Summer 2023 | Volume 16 | Issue 3
It’s funny how many lessons God teaches me while I’m teaching my children. Makayla is in 3rd grade, but I am re-teaching her basic adding and subtraction. It’s crazy that just last year she was doing this along with multiplication, division, and even fractions. However, she was just getting by with math last year. She’d forget what I taught her shortly after I’d taught her.
As I write this, it’s February—6 months into the school year—and she is basically re-doing Kindergarten math. You may wonder why I brought her back to such a basic concept. I’ve questioned myself a time or two as well, but it all comes back to the fact that I want her to have a solid foundation. She was going through the motions and just not entirely grasping the full concept. She had some gaps in her foundation, so to speak. Even though she can’t see it now, I am only looking out for her future. I know that she needs to fully grasp basic math so that she can tackle the more difficult math problems that await her in the years to come.
As I re-enter a season that I thought was far behind me, I am reminded that, just like I want Makayla to have a solid foundation academically, God wants us to have a solid foundation spiritually. He wants to fill in the gaps that I have yet to master. Just like Makayla cannot fully comprehend what lies ahead, neither can I. But I trust my Daddy and I know that His plans are so much better than mine. Jeremiah 29:11 reminds us that He knows the plans that He has for us, plans to prosper us and give us a future and a hope. He sees the big picture. He knows that a solid foundation will come in handy in the future when bigger problems arise.
The crazy thing is that this basic lesson that I am trying to teach my daughter should have only taken 1 month at most, yet her lack of focus has made it take much longer.
Today, as I urged her to please focus so that we could move on, I was reminded that God has been doing the same thing with me. He never wanted me to have to re-enter this season. He hoped I’d learn what I needed in the last season, but I lost focus.
Makayla also has a Valentine’s party tonight at church. I had planned to make homemade icing, sugar cookies, and decorate them with her. We possibly could have even fit in some crafts that she loves to do. Though, since she lacked focus today not only in math but all her other subjects, we finished school much later than planned. She will have a snack to bring to her party, but it just won’t be the grand treat that I wanted to make with her. She may have to settle with some dollar store cookies.
Just like I wanted to bless Makayla, Daddy God wants to bless us. When we lose focus, sometimes we don’t receive His exact plans for us. Sometimes we end up with dollar store cookies when God so desperately wanted to give us homemade.
