With much excitement and a few jitters, the girls started back to school this week. Since we are on day three of this schedule, everyone is waking up with a smile, optimistic and even eager to get dressed and start the day. The backpacks are organized, the snacks are healthy, and the shoes are paired off in easy to locate places. I fear this season shall pass… come Monday when we remember that we are, by nature, not morning people. Until then, I’m going to relish the calm of these first few days of re-entry.
The girls seem to love their teachers, and the oldest one is even enjoying middle school. But, we had a bobble right out of the gate when the 1st Grader decided I had forgotten her forever when I was delayed in the slow-moving pickup line earlier this week. Everyone knows the car line on the first week of school is a test of one’s spiritual maturity {specifically one’s patience and self-control}. I tried to explain to the distraught and teary 1st Grader that though it seemed like her slothful mother was the last person on earth to get there since she was picked up at 12:32 PM that I had, in fact, been in the line since 11:55 AM. I reassured her that I or her Daddy or one of her family members would always be there to pick her up. And, I thought I had regained her trust. But the next morning she came to our room while it was still dark and whispered in my ear, “Do you think Aunt Heather could pick me up today?”
Yesterday I was fifth in line. This has never happened before and will likely never happen again. The early bird in the school car line doesn’t get the worm or a snack or any sort. They just get an ache in their back from sitting still for too long.
Back to school is also the season for all the extra-curricular activities to resume. Apart from ironing out the logistics of who goes where and when and how, it’s an exciting time. I almost thought I had the girls convinced to participate in a few overlapping activities, but alas, it shall not be so. The oldest one is set on dance and musical theatre. The middle one is doing piano and a cheer team this fall. And, the youngest one is undecided but disinterested in all the above.
Do you know what I have encouraged from early on? Tennis. Do you know how many of my children are taking to this activity? Zero. I say things like:
“Tennis is a lifetime sport!”
“It’s great exercise!”
“The outfits are cute!”
“Your school has a great team!”
And, yet this is the actual response one of them gave me last week:
“Yeah, but it makes me sweat.”
I can’t even with these girls. The 4th Grader told me she would consider a competitive badminton team if the opportunity arises. So, I guess we’ll hold out for that. But it will have to be indoors so we don’t risk breaking a sweat during play.
Speaking of sweat…
I’m not much of a gardener. But after it rained last week I decided to try and uproot a small plant from our landscaping to replace it with a hydrangea plant {which will surely die under my care}. I’m not a particularly strong person, but I shoveled and sweated and still couldn’t get anywhere close to pulling the roots of the tiny plant out of the ground. I was beyond annoyed and had to call in for some reinforcement from the Spouse to get it out.
With the hydrangea in place, I thought my work was done. But a few days ago I noticed that in the spot where I had left just a remnant of the plant we pulled out, it has rerooted itself and already started to grow back!
It has taken me forty years and one incredibly stubborn little plant to really think about what it means to be rooted in something. I remembered a few verses in the Bible about roots and found this one this morning in Ephesians 3:17-18:
And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is.
I think this may need to be our drop off prayer for this new school year because when that is happening, when our roots are going down deep into God’s love… our hearts, and our heads, and our feet are grounded in truth — instead of in our feelings. We may be offended on the playground or lonely at lunch or overlooked in class, but those circumstances won’t have the same power to ruin our day. We can remember who we are and whose we are.
Even in the car pickup line.
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