Back To School
January 10, 2025
A Listening Heart
Dear Nieces and Nephews,
The Abundant Life students are heading back to school today after three-plus weeks of grieving, healing and re-orienting since the shooting on December 16. Thousands of people have come alongside them through prayer, fasting, trauma research, notes of encouragement, providing meals and even eating at Culvers and Texas Roadhouse to raise funds.
Are they ready?
Dear Heavenly Father, please send a fresh wave of your Spirit into the hearts of the students, teachers and support staff as they take this next big step today. Meet them in their pain and lead them forward. Help them to know and feel your safety. Remind us all to keep praying through this Challenging day. In Jesus Name I pray, Amen.
God has me
going back to school today too.
Awhile back, someone I love was running away from me. I searched, chased, found, caught, rebuilt, loved and repeated for several months. I faced insults that sent me into new training grounds. Through this season, I learned a lot about letting hurtful words roll off me while searching for their root cause. Eventually, with no truth in them and a much humbler heart, there was nothing left for them to stick to.
Except for one. I didn’t think it was true until its stinger stuck and wouldn’t let go:
“You don’t know how to listen.”
“WHAT? I am always
listening! I ask questions. Then I wait in silence. What else can I DO?” That argument thrived in my brain for a few months.
Eventually my heart softened and an Aha! moment hit: My offended mind
wasn’t letting my heart
listen.
Listening is different from hearing. Listening means “To pay attention, especially through the act of hearing.” Paying attention is the core of the definition. Hearing is secondary.
Our loved ones are often silent.
God is often silent.
But we can still listen. It might require going deeper than questions, when we don’t even know what to ask. It might also require hearing rantings and ravings which don’t match the grieving heart underneath.
Above all, pay attention. This is the school God is sending me back to today.
There is another one who is insulting me now. It just re-started two days ago. I thought I already passed this test. Maybe it’s semester exams? I want to pass. Right away, without another long, painful process.
Nieces and nephews, your age range spans decades. Allow me to separate you into groups for a moment.
To you older ones:
Our youngers, as a whole, live in a world darker than we can fathom. They face addiction to unfiltered darkness and all its rippling effects, and are living smack in the middle of what we only hear about. They are surrounded by the enemy’s lies, and have internalized a lot of them through both choice AND innocently breathing in the polluted atmosphere around them.
They need us.
But much more than our storehouses of wisdom, they need our ears. And our encouragement to listen to the heart of the Holy Spirit for themselves. He is their ever-present help in times of trouble. They need us
because they need Him, and we can point the way.
The biggest moves of God we’ve had at camp have not come because of adult-led teaching, worship or altar calls. Rather, they’ve come when we’ve convinced kids to listen to the Holy Spirit and we’ve given them space to do so. Then, as we ride the waves of revelation with them, listening to what they
are hearing, seeing and feeling, we see the supernatural take over. It’s only from this place that light breaks through with its healing, freedom and revival.
I believe the voice of the prophets which has repeatedly said kids will be at the heart of the coming revival. Let’s make room for it! They’ve got the desperation. Now they just need a personal encounter with The Answer.
To you younger ones:
Please search until you find the heart of us olders. It’s true we’re not always right. We don’t know everything and aren’t perfect. But our hearts are for you. Even though God does speak to you directly, you need our encouragement, nurturing and wisdom because He speaks to us too and we've been around awhile.
To everyone:
When Elijah got afraid and so desperately needed encouragement, exaggerating his problems, running and feeling sorry for himself, he finally found God in the “sound of sheer silence” (I Kings 19:12, New Revised Standard Version). Not in the windstorm, earthquake, fire, or shattering rocks which were trying to cover it up with their misleading distraction.
This is a realm I want to get comfortable living from. There is a sound emanating from the silence in our loved ones’ hearts, and from their storms. Will you listen there with me?
Let’s go back to school together. It’s not a bad place, just a hard place. Learning is hard. But God is meeting us at the door and will be with us through the day.
