A Long And Winding Road....

Can i tell you a pretty cool story?

My son Josiah, who is about to graduate from his last year of high school, has been taught at home by his Mom every since he was about three years old... we have never been interested in making statements about the state of the public school system in our country or anything like that. My mother was a public school teacher in New York City for well over twenty years! i loved the schools that i attended growing up and as a matter of fact, i have friends to this day that i attended school with!

We actually started teaching Josiah at home because Ruthie had originally intended to become a public school teacher... She's a very talented and creative writer and for several years she regularly contributed curriculum to several large children's curriculum publishers. So for her, teaching our children at home was, in many ways, the fulfillment of a dream.

Several years into teaching first Josiah, then our next oldest son Jonah, our daughter Hannah and now Levi, we observed that Josiah was having some difficulty reading. After some assessments we were able to do on our own, we determined that Josiah seemed to have slight dyslexia... Dyslexia is a learning disability that causes the brain to process information differently and often manifest itself in that individuals may have difficulty with written language in particular with reading and writing... and as you can imagine it can be extremely frustrating to both the student and his teachers.... now magnify that by about a bizillion times in a homeschooling setting!

Josiah and his mom however persevered and even to this day continue to do the hard work of not allowing this disability to keep either one of them in check! Now add to this the fact that a foregone conclusion is that one day when you're done with high school the obvious "next step" would be college... for Josiah (and maybe even his mom) knots in the stomach accompanied that thought! The key would be taking the ACT test... Josiah studied extra hard... even though he had taken other standardized test in school this one was different... he took the test, half believing that double digits would be a miracle...

Fast forward to the past two weeks... Josiah received his test score from the ACT which when submitted to the college he wanted to attend.... along with his current academic record and other funds made available... qualified him to receive scholarship funds which will underwrite his college tuition by at least 50% for the next four years!
i'd say between Josiah and his Mom they should both be very, very proud!
i am... of both of them.

Digging deep...

Just this past week, i finished a fascinating book. As a matter of fact, the author of the book put into writing something that for many years i had wondered about but just didn't know how to articulate. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero is a very, very insightful book. Scazzero's thesis is that it is impossible to separate emotional health from spiritual maturity.
The whole concept of being a person who is seeking to grow spiritually takes a turn on its' head if this premise is accepted...

I have often wondered what is the deal?!? Over the years i have met and dealt with...

• People who seem rather normal...

• People who seem to be rather lucid...

• People who have expressed a sincere desire to grow into totally devoted followers of Jesus... and for some inexplicable reason, things seem to for no reason, to go terribly wrong!

Many of us say we want to change, or we want to be different, some people even talk about undergoing a "transformation" but it would seem that this author is right... there is no way to go forward and grow until we take a trip backwards and deal with some "stuff".... for a lot of us we won't make that trip backwards until as Scazzero says in his book the pain of staying where we are becomes unbearable... that is a point with which I can easily identify with.

It's interesting to me... i think a lot of us who are so wrapped up in "doing", we have little to no clue what it means to simply "be"... i know i'm guilty of it too! Always looking for the next great thing to do or accomplish (we often say or think) "for God"... when the reality of it all is, that we are truly looking to do is salve some horrific message we have come to mistakenly believe is true about us from our past.

The great thing is, freedom and authentic change (inside AND out) can be accomplished but it will require digging deep... anything less is a waste of time and effort. This is scary stuff but i think if people would just take the chance, lives would be radically transformed...

Heart Shaping events...

Wow, it seems like forever ago when i sat down to write for my blog! But we had a great Christmas and a fantastic New Year!
i really wanted to get back and write about a class I had the opportunity to take with Lincoln Christian Seminary this week that was actually held at the Chiara Center just outside of Springfield, IL. It was a weeks worth of intense "inner work".
Now i know that some of you may read that last sentence and think... "oh great, do we have to get all introspective and stuff?!?" Well yeah... we do.... it's good for you!


The class was titled, "Shaping The Heart of The Leader" and was unlike any class i ever took in my undergrad studies at Lincoln. But here is the basic premise in a nutshell.... "What are the key events from your life that have shaped your heart?" When you stop to think about it... that seems like a pretty weak question to build an week long intensive seminary class around but when you have the opportunity to "go vertical" (meaning dig deep) as our instructor invited us to do that question can in an instant cause your life to literally flash before your eyes. Let me share one such story. i have shared this before but it's power never fades...

Mr. Wroughton was a teacher and coach in my Jr. High school Blackhawk Jr. High and was intimately interested in his students. Most people would have looked at me, a pre-teen, fatherless black kid and thought… “no way that kid is going to make it…” The truth is I probably would have believed them too had Mr. Wroughton not made a difference with one simple act of kindness…

Everyday at the end of basketball tryouts and after “showers” (remember this is Junior High) were taken we could find out who was invited back the next day by looking at the list posted on Mr. Wroughton's office door. I made it through all three days of tryouts until Friday… the list was posted for those invited back for Monday to be on the team! Guess what…my name was not on list. I cried all the way home… it just so happened that the basketball coach drove by me as I walked home and could see me crying.

On Monday, that same coach asked me to stick around for the first practice of the basketball team. At the end of the practice, he gathered everyone around himself for a moment. He asked if anyone had noticed that I was in practice even though I had not made the final cut on Friday. He went on to explain that I was asked to stick around because, he continued, that after our last day of tryouts he had been driving home and drove past me. He then told this group of pre-teen, pubescent, Jr. High boys that he’d seen me crying as I walked home from the tryouts that day. The response was predictable, the snickering and giggling seemed to last forever.

Mr. Wroughton then followed that up with a statement something like this… “I asked Robby (Pause) to come to practice today and I want him to be on this team because any guy who wants so badly to be a part of this team that he would cry because he wasn’t, I figure we can’t be without”

That was a definitely a heart shaping moment... it changed me forever. How about your heart shaping event? I'd love to hear about it!