I know we aren’t even through August yet, but today feels like the beginning of fall.
The morning cloud cover (that will be gone in an hour or so) seems the perfect background for this first day of school in Pleasanton. Moms are busily getting their kids ready and out the door and secretly (or not so secretly!) are sighing with relief after the hectic schedule of a busy summer of activities.
It’s a new school year.
I miss the flurry of buying new school clothes and supplies. The smell of a new box of crayons, the sound of a crisp new backpack being filled up with notebooks, pens, pencils. Picking out just the right lunchbox. Taking pictures of the kids in their “first day of school” outfits. Those days are long gone for me, but I can still see those vivid memories like they were yesterday. Memories that easily bring a smile and a tear.
But it’s a new year for me, too.
In a few days, September will be here and will bring with it new opportunities.
I will begin volunteering at the nursing home down the street, preparing crafts and baking projects for the residents there. So, in a way, I will have my “new box of crayons” and various other supplies to share with my new class of 80 plus-year-old kids. I can hardly wait!
I will also be starting a new women’s group in my home called Two Or Three on Tuesday evenings. A safe place for women from the neighborhood and from church to come together and form community and share dessert (of course!) and their lives with each other. So, in a way, I will have a new “backpack” filling up with these women’s stories. I’ll be opening my own “lunch box” with them and sharing not only dessert, but my life and its lessons with them.
I’ve started the new “class” of being an empty nester. Lots of new lessons are learned in this class. I have a great Instructor who is very patient with me, but sometimes the tests are hard. I don’t want to be a lazy learner in this fall session. I want to study and take full advantage of the opportunities afforded in this semester of my life.
I’m hoping to gather women this season to put our hearts and heads together to create and craft both temporary physical things and eternal spiritual things. Things that will bond our hearts together and at the very same time extend those hearts to the world around us.
There are things I can’t quite see clearly in my imagination yet, but things that I know are on the horizon of God’s plan for this new “school” year of my life. Lessons that will stretch and grow and challenge me. People that will stretch and grow and challenge me. Opportunities that will stretch and grow and challenge me. Things that will change me to look a little more like Jesus this year.
It’s a new school year and I plan on being schooled in every way possible – “home-schooled”, “public-schooled”, “Christian-schooled”, “online-schooled”. One Master Professor, but many teachers.
Feel like joining me? There’s always room for one more on this “bus”. 🙂
Proverbs 1:5 – Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance…
Proverbs 18:15 – An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.
Proverbs 4:5-6 – Get wisdom; get insight; do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her (wisdom), and she will keep you; love her, and she will guard you.
Ephesians 5:16 – Make the most of every opportunity…
