Relationships

A Different Kind of Back-To-School Prayer

Like many parents I have spent time over the summer praying for my child’s school year. As she enters a new school with all the trepidation associated with making new friends and getting used to new routines, I repeatedly petitioned God to provide her just the right teacher and classmates. My concern for her was understandable; she is growing up quickly but she is still my little girl, and I want this new experience to be a good one for her.

However, a few weeks ago as I was praying that God would give my child the best teacher as well as sweet friends, my heart was pricked with a pain of conviction. My prayers were fixated upon what would be best for her without much thought to the people that she would come into contact with. My child was not only going to a new school with her cares and concerns but she would be interacting with a teacher and with classmates that would have their own burdens to bear. Ostensibly she was going to school to learn, but regardless of the reason she is going somewhere, I want her to see any place that she is in as a place to display God’s love. I was concentrating on with whether the new school year would be a blessing for her – without bringing before God the prayer that she would be a blessing to others.

And so the aim of my prayers shifted. Not because my previous prayers were in error; it certainly makes sense to pray for your child’s well-being. However, if I want my child to develop an eternal mindset, it certainly seems reasonable that my prayers for her reflect the concerns of eternity. I concentrated these re-focused prayers in three areas:

My Kid’s Teacher

The angst that goes into finding out which teacher your child has been assigned is a scenario every parent understands. However, rarely do we think about the process from the teacher’s perspective. In less than 24 hours, names on a page become young people entrusted to their care – with their associated quirks and differences in abilities. A teacher’s job is not easy – and there are many students who make this job harder. Instead of simply praying that my kid would get the teacher that would be the best for her, I started praying that my child would be assigned the teacher to whom she could be the biggest blessing. I prayed that my daughter would be an encouragement and help to a teacher who is likely stressed while balancing a myriad of competing priorities. I asked that God would give my child the teacher who would not only appreciate her intellectual curiosity but who would be blessed by her sweet and caring spirit. My heart’s desire became not that my child would have the teacher with the best instructional methods or greatest classroom environment, but instead to have the teacher that will know Christ more fully because of the year spent interacting with our family.

My Kid’s Friends

As we all know from our own growing up experience, kids can be cruel. Therefore, it is tempting to focus my prayer for my child’s friends solely on whether they will be people who will show kindness and grace to her. However, I also know that there will be people that my child will play with who need the opportunity to laugh at her silly jokes and be blessed by her sensitive heart. In other words, there are kids who will become my kid’s friends not because it is God’s primary purpose that they will be a blessing to her – but because she will be a blessing to them. I pray that God gives me the grace to see who these friends are and that my child will, in her childlike way, show them the love of Christ.

My Kid’s Classmates

Although there will be individuals who my child will naturally get along with, there are some kids that my child might not be friends with but with whom she will come into contact. At every school, and in every classroom, there are kids who sit on the fringes. They may think or behave in ways that kids don’t quite understand, and without knowing any better how to handle it, they may be quickly ostracized, or worse, ridiculed. Instead of praying that my child would not find herself as one of the outcasts, my prayers became that she would find these kids. My petition has been that God would grant my daughter the eyes to see the people that are hurting and that she would reach out to them; that in a world full of sin and pain, she would be a light in their lives. You never know the difference that a smile or gracious word can make to a hurting child, and I pray that my kid would be the one to provide it.

Preparing My Heart

I didn’t know why I experienced the prompting to change the focus of my prayers a few weeks ago, but I now know that it was, at least in part, to prepare my heart. In the last few days we have learned more about what this school year will look like for my daughter, and it wasn’t what I expected. In His kindness, God had already begun the process of shifting my mindset to consider how He may want to use my child to bless others, rather than focusing solely on the blessings He has prepared for her. And even though the school year begins with more uncertainty than I originally anticipated, I can confidently still utter my back-to-school prayer. Because regardless of whether it is a great or challenging year for my kid, I pray that because of her, someone else’s year is blessed.

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Relationships

Looking Out (Part 2) – Blessing Our Spouse Through Our Attitudes

Last week I wrote about the importance of looking for opportunities to bless our spouse. As I wrote then, too often we are focused on how things benefit us and striving to prevent any personal inconvenience. This self-centered perspective is bound to create barriers rather than building a relationship with the one we love. In the previous post I shared three practical things that we can do to turn those tables around and instead intentionally bless our spouse. Today, I have three more suggestions. But instead of being focused on what we do, these three recommendations concentrate on the condition of our hearts. Our attitudes can be a blessing to our spouse just as much as our actions.

Express Gratitude

As I have shared before, my parents were high school sweethearts and when by Dad got his promotion to heaven they had been married for 34 years. Despite this long history, my mom still thanked my dad for every dinner that they went out to – whether it was for a date night or a dinner together as a family. She didn’t have to do this but I am confident that it both encouraged my dad and blessed him to know that my mom still appreciated his gesture. He knew his thoughtfulness was noticed and for most of us, just knowing that we are not taken for granted can be a significant blessing.

In a marriage it is easy to get into routines and have expectations. We would be wise to thank our spouse for the things that they do for us, even if they are things that we are used to them doing. After all, who among us doesn’t appreciate appreciation? And what a blessing it is to know that our spouse is grateful for all we do on a regular basis.

Eliminate the Scorecard

Often times in relationships we seek for balance – we want there to be an equitable division of labor and we don’t want to give more than we take. The problem with this approach is that we are constantly keeping score, trying to figure out which way the scales are tilted. If we are busy trying to figure out whether we are owed something, we are not busy figuring out how to be a blessing. A scorecard mentality is detrimental to any relationship, and it is doubly so in a marriage. There will be seasons of life where you will need to give more, and there will be seasons where you will be the recipient of greater gifts. Our tendency is to focus on the times where we are giving, but it would be better if we didn’t keep track at all. After all, I Corinthians 13 says that love “keeps no record of wrong.” Focusing on what our spouse did or didn’t do is unlikely to strengthen our marriage; thinking about what we can do today, in this moment, to be a blessing, will.

Celebrate Accomplishments

Along with having a propensity towards thanksgiving, we can bless our spouse by sharing in their joy. This may seem obvious, but in far too marriages, people are too busy getting things done to take the time to recognize each others’ accomplishments. It may not seem like a big deal to you that your spouse was complimented at their job, but it may be to them. Perhaps it seems like an easy task to get your kid to sleep on time, but for some moms and dads that requires a herculean effort. The point is that the accomplishment does not have to be something monumental for it to be significant. And looking for ways to encourage your spouse in the work that they are doing by taking notice of milestones and achievements will go along way towards encouraging them to continue doing those things with excellence.

A Mutually Beneficial Arrangement

When it comes to intentionally looking for ways to bless our spouse, both our actions and our attitudes matter.  In all likelihood our actions will follow our attitudes so perhaps that is the best place to start. But even when our hearts are distracted and our minds are overwhelmed, we can still find ways to be a blessing if we are intentional about doing so. The sad reality is that we are more likely to drift into ambivalence than we are to leap into purposefulness. That is why we must commit to consistently seek ways to bless our loved one, and to do so regularly, in big ways as well as small.

 

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