Homeschool

How To Exercise When You Are A Busy Homeschooling Parent!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

How do we become the kind of homeschooling parent with time to exercise?

Good question.

As discussed here and here, we throw our old identities of competent, non-butt-smelling parents out the window. Then, we think up a new plan that is dissonant with the parent we thought we would become. We embrace our inner loser.

And so, when I therefore stopped trying to be excellent as a homeschooling parent, the solution became apparent:

Let them rot their brains!

I decided, in my excess of homeschooling wisdom born from a recognition of my incompetencies, to begin each day by pouring into my children’s brains not challenging academic subjects, but . . . content dribbled from online devices straight into their beautiful little brains as they stared intently at screens!

I essentially bribed them.

“Look,” I said that morning as I pulled out their new to-do lists. “Do the stuff on the list this morning and then you will get to rot your brains with time online!” I promised them that big carrot held out tantalizingly close.

And so they finally got up, brushed their little teeth, put away the milk (one of their to-do items in that season), got dressed, combed their cute little hair, and then sat down to veg out on a device.

I let them watch anything they wanted from the RightNow Media app. I can trust what this company produces. And for a high-tech tip, if you triple-click your iPad or iPhone the kids can’t suddenly switch from the app of your choice to their favourite “Candy Plus Violence!” (or whatever) app.

We all won!

I got my sweat on downstairs on my elliptical machine for half an hour while they watched something that was loosely a morning character development program. (That was the rationale of the old “I must be an exceptional homeschooling parent” tiny voice remnant that still lurked in the recesses of my mind.) I got my sweat on, and the best thing was that I could find them all at 8:00 am, and they were ready to go!

When I sneakily put pencils into their hands in the last 10 seconds of their program, it was a transition they barely even noticed, from vegging out to doing math!

By 10:00 am every single day, I felt I should have won a homeschooling award. (I didn’t. No one cared. God does though!*)

So, lose your respectable homeschooling parent identity!

Let them rot their brains online early every morning instead!

You’ll feel amazing AFTER exercising! (Not before or during exercising – Let it be known). It feels pretty great (eventually) to shift identity, too. And so, how do we change our identity to the kind of parent who exercises?

1. All of our initial ideas about who we will become as homeschooling parents are kind of nut-so if we’re honest! Let’s toss those ideas with our huge egos and embrace mediocrity for our children instead! 

2. Our children may need their brains to rot a little so that this homeschooling journey is sustainable for all of us. So be it! 

3. Time for popcorn and a group educational video at 11:00 am, little family? We did something useful today! Let’s celebrate! We give each other a high five, and I have time for a visit with a homeschooling mom that afternoon. (While the kids build a mini-nuclear reactor or do whatever it is homeschooled kids do in their spare time). 

This homeschooling ship is on course!

When a mom’s long-term well-being matters EQUALLY as much as the (nut-so, unrealistic) goals we have for our children*, this homeschooling ship can sail into the future as long and as far as God calls us.

Well done, parents!

Love others as well as you love yourself

Jesus of Nazareth, a guy with tons of wisdom!

As you listen to this song below, consider asking the King of Kings, the guy who longs to pour love on you as your Father, what gifts He longs to put into the hands of His favourite child, you.

(Because we’re all His favourite child. Shhh… that’s God’s secret that He is whispering to you even now. Hear Him?)

Blogpost Footnotes

*That discussion is for next time – we are all works in progress!

The Best Solutions Suddenly Materialize When We Embrace Our Inner Loser!

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

The problem I couldn’t solve in that season was, “How do I, a VERY busy, mentally fragile (We’re around kids a LOT) homeschooling parent, find time to exercise?”

I did, eventually, find a solution to this problem by embracing my inner loser. I hope this problem-solving method helps you find solutions to your biggest problems, too! Here’s what happened, which is a continuation of this post.

And yes, I realize this last post was useless without an explanation, which I didn’t have time to provide.

Now, where was I? Ah yes. Smelling kid’s butts. After the low of us parents becoming butt-sniffers, we hit an even lower low several months later.

Butt-sniffing became our accidental family culture.

Our two-year-old, who loved to mimic our behaviour, stopped next to me as I sat on an office stool and then had a sniff before she carried on with her other little tasks. I looked at her, startled and then smiled lamely at my husband.

