Whenever I try to teach my kids to trust in God’s plan, He always intervenes.
My kids started back to school today after a fabulous summer break. They were not happy. My son spent his last day of sweet summer with friends in the neighborhood, riding bikes and enjoying the outdoors. My daughter met some friends at a pool and then we added a few more and they convened in our basement to talk about the perils of school and how they dreaded it.
I had to run a quick errand to pick up some drum sticks for my son when my daughter called panicked. While she wasn’t happy about going back to school, she had what she considered, the perfect schedule. She had friends in every class and lunch with three of her besties. The girls had all checked the Power School app one more time and she discovered that her schedule had been changed. She had been taken out of math and put into chemistry. This also changed her lunch period.
It had been less than twenty-four hours since we attended the school open house and someone had changed her schedule. This may seem like a very minor issue, and to adults, it is, but to a high school sophomore, it was huge. She asked me to e-mail her adviser and I reminded her that I was driving. I suggested that she e-mail him.
She hates to deal with authority. She would much rather avoid conflict at all cost. Reluctantly, she agreed. I said a prayer for her at this point. I could feel God’s hand in this situation. She e-mailed her adviser and he e-mailed her right back. He was very kind and told her that he didn’t change her schedule, that one of the administrators did, probably to balance class size. He promised to look into it.
She worried all evening. I asked her if she had prayed about it and she said yes. Then I asked her if it ever occurred to her that God had a plan for her, that perhaps she was supposed to meet some new people in the chemistry class. There would be upperclassmen in there as well. I reminded her that when she got put into a group on her mission trip without her friends, she had the time of her life and was thrilled that she ended up where she did. She wasn’t convinced.
She went on to bed and this morning, she was surprisingly calm. I reminded her that life is full of curve balls and that everyone at some point in life, had something changed against their wishes. She e-mailed her adviser again and he asked her to speak to one of the assistant principals. She was super nervous about that, but she had also found a friend in the new class, a girl from church, a girl from our small group class last year. She decided that either way, things would be fine.
Teaching my teens to trust God is one of the most difficult tasks around. When the seemingly minutiae in life is a huge deal, it’s hard to show them that there is in fact, a bigger plan and that God has their best in mind. I find myself praying a lot about wisdom and the ability to show them the truth.
The thing is, when I pray about teaching them trust, God always comes through. After all, He wants them to learn about trusting Him too. I know that God doesn’t work like a genie and the answer to some prayers is no, but the fact that we talked about praying about it, and the fact that she dealt with her adviser herself and the fact that she decided it would be okay either way, had God’s fingerprints all over it.
In the end, she texted me that she was able to keep math and I said a prayer of thanks to the God who loves my children more than I do, as hard as that is for me to understand.
Have an awesome day!
Wendy 🙂