesses of my heart recently. He comforted me in empathy, the way my dad would rub my back when I was a child, just before I would throw up. You know that feeling just before you are sick when you remember you will feel much better to have the bile removed from inside of you? That’s how I have been feeling.

I had been covering up the threatening volcanic eruption with my best church bonnet and long white Sunday dress.

Like the person who travels to a volcano that threatens eruption, and pours a bit of water, a shovel full at a time, on top of the huge mountain to pacify it a little bit, I placated my growing anger.

I shoved the equivalent of a baby pacifier into my mouth at church, turned aside, and listened to relentless chatter. Another shovelful of water, please. Or she’s a gonna blow.

My anger terrifies me.

I once climbed an active volcano in Costa Rica, la Rincon de la Vieja. Tourists would never have been allowed that close to an active volcano in ultra-safe Canada. They wouldn’t have been allowed within miles of that place. And as I stood at the top of that mountain and looked around, I was shocked at the scale of the devastation.

An entire mountainside of bare rocks, with the jungle forest beginning abruptly in the valley far below.

Yet scientists know that after the initial devastation, volcanic ash enriches the soil with its dense nutrient load.

Soil from this ash produces some of the lushest plant life on earth.

So as God rubs my back, gently telling me it’s okay to be sick, I realize that holding in my anger only makes me feel sicker.

At that moment, the clerk at the checkout counter seemed to silently ask me as she wrapped my package with a smile, “Would you like modern-day slavery with that?¨

And my anger, rightly expressed as love, compels me to take one small step in a direction that opens the door to better alignment with my true identity.

And this anger, no longer stuffed inside but rightly expelled as love, contains the soil that can nourish the seed of hope.

Does anyone dare despise this day of small beginnings?
The Message

Stop Agonizing – 2 Unmissable Reasons To Homeschool (Or Not)

April 5, 2024April 4, 2024 / Lori Lawe / 5 Comments

For most of us, deciding whether to homeschool or not is an agonizing decision.

So, let’s say we choose to homeschool. What if we wake up one Saturday late because we are exhausted and realize with terror that we’ve ruined our kids? That they are irrevocably broken?

On the other hand, what if we put our kids through the cookie-cutter “everyone-else-is-doing-it” public school experience, and after confidently sipping lemonade with our feet up, discover the cookie-cutter is broken, and we have a different-shaped kid than we expected?

This parenting gig is not for the faint of heart.

But you must decide by Monday because school starts then, and you still don’t have your books (I’ve been there), if you will plunge into the homeschooling world – the beautiful, exhausting, messy, societally outcast-able (your kids do WHAT all day??) world of homeschooling.

So, to homeschool or not?

The cons of homeschooling and public schooling should be thoroughly evaluated to decide whether you should consider homeschooling.

First, let’s study the cons of homeschooling.

#1 – The number one con of homeschooling is that they are HOME. ALL the time. Wow. Need I say more? Before you grab a martini and try to forget that you were even considering this option, please read on.

#2 – The number two con of homeschooling is that you have to regularly flip through your Rolodex, or whatever, pick up the phone and CALL their friends so that they have a play date.

Well, of course, now we do all that in one swipe, but you get the point. It is ANNOYING. If you toss your kids in a room full of kids exactly the same age as them and leave them there every day for a year, you don’t NECESSARILY need to ensure they are spending even MORE time with these same kids. Enough said.

Now, let’s study the cons of public schooling.

#1 – The number one con of public schooling is that they are GONE. ALL the time. Wow. Need I say more? We shuffle the little snotty cuties off to dance or soccer practice after school and then to play dates or birthday parties. They NEED even MORE time with the same kids discussed in point #2 above so other kids don’t climb over them in the grade school pecking order.

Now, there are only drops of water in the jug of time the kids have left over for YOU. Before you grab a martini and try to forget that you were even considering this option, please read on.

#2 – The number two con of public schooling is the school system may put you in the equivalent of a dark closet and shut the door while your child is going through something that will affect them for the rest of their life*.

They will do this to you because they want to help your child. Whether they are right or not is a discussion for another time.

The point is that abdicating parental involvement in a life-altering event for your child is now part of what your signature indicates when you enroll them in kindergarten.

It’s worth considering this, at least, as you have tea and perhaps flip a coin to help choose a schooling option for your children.

And the point of this blogpost? Perhaps every involved parent should seriously consider homeschooling. Now, I do know that homeschooling is not an option for every family. And indeed, this is not the best choice for every family. And even if it were, most families aren’t crazy enough to try it.

God, as a parent Yourself, you empathize with us that parenting is not for the faint of heart. Please help us to confidently decide which schooling option is best for each child this year. Guide us as You see the future and know what is best for each unique child.

Cry for help and you’ll find it’s grace and more grace.
The Message

Do you sense that God may be nudging you toward homeschooling? What makes you want to move in this direction? If you are currently homeschooling and want to quit, we encourage you to keep sailing in the same direction until the skies clear, friend.