How did we become THAT family?*

The point is, as discussed last time, the person we become is not always the person we aspire to be.

Not only did I find it convenient to assume the identity of a butt-sniffing parent, but I also found it convenient to shirk the identity of a homeschooling parent who has all of her ducks in a row.

Which brings me, finally, to embracing our inner loser so we can become a homeschool parent who exercises.

Before I started on this homeschooling journey, I, like you if you homeschool, envisioned myself as a particular type of homeschooling parent. This is not the parent I eventually became. I’m okay with that now.

But the shaky ground of this identity incongruence was a roller coaster ride.

I envisioned myself nicely coifed and looking like my favourite public school teacher in Grade Three, Mrs. Chamberlain. Instead, I very quickly became that parent still wearing a house coat and curlers in my hair at 11:00 am, downing my fourth coffee, and trying to find the kids so I could corral them inside. We began the day with our “Homeschool Morning Routine”, which, for us was trying to find our books or pencils strewn around the house and yard the day before.

A new problem also emerged: I knew my inconvenient, neglected body needed to start exercising again.

I couldn’t even figure out how to encourage, bribe or command my children to put the milk away after they finished breakfast (In fact, I still haven’t figured that out with one of my teenagers). How would I keep these little ones on their homeschooling tasks while I left their side to exercise?

The feat seemed impossible.

Until my new identity as an incompetent homeschooling parent thought up a solution.

Realizing I was – ahem- a BIT of a (whisper) homeschooling loser, once I stopped trying so hard to be an exercise enthusiast, and embraced mediocrity, the solution to my problem was obvious!

I’ll tell you specifically what that is next time.**

The point is, let’s embrace our inner incompetence!

Perhaps the solutions to your problems can be found there, too!

Since we’ve . . . proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God . . . got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.

The Message

Once we accept our identities as people who are incompetent in so many ways, life suddenly gets much more manageable!

Time to stop trying so hard and embrace your inner loser, too?

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

Blogpost Footnotes

*See this post for a perfectly reasonable answer, thank you very much, okay?!

**Ah! I forgot to say something useful again!

Not Exercising? Try Shifting Identity To The Parent You Never Wanted To Become

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

How do we develop an exercise routine we can stick to as parents?

We must morph into the parents we never dreamed we’d become.

And I mean to become the parent we feared we would become.

I’ll explain.

It all started the day I started sniffing my kid’s butts.

When I was a well-coiffed, austere young woman in my twenties, I wrinkled up my nose at those homesteading women with several children crowding around them as they made cookies and managed a beehive simultaneously. “Isn’t that disgusting?” my sophisticated friends and I whispered, and we looked away in horror when one of these busy moms lifted her toddler, sniffed around their child’s middle for signs of a “Number two” and quickly set them back down on the floor again. This mom then happily continued stirring cookies, unpasteurized honey, or whatever she did all day.

“I would never do that butt-sniffing manoeuvre!”

When my children were toddlers, I gasped my way to a mom and toddler’s event one morning, my hair dishevelled, unmatched dirty clothing thrown over my and my toddler’s forms. I was clinging to a half-drunk coffee for dear life as I sat next to a fellow mom and empathized delightedly with her. We shared similar tales of near survival, of these miniature beings often holding us hostage to their need.

Suddenly, I remembered that I should probably check the older daughter, who was not yet fully toilet trained.

I grabbed my daughter’s arm and yanked her away from her friend. My daughter morphed from playing contentedly to screaming like a fire truck. I nearly lost the battle of the wills but managed to stuff her into the change-room, where I opened her training diaper and

. . . nothing.

There was nothing there.

When I returned to my friend, she was already chatting with another dishevelled woman, and for the rest of that “mom’s time,” my two toddlers had incessant needs again.

So it didn’t take long before I happily lifted my toddlers when they were playing contentedly, smelled their butts, and set them back down again with a wink and a nod.

I continued my coffee and well-deserved amiable chat with other homeschooling parent survivors,

My identity had shifted.

And similarly, what kind of identity shift do we need to become the kind of homeschooling parent who exercises?

