My mom is a teacher and she says profound things that I don’t understand.

Again, I swear, I was an A student in school.

 

. .  . I’m just a little, you know, one twist short of a slinky.

 

This time it happened to be about teaching.

See, the Human Calculator and I homeschool our kids.

Confession: I swear I never thought I’d homeschool my kids.

 

I was like “Huh?”

I felt like God was like. “Yeah, you should homeschool.”

And then I was like, “Okay”

 

I’m still not sure what happened.

 

But here we are – we are those people your parents warned you about.

Come to think of it, I think my parents warned me about those people too.

And now I are one.

 

Sheesh.

 

So I’m asking my mom something about teaching and she nods her head very knowingly, like the best teachers do, and she says, “Well, learning doesn’t take place until the student reaches the threshold just beyond what he is capable of.”

 

Say whaaaaaat?

No, I’m serious.  I’m gonna need you to repeat that.

 

Learning doesn’t take place until the student reaches the threshold just beyond what he is capable of.

 

Yeah, write that down.

That’s free mom advice.

You don’t want that to go to waste.

 

Life is supposed to be a just a little bit difficult.

 

Check this out:

My troubles turned out all for the best—
    they forced me to learn from your textbook.

Psalm 119:71 (The Message)

 

We have some friends that moved recently but our recurring joke was “God Loves the Struggle”.  We had a few others, ongoing jokes that is, but instead of ratting out my friends, I’ll just say that what happens in home group stays in home group.

 

But God does love the struggle, because it means we’re learning.

 

 

It’s kinda cool, right?

God actually knows what he’s doing.

 

When life is hard – his intent isn’t to torture us.

It’s to teach us something.

 

And the Holy Spirit loves to teach all kinds of subjects.

Health, Business, Interpersonal Skills, the list goes on and on.

How ever the trouble ended up on your doorstep isn’t necessarily the point.  It’s “How is what you’re learning going to get it to go away?”

 

It looks a little like this:

Maybe your health issues have caused you to learn a better way to deal with stress and worry.

Maybe the struggles in starting your business have been the Holy Spirit showing you a strength you posses that you didn’t realize was there.

Maybe the arguments in your marriage have shown you that you want to learn how to communicate better.

Maybe your codependency habits have exhausted you to the point of needing to learn boundaries and how to value yourself. (I’m not going to point any elbows on this one – ahem)

 

God loves the struggle, because it’s an open invitation to learn something new.

 

Something about who he is.

Something about who you are.

Something about what he’s wanting to do for you.

Something about what you’re capable of accomplishing.

And always about how much you are loved.

 

Sharpen your #2’s, because school’s in session.

 

 

 
Photo Credit: “Pencil” by monoar permission through C.C. by 2.0