By mid-September students everywhere have returned to classrooms and if it were marketed simply as “reading, writing, and arithmetic”, most would scoff. They would wonder where the STEM programs were and what computer programs were being utilized. It tends to be easy in our modern era to deride anything that is more than a few years old as antiquated and by implication, “less than”. I get that! I spent 15 years of my life teaching in a public educational setting in the 1980’s and early 1990’s and was blessed to have one of Apple’s first computers in my special education classroom. That is more than 30 years ago and behind the times in many ways by 2022 standards.

My education did not start that way as a child. I had the rare privilege of spending grades one and two in rural Ohio in a one-room school where eight grade levels managed to be taught by one teacher with fairly amazing results. (For many homeschool mothers today that would not be surprising.) I confess that I learned a great deal by overhearing the lessons of students in older grades.

The school I attended was the same one my father had attended years before me, but the curriculum had changed by the time I entered first grade at age five. My father’s class used the famed McGuffey readers and other texts authored by McGuffey as well as Ray’s arithmetic books, texts that educated and trained thousands of students in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I cherish a few copies of those very books that I have on my bookshelves that belonged to my dad and his sisters.

Few except homeschoolers would consider using these texts today since they went beyond basic academic subject matter. Stories in reading texts were meant not only to teach reading, but also a set of moral principles and values, love of country, and respect for parents.

When I review the contents of these books on my shelves, I see words and concepts that might cause some contemporary students to stumble not only due to vocabulary words that are no longer common but also due to the level of thinking and maturity evidenced.

That old fashioned generation without smartphones, high tech computers and scientific calculators managed to build the economic engine of the United States. They did so by grounding it on moral, biblical, ethical values and principles as a sure foundation along with academic standards we all now benefit from and take for granted or even shun.

Perhaps we have gone too far, however, in this modernization and started to see something was lost in the process. Homeschooling seems to be one response to an educational system that set aside the very values we all once cherished. Many ridiculed this movement when it started but despite the critics, students who are homeschooled are standing tall in their accomplishments equaling and often exceeding the academic performance of their public school peers. The subjects taught them are quite inclusive and include things like rhetoric and dialectic skills as well as numerous languages, math, sciences, history, geography, music,  and arts. Many are taught in various co-op formats where students have spirited interaction around subject matter taught by highly educated mothers (and sometimes dads).

As I reflect on the return to studies by millions of children around the world, I am especially grateful for mothers (and sometimes dads) who are investing time, skills, and numerous resources to homeschool their children. These parents are unsung heroes who sacrifice a great deal in an effort to hold a high standard of academic performance as well as skills such as thinking, evaluating, organizing, time management and more. In the mix they base everything on moral principles that respect God, country, family values, and authority. They are not wimpy followers who are socially inept, but leaders who have been challenged to consider consequences and take responsibility for not only learning material, but also their own behavior and choices.

How do I know this? Our daughter and daughter-in-law have homeschooled all six of our grandchildren in Maryland and Tennessee. Our oldest granddaughter earned a scholarship and graduated with honors from an excellent university with a BSN a few years ago. Our oldest grandson earned a trustee scholarship to a highly ranked private college in a pre-medical program, studied abroad in Chile as a college junior, and is currently in his fourth year of medical school. Another graduated from college with a business degree and uses his creativity and marketing to help make the world a better place as a junior project manager of an innovative business. Our middle granddaughter is carving out her own path in the world as she tries a variety of niches. Our youngest granddaughter also earned a trustee scholarship at a highly ranked private college, serves as a teaching assistant to two professors, keeps up with violin, karate, and auditioning for the fall musical. Our youngest grandson is the only one being homeschooled along with coursework online at a college attended by his siblings and a local community college while continuing to perfect his skills on the cello and karate.

These six have played on basketball, soccer, and swim teams. The one who played high school basketball was on a top nationally ranked team. Among them we have singers, thespians, pianists, a drummer, a violinist, and a cellist. None of them are socially inept or backward. All have held various jobs and completed internships with more to come.

Today I salute my daughter and daughter-in-law for equipping the next generation with the academic skills and moral fiber to make a difference in the world and for eternity. I am so proud of both of you.

Perhaps the admonition in Proverbs 4:7 ESV says it best:

“The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.”

Before any of us answers that question, I think a long pause is probably best. At first glance most of us may give the answer we think is best or the one we have used for the longest time or even hope is true, but is it the most honest and representative of who we are?

If we are still dealing with brokenness or unhealed wounds, too often they will be what define us. We may wish that were not true, but often it is. That person, ministry, business, or organization that was the cause still overshadows much of who we are. We tend to struggle with relationships, trust, an accurate self-assessment, and more. We have lost track of how to “let go” of what happened and “hang on” to the hope and healing the Lord offers us even if we believe in Him.

If we are in the midst of loss and grief, our sense of how we fit in the world and our relationships is muddy at best. We look through most things in our lives through the veil of the loss. We are not ourselves or at least not the self we were most accustomed to.

If we look to others for our sense of self, belonging, acceptance, etc., we will spend too many minutes exhausting ourselves trying to turn ourselves into a pretzel that may or may not be appreciated by others or reflect what is in our heart. And who are they to be given that much power? Why do we give them that power?