1. We realize that if we are going to stay in this game long-haul we’ve got to surrender our pre-conceived ideas of success as defined by this culture, or worse, by our expectations of ourselves.

2. Our identity must be firmly linked to those who are societally undignified. We delight in our identity as children of the king, not as classy members of a specific culture (i.e. of any culture).

 3. We have fun, dancing with joy with our two-year-olds because we finally figured out that when we are happy, our little ones are too.

Throw off your chains, captive daughter . . . ! God says, “You were sold for nothing. You’re being bought back for nothing.”

The Message

And it was this change in perspective, from “culturally respectable” to “daughter of the King,” that led me to be the kind of parent who exercises regularly, as well.

The link between a shift in identity and exercise will be discussed another time.

I promise to say something useful sometime! That is if I remember to finish this blogpost series on exercising when homeschooling. This post was essential to set the foundation for when we will dive into the nitty-gritty of the shift in identity required to exercise while homeschooling young children.

For now, the first step is to stop trying to be “respectable”!

It doesn’t work anyway!

You’re welcome!

Good luck!

Authentic Fruit Is What Happens When Parents Pour Into Kids, Creating Spiritual Desperation

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

After gabbing it up with my teenage daughter as they waited in line that day, the stranger grabbed my arm and whispered, “You did a great job with her. She is so kind. Well done, Mama.”

After I picked my ego up off the floor, where it has been the last two decades, trampled by societal expectations for a productive life (Hint – Homeschooling is not a candidate in this employment contest), I pinned my self-esteem back onto my chest, and thought, “Yes! You are right! She IS amazing!”

But the thing is, she didn’t come out of the womb this way

Even after 10,893,231 conversations in which I turned blue in the face and explained how to fit into society (i.e. NOT by wearing pasta in our hair when in a restaurant), she STILL wasn’t that easy to be around.

The POINT is that homeschooled kids are often well-adjusted because:

(1) Parents KNOW what is going on, in terms of that naughty behaviour we would rather not deal with, but that we have to address because we are spending 10,000 minutes (almost all the time) with them again this week,

(2) Parents can’t ship them off on a bus every morning, even BECAUSE they know what is going on (They would say “Thank God” if they would go on a bus SOMETIMES), and,

(3) Parents are confronted day after day, hour after hour, minute after long minute some days with the FACT that they are spending INORDINATE amounts of time with unsanctified humans.

Worse, parents are confronted with the reality of OUR need for sanctification, and this is humiliating for us. So, we run to God and beg for help on our knees BECAUSE we are ALL such desperate losers. But the sweat and tears of our prayers eventually sanctify our kids BECAUSE they receive this message of grace through our lives, as God sanctifies us.

Translation: We ADMIT we parents are losers, and then we gently reveal the truth to our child that she, too, did the wrong thing again when she smacked that kid on the head with her firetruck because she wanted HIS cupcake too.

But this grace in our lives, this deep understanding of our need for forgiveness, softens our speech a little.

do not provoke your children . . . by the way you treat them

Ancient Text

And this broccoli seasoned with the melted cheese of our own desperate need for forgiveness becomes a food our kids can swallow.

And we both grow a little more today, our plant’s roots grasping a little more of the water that truly satisfies, and so fruit in our lives and our kid’s lives will begin to grow.

It’s a law of nature.

So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit.

The Message

And when they compliment you again for having kind kids?

You can sit back, relax, take a sip of a cold summer drink and know that the path of life you chose was a good one, which is bearing fruit in your life, too.

Pick some fruit from the tree of your life and enjoy it today.

Well done, Mom and Dad.

God sees your investment in your kids. His praise that you followed His lead is the food that truly satisfies. Nothing good comes without sweat and handing over our fears to God.

How are you choosing to invest your life?

Homeschoolers Heal Us By Modelling How To Shake Fear And Blossom

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

We were discussing the more profound things of life, unearthing the cultural assumptions that keep us in bondage.

And this is what she said: “Homeschooling gave me the confidence to try new things.”

She said it matter-of-factly, confidently, as if she believed it. She was homeschooled, and then homeschooled her kids. So she had many years to mull over homeschooling.

