Pioneer Files: The Walk that Changed My Life

 

It's okay to breathe.

We've talked a lot about discipline in the previous posts. Today, I want to assure you it's okay to relax, to find your family's rhythm of life as you and your children grow up together. Train and rest. Work and play. Learn by trial and error what's most effective in reaching those hearts and minds you long to present to God.

  

The beauty of a home education is its flexibility. Some days God had different plans for us than the ones I made. Many times an illness, family tragedy, unplanned visitor, or impromptu field trip invaded my neat lesson plans (yes, I made lesson plans). Then I tried to take a deep breath and flow with the day. After all, this was a good way for my children to get a taste of real life uninsulated by the artificial culture of an institutional atmosphere.

These interruptions provided important opportunities for learning as our children watched us interact with others and respond to life’s pressures and demands.

Please, please, make time for fun.

We loved to occasionally surprise our children with time off for a special family field trip. We even took days off just to relax at home. It usually didn’t take long to recover lost ground. I just tried to not make it a habit to let trivial distractions consume our days. It took determination to keep going every day, year after year, and to keep moving toward our goals.

Daily experiences are wonderful teaching resources. Often the best lessons emerge from odd moments or spontaneous conversations. A lunchtime discussion of the news or the discovery of a bird’s nest during a morning walk can provide happy memories and direct our attitudes in a life-changing way.

The Walk that Changed My Life

As a teenager, I was already an avowed evolutionist, well-trained by my public school teacher to regard as backward anyone who believed in special creation by God. But one beautiful spring day, my beloved little Irish grandmother came to visit us. At barely 4'11", she was one of the few people who made me feel tall. She and I took a walk in the sunshine, just basking in the joy of each other’s company and conversing in the natural way that sometimes only grandparents and grandchildren can.

That day we fell onto the subject of evolution as we walked. I defended it with youthful egotism; she opposed it gently. At that moment we happened upon a bird’s nest perched in the branches of a dwarf fruit tree, lying low enough for our inspection. Our movement disturbed the young birds, and in unison they bobbed their fuzzy heads out of the nest and popped open their wide red mouths in a raucous bid for breakfast.

Grandma Jean and I chuckled over our discovery. She wrapped her small hands around the rough nest and looked at me with a smile. The memory of that moment before her next words is preceded in my mind by the sensation of a page tearing into two distinct pieces.

BC and AD. 

Before Christ and In The Year of Our Lord.

 Then she asked me a question.  

“Pam, can you look at this and tell me there is no God?”

I was cut to the quick. This was no scientific debate, no angry exchange of facts and theories. It was nothing less than the Spirit of God blasting through my ignorance, using a beloved grandmother to draw my heart to Him.

To this day, I can't explain why her simple statement touched me so deeply.

I can only tell you that when I looked at the nest and those little birds inside it, the scales over my eyes crashed to the ground. I knew without a doubt that I was wrong. Only much later would I read the first chapter of the epistle to the Romans and learn that creation itself testifies to the reality and nature of the Creator.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 

- Romans 1:20

Grandma Jean died a few years later. But that one day sent me on a journey to find her God and to know Him as she did. It also taught me to never underestimate the work of the Holy Spirit in the simple things we do with our children.

Sometimes we just have to close the books and listen to the song of creation. God speaks louder through what has been made than through our attempts to explain Him. Sometimes, the best thing you can do for your family is to cancel the lesson plans. Take a walk with the kids, fill your lungs with the joy of being alive, and let God lead your path through parenting.