If we have just received a promotion or accomplished something we have worked hard for, we tend to define ourselves now as … you fill in the blank.

Make no mistake. Whatever we choose to define us has power over us.

It’s easy to get disoriented in our self-definition because never before have definitions been so freely and commonly used about us and toward us. Sadly the definitions are commonly one word. They become labels.

How can anyone be summed up in one word?

That one word quickly becomes a label and whether it is positive or negative, it still proves a snare because it doesn’t look at the whole of who we are and it is highly unlikely it looks at our hearts.

To know another person’s heart or even our own requires a considerable length of time listening and observing. Absent that, we too often assign what we hope or believe is true, even if it isn’t.

The truth is that it is still too easy to look at the surface, at the appearance. More and more we look at Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook moments, or the headlines shouting at us from every device. Sometimes we make an instant decision about someone or something without even recognizing that we are doing so. Yet those decisions not only define that person or thing, but begin to define us as well.

When we do so, we do it at our own peril.

We see that clearly repeatedly throughout scripture when God chooses the least likely, the most ordinary, the flawed, the youngest, or the oldest to work out his purposes and plans.

Then in 1 Samuel 16:7 (NLT) we see the issue identified clearly when Samuel is looking for whom he should anoint as king:

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

Do we recognize that our choices and decisions grow from what is in our heart?

We may believe we are not so obvious, but those things give us away every time.

As I was reading Jennifer Dukes Lee’s book, It’s All Under Control, I was reminded of the solid truth that points to who defines me:

“If our relationship to Jesus is our defining one, then every decision – big or little – passes through that filter. So instead of saying yes to prove our love and devotion to people or to Jesus, we are allowed to experience the freedom of saying no, based on the fact that we have nothing to prove. We already are beloved.

Our actions in life will always follow our choices. Our first decision is choosing our primary identity. Our calendar is not our primary identity. Our caregiving is not our primary identity. Our productivity is not our primary identity. Being ‘awesome’ is not our primary identity. As daughters (or sons) of God, our primary identity is Jesus. His power, then, extends over us, our work, our priorities, our everything.”

Disappointment.

The dictionary definition reads, “the feeling of sadness or displeasure caused by the nonfulfillment of one’s hopes or expectations.”

One of the challenges we face in life is the reality of how disappointment haunts us.

Though we may try to control or limit our exposure to it, it is not truly preventable and it goes beyond feelings. Our feelings are connected with the neurotransmitters (neurochemicals) in our brains so disappointment is also physiological. Many of us know the neurotransmitters often mentioned in news or health reports: serotonin and dopamine. These and many others not only influence how we feel, they react to what we are experiencing and try to determine what we will need and want.

When we experience something  we love, something that gives us pleasure, our brains (with the help of the neurochemicals) start to anticipate and predict it will (or we hope it will) happen again in the future. We start to have expectations based on that and as a result the dopamine levels in our brains start to go up.

Jonathan Merritt notes in his book (Learning to Speak God from Scratch) that we actually get a “double shot of dopamine.”

Jonathan goes on to add:

“Here’s the rub. Life doesn’t always give us what we expect. People fail us. People hurt us. People lay us on the altars of their own selfishness. When you don’t get the desired result – you experience what researchers call a ‘reward-prediction error’ – not only do your dopamine levels fall, they plummet from the heightened level generated by your expectations.

Now, instead of receiving a double shot of dopamine, you receive none. You crash doubly hard.”

Looking at that scientific research helps explain why it takes us so long to recover from some disappointments, especially major ones.

We also sometimes fail to realize how our hopes turn into expectations and assumptions. Those occur not only about things and people, but God as well. When our knowledge of the Word is spotty or skewed by looking only at selective verses, we ignore the greater context or the whole counsel of scripture.

Sometimes we are also impacted by our earliest religious experiences that may not have been wholly accurate at best.  They may be very biased based on our age, how mature we were in our faith, and who exposed us to them and their significance to us.

We can be tempted to create a picture or sense of who we believe or hope God is. Then we may find verses to support that and soon you have strong convictions this is who God is and how He should respond or act. As long as He is operating within that framework, we are okay. But what happens when we are disappointed? We can begin to not only be disappointed in God, but distrust Him and feel as if our world is falling apart.

C.S. Lewis wrote a great deal and some of his profound works included the pain of loss in A Grief Observed and the issue of suffering in The Problem of Pain.  What he says about pain is not an easy truth to hear:

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Disappointment brings with it the possibility of doubt.

The enemy knows well that doubt has worked well as a device ever since the Garden of Eden when Eve tells him she will die if she or Adam eats of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The enemy creates doubt with these few words, “You will not surely die.”  I wonder if in that moment Eve considered all she knew about God and his love and agreed that certainly they would not die given God’s love for them. So she yields and the rest is history for the human race.

Doubt can be deadly.

What do we do with disappointment and doubt?

The Lord desires us to have a conversation about it rather than behaving as a child who goes to his or her room and slams the door shut on dialogue.

Jonathan Merritt gives clarity to what truth we need to grapple with:

“…in times of difficulty, God offers us presence, not a parachute.

What we experience as disappointment is an invitation to give up holding tight to what we hope is true. To stop trying to cast God in our image. To let God be who God is, not who we wish God would be.”