No need to check a calendar, the TV tells us exactly what time of year it is. There are commercials with cool lunch ladies, and ones that show trendy hoodies we’ll be spotting at the bus stops this year.
As a mom, I feel a knot in my stomach, as I watch the cool kids share a spot at the lunch table with a girl in the new sneakers they call her “confidence.” I want my boys to feel wanted and confident… and to simply state it in terms of this Facebook world we’re living in, to feel – well – liked.
I remember the time I wouldn’t have thought twice, the time I was more focused on packing my closet with pretty things. But something big happened since then… I met my two little boys.
Now I listen to the radio, watch TV and notice the magazine covers at check out, through the innocent little eyes that favor my own. There are times I am excited about what they see and times I want to shut it all out.
You see the little boy who just grinned so wide at me for simply lifting him up from his crib and pulling him close is not thinking about being cool or being popular, but being loved. Not liked or accepted or included as the commercials define it, but being secure and supported and loved.
As I watch friends share photos of their little ones, cute and cleaned up and ready for their first school days, I pray. I ask for protection on these precious minds, so sensitive and wanting to know. I pray for teachers in the classroom and in the home as they prepare for a new year to show and tell. I ask for special blessings on the children who have no new shoes or TV to see what they’re “missing.” Help us be that blessing.
The first day of the school year is still aways away for my two, but I know those years will go by fast, so I pray now.
Dear Father,
I come before you, as a perfect tiny hand reaches up and grabs my nose. He looks and studies, though he knows no words yet to say. Thank you for teaching me more about your love, your goodness, faithfulness and suffering for your prize. I ask for confidence. For me, as I aim to please you first and for our children that they know you are with them each step they take. I ask that from the start to the end of each day, they will seek you first, because we’ve shown them what you look like. We know the only way we can show them is to have seen for ourselves, so take us back to school. Teach us more about who you are.
I ask for protection, for your power to disarm any evil that aims to attack and to rise up leaders who care most about your Kingdom come. It is here. You are here. Whether our children are taught in the school house or home, they are yours. Show us each day how to show them how great is your love. It is all they need, all we need. You are.
Because I’m redeemed by Jesus, I pray. Amen.
“Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Philippians 1:6
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