All my love,
Aunt Michelle
Dear Nieces & Nephews, Did you know that rules stimulate the desire to break them? It says so right in Romans 7:5. “For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death.” Bingo. The source of all my parenting woes! The law. Rules. What’s a parent to do? Get rid of rules? “By no means!” to use Paul’s phrase. Jesus didn’t come to get rid of the law, but to fulfill it. So if I’m to follow His parenting example, I don’t get RID of our rules, I fulfill them. What?! What in Heaven does THAT mean in the heat of battle? I wish I could give a clear, concise answer, but all I have is hints that I’m collecting in a bucket. Do you care to join me? If not, skip the next twelve paragraphs and jump back in where I tell you Lexie’s inspiring story. This is what I've got in the bucket so far: Rules, like “The Law” of the Old Testament, reveal the existence of naughtiness. Without them, we wouldn’t even know what's naughty. We need them. The problem is, they also stimulate a desire to break them. Which leads to pain. (Keep reading Romans 7-8. It paints quite a picture.) If God provided a way out of this pain with sacrifice born out of deep love (dying on the cross), maybe we can do the same for our kids so they can experience it first in the natural realm. “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you,” with natural consequences we neither rescue them from, nor remove ourselves from. We’re still there, with them as they suffer. Yes, we suffer too. Ugh! But with the kind of suffering that brings joy. Maybe God-inspired deep-love-sacrifice releases our kids from the tyranny of forbidden-fruit-infatuation and sets them free to live in a new way, deeply rooted in connection instead of rules. Because our connection to them pulls them into our connection with Christ , facilitating their connection to Christ , which sets them free from sin and changes their whole mindset. Eventually. In a slow progression of their minds learning to choose Spirit ways over sinful nature ways. One small painful step at a time. While we parents have absolutely no control over which way they choose. One of my dear ones stashed every forbidden candy box and wrapper ever collected in their dresser during my ongoing war against sugar in our home.
Dear Nephew, What do you want for your birthday? Like really, really want , so deep down you’re afraid even to say it? I feel like God’s waiting for you to say it. He knows what you want, He just wants to make sure you know what you want. So say it. Then hold onto it with all that tenacity you’re famous for, until you see Him bring it about. He put your deep desires in you for a reason. It’s been a painful process of sorting it out from the surface wants that are so fleeting and even damaging. When I used to take you all shopping and you got to choose something you wanted, the other kids would quickly grab something off the shelf. But for you, it would become such a process. You were so worried you were going to choose the wrong thing and be disappointed. These past few years, you have had many disappointments. From rejections of your love, to devastating breakdowns, to friendships not working out, and then all these health problems. Disappointment times infinity. I believe it’s been a process of sifting in your heart that has been so painful you don’t know what to do with it. I hate to watch it. I hate to see your pain. I think breakthrough is right ahead of you. It’s probably not going to look like you expect it to, but I think it will look many times better. Above all you could ask, think or imagine. Because God’s goodness is infinite. Where it looks like He has forsaken you and let you down, He’s just not coming through in the small things because He needs you to let them go so you can grab hold of the big things He’s offering you. There is so much champion in you. So much skill. Such refreshing wit. Such a winning smile. Such a blend of tenacity and tenderness. I can’t tell you how proud I am of you. How relieved that we are still close. I want to team with you for whatever is ahead. I love you from the bottom of my heart, Aunt Michelle
Dear Nieces & Nephews, You’re always on my mind. I’m hoping that with the approaching holidays and Camp Fire gatherings (more on this later), I will see you in person soon. In the meantime, here’s to writing again! I was part of a mom-care panel a couple weeks ago, sharing with homeschool moms some of my triumphs and failures in caring for myself while caring for children. The next day, while that was still on my mind, Aunt Marian called to offer me a week’s stay in a cottage at Christmas Mountain in The Dells because of a last-minute cancellation. I accepted, and God took such good care of me there! I decided what mom-care ultimately means is letting Him care for me, and cooperating as He directs me to assist. We moms would call that “obedience.” A good friend told me recently, “Michelle, if I was God, I’d give you an A+ for effort and a D- for results. But that’s not how God grades us. He grades us on our obedience. Some plant, some water, but it’s God who provides the increase. Just keep doing what He tells you to do.” OK. I can do that. I’m actually really good at obeying. I mean, I can put my nose to the grindstone, grit my teeth and plow as only a mule can. I’d make a really good mule. I’m not so sure mules are happy though. Our Midnight is, but … well … she’s never worked a day in her life and knows nothing about obedience.
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