I was struck by her confidence and creativity to try new things, but she brushed me off, attributing these traits to being homeschooled. For example, she is a self-taught photographer and took these photos of our daughter, assuring us that her red dress would “pop” in the pictures at this location. She was right.

She explained her homeschooling philosophy to me as her camera clicked, “When you are homeschooled, there aren’t as many kids hovering over you, making fun of you for trying something different. So I felt free to try new things.”

She painted her family’s camping trailer with flowers and a mountain scene and then was commissioned by her city to paint a mural.

“I’m mostly self-taught,” she explains, but she’s having fun, exploring the talents God endowed her with, instead of burying them in fear, as so many of us accidentally do.

“I was afraid I might disappoint you . . .”

(Jesus) was furious. ‘That’s a terrible way to live!”

The Message

But we’d rarely seen another way.

She reminds me of my kids, who are also homeschooled.

For example, today, our family is in Salt Lake City, Utah, attending a “Reborn” doll conference.

Our 15-year-old daughter had the confidence and time to explore the God-given gifts endowed to her, too

Last week, she sold one of her dolls overseas for over $400.

“I didn’t know you could do that!” I exclaimed from my public-schooled worldview.

She didn’t know either.

But she’s not afraid to try.

Our other daughter wrote and self-published a novel by the time she was 15 years old.

What would we do if we weren’t afraid to try?

I would keep writing even though you may laugh at me. How is God calling you to awaken? What do you imagine the next step is on the life adventure He has mapped out for you?

Ready to take another step, friend?

Let’s hold hands because I’m afraid, too.

I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears.

Ancient Text

The definition of courage is NOT “Not being afraid” but “Doing it anyway.”

What is God whispering to you?

What’s the next step?

Let’s go!

He’s waiting.

The Eye-Opening Way To Soar Like A Bird Over The Desert Of A Wasted Life

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I was flying one day, soaring like a bird. I could see for miles around. I could hear God whisper, even though I doubted I heard correctly or well.

He said He was pleased with me.

I had a life the world scrunched up like used paper, ready to toss in the garbage.

But God saw a world of possibilities on the horizon of my life as we soared that day above the clouds.

I had invested my life. I had spent my life, out of the world’s horizon of possibilities, in one tiny area. I had invested most of my health and youthful vitality into two small children.

Homeschool them, He had whispered that day.

And through my tears, and hopes, I obeyed, never imagining how far into the horizon of my life this journey would take me.

And again, He said, year after year.

And when I look back now, with my hurting back of older age and the gray hairs that crown my face, it was a worthless life, one the world throws away.

“Heaven always recognizes the fathers and the mothers who pay the price and create momentum for following generations. Fathers and mothers, in eternity, always receive benefits (if you will) from what their investment provided in future generations . . .

Be willing to be the first in your family to break into something.

Be willing to pay the price to get a breakthrough that the rest of your descendants will benefit from because heaven applauds those whose . . . anointing is less, but they created the momentum so that another generation could inherit it and take it to a place they never had time to go.”

Bill Johnson in The Test For Promotion

“She threw away her talents!” they exclaim. My national government, the university and others had thrown money at me in my youth. “Study and take this valued position,” they offered.

And I did, for a while.

And then I homeschooled my kids for many, many years.

Why?

I don’t know.

I’m following my Saviour, and this is where He led me.

He seems to be leading some others there, too.

I am not a chess player, but only one of His pieces.

I must trust that my life, rightly lived, opens the door to the wind of the spirit of His work in the world.

And where is He leading me next?

It doesn’t matter.

Because in His arms, I can place the stewardship of my life. I feel alive there. I pray for you, too, to be set free from the snares of the approval our society offers, entangled by the search for ever more wealth, when we have enough food for today.

I pray for the strength to invest in little people if He calls you to set aside time for this.

And not everyone is called to homeschool, of course.

But wherever He calls you, I pray you follow.

And in each season of our lives, may we lay down how we thought life would be and pick up the strange reality of His life at work through a group of people ready to join the adventure.

Where is He leading you in this season?

Need some water for the journey? I hold out my canteen to you. And come on, let’s rest in this cabin we stumbled across before we start again, journeying tomorrow.

A little rest will do us good.

“Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest . . . Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

The Message

Have any food to share?

And may you have the strength to journey on again tomorrow, friend.

