Walk with the wise and become wise,
for a companion of fools suffers harm.[1]
As iron sharpens iron,
so one person sharpens another. [2]
Over the
years, I think my husband and I have had more conversations about school choice
than about pretty much anything else.
Maybe not, but every August it sure seems that way. We have thought through, researched,
prayed over, [read: over-analyzed] nearly every year of our daughters’
educational careers, starting when our oldest was five. [Okay, okay… so we started talking about where she’d go to
kindergarten before she was born.
Big deal.]
Our approach
to choosing what school vs. homeschool vs. private school vs. this school vs.
that school is: We take it year by year.
Every year, every option is on the table. Every option.
So far, I stand by our approach.
I end up with a peace every Fall, that we are exactly where God wants us
to be, although I may not understand the reasons why, and although it may be
the last place I thought we’d be if you’d asked me in June.
But before
that peaceful Fall breezy peace, when we’re in the spring and summer seasons of
the year where we’re laying option after crazy option on the table, the heat
gets turned up. And I start to really
sweat.
That season
ten years ago, when our oldest was about to be kindergarten-age, and we were
making our very first obnoxiously over-analytical school choice – and totally
freaking out about it, I might add – a wise, wise, wise, wise, wise friend said
something to me I’ll never forget.
[You see,
she was an expert. Here I was a
green newbie preschool parent. But
she? She taught sex ed to junior
highers. And not just at one
junior high school. She traveled
from junior high to junior high all over town teaching sex ed (abstinence). That day I just knew my friend could
tell me which school system to put my five year old punkin into… the one where
nobody ever has sex or does drugs or talks back to their teachers.]
But she
didn’t. Instead, she gently but
firmly shook me out of my freak-out and into the reality that by the time my
daughter is in junior high, the name of the school she attends won’t matter
nearly as much as the company of friends she’s a part of, within said school.
We still
pray over school choice each year.
But silly me. It’d make so
much more sense to spend so much more time praying over their friends. Over that network of people they’ll
hang out with at the reunion twenty years from now. Over that circle of kids that will be in
each other’s homes and in each other’s business. There is no perfect school. But there is a perfect gift – I’ve experienced it myself, so
I know! – of a true friendship that makes you love God more and more everyday,
and makes you a sharper (not duller) person because of it.
This morning as I was praying for those friendships for my girls,
the Lord called to my mind the specific friendships He blessed ME with in my
growing up years. I remembered
faces and names, without whom I seriously don’t know where I’d be today. So I tried something new, and I invite
you to try it, too. I prayed for
that specific kind of friend for my girls. Like, “Lord, I pray for ____________ (my daugher),
that You would give her a ____________ (the name of one of my friends
growing up), someone who will ____________, ____________, and ____________
(all the ways God used that specific friend in my life.) It turned into a beautiful prayer too
personal to share on the world wide web.
But suffice it to say, I’m overcome with gratitude today for the friends
He placed ever-so-strategically in my life. And I’m overcome with trust today that He will do the same
for these three daughters of His that live under my crazy care.
Lord, I pray for our family’s wider circle
today.
I am not naïve enough to think that my voice
is the only one speaking into them day after day. And the older they get, the more tuned-in to the other
voices they are. I pray today for
all of ____________’s relationships outside of our home. I pray, Lord, that You’d give her the
gift of a friendship that is like
“iron sharpening iron”… a mutual encouraging, challenging relationship with
someone her age with whom she can be held accountable and be sparked to make
right choices and fall more in love with You. Today.
I pray for the gift of a mentorship relationship with someone older and wiser than
____________, whose voice reflects what we would say, but in a way that
____________ will receive and listen to. Today.
As ____________ becomes more and more
independent, I pray You strategically place friends and mentors in her life to
protect her from harm, to increase her wisdom, and to make her a sharper (not
duller) student, friend, sister, daughter, and lover of You. Today.
Amen.
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