Here I was ‘mom life-ing’ it. I had just moved to Colorado from California. Why? I don’t fully know, but I do know that it has become an impossible feat to label the exact reasons because it is so many things wrapped together into one place. This morning I found my heart pressed against a window. All my hopes for my children, dreams for their future, began fogging up the window and an intense recent desire began giving me goosebumps. My oldest are in 4th grade and I have had a firm desire to never put them in private schools, and until last month, held a belief that I knew in my heart… was unshakable.
Then wham!!! Out of nowhere, I was walking thru my new church and I suddenly just knew. I knew that one day my kids would go here. I wasn’t worried about the money which was only odd because I had zero of it, and the school would cost, a lot. Instead, the entire conversation between God & I was ‘Ok, Kelley. I just wanted you to have an open heart’. Within a 20 foot walk for no reason at all, He in its entirety, changed the way I saw my children’s future, and changed my heart. I wish that was the way I saw all of life; that there are no true lines or impossibilities, that God truly just wants my open heart.
So here I am. I don’t know how I got here. I mean I drove, but on auto pilot to a place I’ve never driven to without reason. Recess. The kids were swinging and playing and laughing and everything was perfect. I mean of course it was, because I was looking from the outside in. All at once I am desiring a greater, fuller, better life for my kids, wanting to do anything to keep them here, at a school, that they don’t even go to yet. God placed this desire in me and it was one I didn’t even want. Most times you hope God is on board for one of your desires and then just sometimes, the better, scarier times you realize you need to get on board for one of Gods desires. That should really happen more frequently; just the other way around.
So as my face was daydreaming thru the glass watching these elementary kids play on the playground, I realized an entirely other perspective that these kids were also looking thru a different window of where they wanted to be also. Just as so( too) many were looking thru an entirely different window whether it be from 3rd world countries, or wishing their kids could go to school at all, or in any place like America that offered education, or they could afford to not have their kids work (some sadly even having to sell their kids for sex in exchange for money)… everybody has a window they look thru. Regardless of the reasons, hardships, or circumstances all those also looking form the outside in, also want something more for their children.
Don’t all parents want more for their kids? Maybe. I never did actually. That doesn’t make me a bad parent either, it makes me a grateful one. We have lived overseas where poverty meant something completely different then it often times does in America. We have the benefit of having travelled world wide with our children and consequently have the benefit of a larger perspective. We have a beautiful life for our children and we teach them to be grateful for their amazing life every single day. I know how deeply God has blessed us, and I’ve many times felt it was selfish to desire more. Yet, God knows the desires of your heart and He makes the desires bigger sometimes when He needs us to expand; He makes the desires better. He makes us better. He wants to make our children better.
God, I don’t know why you changed my heart in this way. I was fine I think. I trust you in this though. I feel like this is suddenly the most important thing in my kid’s life. It would change the course of their lives, not because of private education in itself but in the lifestyle of believing that you have greater bigger things for them, that they are made to be in relationship with you. I don’t want them to have an education of fractions, and world war date memorization; I desire for their character and integrity to be so engrained in them that they believe in their greatness. You made them for dreams outside of textbooks, you know that the impact they can have on this world is bigger then anyone can see, but you can show them and you will. If this is your will for them, please continue to open my heart, please provide a way, and where I need to work to make your dreams possible, please give me the bravery.
I trust you. -me
From the outside in. Feb26.18
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