May the food God sends you be enough for today.

God then told Elijah . . . “You can drink fresh water from the brook; I’ve ordered the ravens to feed you.”

The Message

God, may we be awakened to see with Your eyes we pray.

Relax and Have More Fun! They HAVE to Love You!

/ Lori Lawe / 3 Comments

What if people HAD to love you?

I figured out what my family REALLY thought about me lately, and it was a bit of a shock.

Here’s what happened.

We were reading an excellent book together as a family.

Caveat: Before you get the wrong idea of us all drinking hot chocolate and stringing popcorn and cranberries by the fire as we each take turns reading aloud together, singing a song between each chapter, aka Little House on the Prairie style, no, it wasn’t like that. It was an audiobook played in the car during our day-long drive to visit extended family. The book just helped us not to want to kill each other.

Setting the mood.

Anyway, the book was excellent. It was called Jesus Revolution. I would highly recommend it*. We all got into the story, and even the child we initially had to bribe to listen to the story with us asked for more!

At one point in the book, the author, Greg Laurie, is described as having something like “deep spiritual depth and a bit of an unpredictable, crazy personality. You never knew what he was going to do next.”

My husband looked at me sneakily out of the corner of his eye, smirking. “WHAT???” I asked. “What are you smirking about??”

“Oh,” he replied, looking away casually, “just something said in the book.”

“What??” I protested. “I’m not…!” And then he laughed, and there was a muffled chuckle, I think, from the back seats.

So I guess my family thinks that his personality describes me!

Hmmm. . .

But that’s okay because my family HAS to love me.

What do I mean, you ask?

Well, we homeschool them, so we read to them from books that say things like this:

Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it.

The Message

Then, we go to a church where they read the same stuff.

At church, they HAVE to love you, too! If you find people who don’t love you there, find some others to love. You’ll find true believers who promise to love you no matter what your personality – even the “unusual” ones – whew!

So we can finally relax and have fun.

We’re loved!

And this reminds me of what we did last night. I bought a gift for my family – well, sort of. Okay, yes! I did buy it for myself and pretended to give it to the family!

It is called The Adventure Challenge. You scratch off an “Adventure,” and then the family HAS (Yes, teens, that word is “HAS”) to do the Adventure together. Last night, we strung out yarn as an obstacle course through the basement, and we had to go through it as fast as we could, being sprayed in the face with water each time we accidentally touched a string.

It was fun.

And my superhero outfit? Yeah, I am wearing a bathing suit over the top of my leotards. And yes, the big “S” on my shirt WAS made a spur of the moment. It helped me go faster!

I even got first place!

Before any of the others went, I was ranked first, that is.

So relax! Make your teens do fun and crazy stuff with you! If you’re unsure how, try making “fun” a prerequisite to “food,” for example! They’ll thank you later (Okay – maybe MUCH later).

Your kids are loved, too!

And that was the message of the Jesus Revolution book, actually. It was about a bunch of crazy hippy kids who were overcome, in some cases literally, by the love of God. That love overflowed to others and transformed a nation (Even Time Magazine did a cover article about this movement on June 21, 1971).

So go ahead and be the real you, whatever that looks like.

They HAVE to love you!

Blogpost Footnotes

* If bribing your kids to watch a movie with you is less expensive than bribing them to read a book, the movie Jesus Revolution can be rented here.

Despair In Family Relationships? Try Listening To This Astonishing Guy*

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

She rejoiced.

It happened!

She danced in the field that summer morning, praising her maker.

What He promised, quietly, with a whisper of love, that He would guide and comfort, HAD materialized.

Here is what happened.

At the women’s gathering that day long, long ago, this good mother poured out her heart to another.

The tears racked her body as she openly shared her fears.

Generational problems pursued her family. Her grandmother, grandfather, father, mother, sister, and auntie bathed in the pool of these problems. None of them had figured out how to get out of this pool, dry off, to dance in that grassy place in freedom.

They all felt like they were drowning instead.

How would her relationship with her daughters differ from what was experienced by every other family member?

The despair of this situation overwhelmed her.

They bowed their heads, these two women, and prayed together that day so many long years ago.

