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I found a new release at the library the other day, called The Comeback: Seven Stories of Women who went from Career to Family and Back Again, by Emma Gilbey Keller. After reading one line of the inside cover, I immediately wanted to read more – ”An inspiring book that argues that women can have it all — just not all at once.”
This echoes what I have long felt — that life happens in seasons.
For seven years I have been a mother of preschoolers. Their needs have been constant and basic — food, clothes, diapers, potty-training, bathing, and so on. Early motherhood is physically and emotionally demanding, and it doesn’t have a definite end moment, it kind of tapers off like the waves on a beach. But it does end.
And now I’m (suddenly!) the mother of elementary-aged children. If I find myself doting over them too much, putting on their clothes for them or reminding them to put their library book in the backpack, then they quickly call me on it. They need to do those things for themselves and this is a good and healthy part of growing up.
Realizing this has been difficult for me. I’ve been restless. I thought about cleaning more, taking up helicopter parenting, or shopping. But none of those sounded appealing.
So I picked up some contract writing work that has been keeping me busy, but yesterday I sent in the invoice and today I’m reflecting on family and career. As I write this, the house is abnormally quiet and through the open window I hear a truck in the distance and birds chirping outside. It’s peaceful, and didn’t I yearn for this during those rowdy summer days?
Like the cool breeze coming through my window — so different from the summer heat – I know my season is changing. May God direct my steps.
It’s back-to-school time, and people of all ages are preparing for the next level in their studies. At church on Wednesday evenings I’ve been teaching a summer Bible class for five year-olds entering kindergarten. While making snakes and cut-out letters with scented homemade play-dough (a smell that reminds me of strawberry Pop-Tarts), I asked the kids if they are excited about going to school. A couple of the girls nodded eagerly, as one rambunctious little boy shouted, “NO! I hate school!”
But they are ready to go, because it’s time for them to learn something new.
In high school and college, we keep track of our progress by counting credit hours. Once you’ve completed a certain number of credit hours per required subject, then you’re able to move on to the next thing. We go from pre-algebra to algebra, from pre-cal to calculus, then to calculus II. Once you’ve mastered (or at least passed) a subject, you earn a set amount of credit hours.
Kinda makes me wonder — does God have a credit hour system? How many do I have?
I’ve always been a bit nerdy and I will just go ahead and say it: I love and will always enjoy learning. In high school I liked science so much that I wanted to learn at the college level, so I audited a class at the local community college. According to one college website, this is what happens when someone audits a class: “students who wish to attend a class without working for or expecting to receive formal credit may register to audit the course. Students who audit a course may not participate in class, do not take examinations, and do not submit papers.”
Hmmmm — all of the fun learning, but none of the responsibility. No one calling on me to answer questions, no cramming for exams — just sitting back in class sipping on my latte, soaking up the information. But on the down-side, there’s no credit hours, no way to claim the effort, no way to move on to the next level.
Please don’t audit your own spiritual growth. Many of us have been going to church for years, passively soaking up all that great information. Bible studies, prayer groups, accountability partners, retreats, ministry fairs, outreach opportunities, special donations of time or money, food drives, I could go on and on. Unlike our Christian friends in China, we have spiritual classes coming out our ears and we’re auditing them all. Not mastering anything, not participating fully in our true calling, neither working for nor expecting to receive formal credit for our spiritual progress.
This needs to change, in me and in you. Do the work! Participate fully! Show up for the exam! Then claim your credit hours and move on to the next level, because life is too short for anything else.
In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Hebrews 5:12-14
Several uplifting faith stories have come my way lately, and I would like to highlight two of them here.
Undercover skeptic softens his view toward Christianity. Ivy League college student Kevin Roose went undercover at conservative Christian school, Liberty University, for the purpose of writing a book about his experience. While at the college founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell, Roose did encounter some fundamentalist and political pressure, but he also discovered that most of the students were surprisingly normal and sincere. Roose said the experience transformed him, and that he now prays to God regularly. For the whole story, click here. (Thanks to Mom for mailing this article to me.)
Christian-turned-atheist returns to Jesus. British Christian author A.N. Wilson was once thought to be the next C.S. Lewis, until he renounced his faith and wrote a book about how Jesus “failed and died.” But this past Easter, Wilson publicly re-converted to Christianity, and wrote a letter in the U.K.’s Daily Mail to Christians, encouraging them to keep the faith and not be deterred by atheist critics like Dawkins. Click here for more. (Thanks to Sarah at Crosswalk.com for drawing my attention to this story.)
I’m not naïve enough to think that these two men will be shining examples of Christianity for the rest of their lives. Like all of us, they can still mess up. And while Kevin Roose now admits to praying since his time at Liberty, he has been quiet about a possible conversion to Christianity. To know more about that, he says, you’ll need to read his book. But in a world where believers are becoming non-believers and many churchgoers no longer go, it’s nice to hear these thoughts.
Say evangelism and I picture a man in a sandwich board on the streets of our inner cities, shouting “Repent!” And in times past, the literal “city” was indeed the best place to be heard by the most ears. Today we have the internet, which unites us across cities, states and countries on one message board. When was the last time you tried to reach out?
I’m currently involved in an interesting discussion on MySpace. If you’re a MySpace member, click here to view it and even participate. I think you can view it even if you aren’t a member, but to comment you’ll need to sign in. So far in this discussion we’ve covered free will, drinking, moral relativism, evolution, and misconceptions about biblical womanhood inside and outside of church. You may want to skip the first page or two, since I got some obscene comments early on (see the last post). But since then it has been interesting and thought-provoking.
I wonder how many people truly hear the guy on the corner with the sandwich board? I have found it’s the same with the web — the best results come from personal relationship, which sometimes means hearing (or reading, in this case) things that I myself wouldn’t say. How else can we be the light in the darkness, if we’re not willing to engage the dark places?
