Beyond the Upper Years (Part 1)
When God Writes the Curriculum for Your Child
I remember well my first daughter’s senior year. As we are long-term overseas missionaries, we have to plan life in chunks of time, and that year was a doozy {to use some sophisticated vocabulary!}. The world was still coming out of covid, especially for those of us who needed to fly internationally. Requirements were changing daily, and to add another layer of difficulty, we were returning to America in January, with 1/3 of our school year to finish. Raising our children on the mission field has brought so many more blessings than I could have ever imagined, but sometimes, rearing them in a developing country brings its own challenges. As soon as we returned to America, my daughter would need to learn to drive – it is illegal to drive here until age 21, and we do not own a car {#bigcitylife}. She needed to learn how to handle a foreign {to her} currency, and also how to use cards, cash apps, checks, and credit cards {here it is cash or momo (mobile money)}. She had to be able to function well in a culture she had lived in for just three years of her life while her family was 7,000 miles away. To further complicate matters, I was facing the question I imagine many moms face when graduating their firsts – Did I do enough? Was she ready? So, I gave her stacks of books to read in her “spare” time {of which she had very little}, a crash course in Computer Literacy {I am a Luddite, who suddenly recollected that America was very techy…bad idea to wait that long!} and tried to cram in everything she would ever need to know.
Forgetting that I was raising a Learner, I committed a cardinal sin in CM’s pedagogy. I forgot that this way of education is about life, not an ending to her formal schooling under my guidance. I love Miss Mason’s quote in School Education, “The question is not,—how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education—but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?” However, in my fear of the unknown, I tried to tip on its head all I believed about education and how God created us. I struggled about her knowing “stuff” rather than caring.
That was a few years ago, and God continues to show me that my daughter’s education is not about me or her or being “educated.” It is about God shaping my child more into His image. All the things I worried about have sorted themselves out {time and practice often have a way of doing so}, and my girl has learned so many things I did not know she needed to know.
She is gaining an understanding of what she needs to do with her time, how to interact with others in a different culture, what a good work ethic looks like in a formal job {another thing she could not do over here}, how to pursue her relationship with God during the busyness of college studies, how to maintain her health when mom is not the cook, and even how to wade through the deep waters of a life-threatening sickness and a 9-day hospital stay.
As I now prepare my second daughter for this same transition {we leave our Ghana home tomorrow!}, I am leaning hard on Jesus, seeking to rest in the truths I have learned so far. God is big enough to know what my children need. He is wise enough to teach. His love will not fail them. He is sovereign, so He can write the exact curriculum each of my children needs.
Patty Sommer 2024