And God spoke, in the recesses of this desperate mother’s heart, a strategy and plan to walk in freedom, step by step, to carve out a new path from the dysfunctional road all her family member walked.

I’ll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common.

The Message

And she was joined in marriage to a man who also longed to walk a new path, the one that Jesus walked ahead of them and beckoned them to follow.

And they did.

And years later, when their first child leaves home, they look back with a cool drink and remember the pain and branches across the path of the road they followed Jesus on. They remembered their hair and clothes full of the pieces of branches, yet their hearts grew larger each day as they learned, through following Him, how to love a little less selfishly, and pour more of their lives out on the other.

And He healed their union, their diversion from the path the others in their family travelled, with a different destination.

Their relationships with their children were healthy.

Not perfect.

Each member of this small family worked through and argued past, chopped chunks off each other, as a sculptor does to a piece of art.

But their path led to healthier relationships.

This couple celebrated the new lineage of increased unity that bonded their family, as they were all refined by this artist, Jesus.

And they danced together in that grassy meadow, this small family, for something new had risen from the depths into life.

Does anyone dare despise this day of small beginnings?

The Message

Blogpost Footnotes

*Also known as “God”

When Seeking a Simple U-Turn From Drowning To Delight

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Homeward Bound, Again

A cacophony

My head explodes from the noise

Quiet!

The mundane and the repetitive and the

Scrambling over one another

The pressing down of the other

Must STOP

At last

It is quiet

My boots crunch the spring needles

And I finally feel peace

Alive

Look!

A spring visitor with her mate

Chirping at us, welcoming us to

Our own home

A home we forgot to visit

“Come hither!” she beckons

We remember our true home

And journey deeper

Into the forest

Your heart and mine

Beat as one now

I left my idols at home

My schedule

My dominion

My distractions

My crutches

I am a vulnerable beast

Among others

Walking

Remembering my true home

You

Guide me

Comfort me

Show me what you see

Give me a glimpse through

Your telescope

Of the distant mountains

Snow melting

Rivers filling

It is spring

Get ready

Forget about what’s happened;
    don’t keep going over old history.
Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new.
    It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it?

(Says God) in The Message

The Fastest Way To Faith – Walk Through Doors Children Open

/ Lori Lawe / 5 Comments

“Mommy, Mommy!” she called out, running into the room.

She was an adorable three-year-old redhead. Her older sister is comparatively more excitable. The older sister would emotionally max out due to many stimuli, including re-noticing her pink fairy wand or anyone visiting, no matter how sullen and grumpy.

This three-year-old was more even keel at both ends of the excited-angry spectrum.

And I had very rarely seen this child so exuberant.

She grabbed my hand and led me to a run. Where were we going? I wondered with a smile. I tried to get my excited face on, not wanting to squelch whatever new joy she had discovered.

We ran hand in hand to their playroom, and she stopped in front of the window. She looked triumphantly at me. I looked around, trying to grasp what she was showing me.

“Angel!” she exclaimed with desperation, pointing to the window.

Oh! I nodded and smiled.

I didn’t want to correct her, to say, “Oh honey, there is no angel there.”

What if she was seeing an angel? I let her correct me instead. And so my spiritual journey was fueled anew.

We stood hand in hand, looking out the window for a minute or two.

“Oh! Angel gone!” she exclaimed. And just as suddenly, she sat on the floor nearby, re-stacking her blocks.

Kids usher us into the divine. And parenting, because it involves kids, is like steroids for the spiritual life. They violently remove our blinders to how we have stuffed God into the small box of our expectations.

Spend time with children, and we fall to the ground, our knowledge tripping us up. Everything we thought we understood about spirituality has been upended and we are on our rears with dirt in our hair. Our children offer to help us to our feet.

They simplify things for us.

Consider Diane M. Komp, MD, a pediatric oncologist from Yale who:

“found a personal faith while treating . . .. dying children”

A Window to Heaven

In Dr. Komp’s words, children are the “littlest of God’s giants.”

So, can children help us on our spiritual journeys? That depends on our heart’s reaction to the clues children show us – more on this next time. But let’s assume that children sometimes walk ahead of us in critical ways.

Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom

The Message

God, give us humility to be led by our children further and deeper into the essential truths of Your Kingdom, we pray.

I’ll continue this story next time.