There is Grace for This

My children are in school.  Drop them off with hug and a kiss and a lunch box kind of school.  I never thought I'd be here.  I was raised in a culture that said homeschooling was the only legitimate option for Christians.  Later, Christian classical school became an acceptable, if not preferable, option.  But not public.  Never, ever public.

But my daughter, my sweet, six year old daughter, is at a public charter school.  This has advantages over the traditional public school both academically and culturally, but it is a tuition free public school nonetheless.  Many would say I am abdicating my God given responsibility to raise, nurture, and educate her in the way she should go.

And Gilead.  Gilead is starting preschool today at the local Lutheran church.  Preschool.  The rhetoric in my head whispers that that is never, ever necessary. That he's my responsibility, and I'm failing him somehow.

I'll have Abel and Pip all day, just like it's been since I became a mother six years ago.  Abel, with his boundless energy, and Pip with his sweet smiles and ability to be a joy-filled baby despite being in pain much of the time.  This way I can care for them, really care for them, without turning on the television because I just need to finish school with Mercy, and the baby will wake up any time.  Or worry about the fact that school isn't getting done when Pip has medical appointments three days a week.

I have a tape running in my head that keeps looping over, and over, and over again.  "There is grace, there is grace, there is grace for this."  Grace when Mercy loves school and I'm afraid she won't want to come home when I'm able to add that back to my plate, and grace when she dissolves into tears in my arms at the end of the day.

God is bigger than means of education, and more merciful than I was ever taught to believe.  I cannot, do not believe that God is so rigid in his expectations of us as to keep from extending even more love to those who are in hard and unexpected circumstances, and must abandon their plans for the future.  Plans that were good.  That were meant to please Him.

I'm having to surrender control of my life, my children's lives, in ways that I never have before, and trust God to hold them close.  After all, they're really His, and I want them to be.  We'll continue to fill them with gospel truths and pour all the love that we have into them when they're home.  And every morning I'll drop them off, tell them that I love them, and know that their Jesus is there with them. Yes, there is grace for this.