🎒Change: A Hand to Hold

Back to School Prayers, Playlist, and Reflections

No one is more accustomed to change than a parent. Not only are your children constantly shifting and changing and growing in a way that is somehow right in front of your eyes and impossible to see in real-time, but you are shifting and changing and growing as you raise them, too.

I wrote a book about finding the sacred in the ordinary seasons of our lives, but I’ll be honest with you: I have no idea what season we’re in this time of year.

(Is the end of August summer or the early stages of fall? Does it depend on what part of the country you’re in or if your kids have started school yet?)

This Week

Year of Breath is the paid and private community for Liturgies for Parents subscribers.

This week, we have a guided reflection prompt for each day of the week, along with intentional breath prayers to borrow when winds of change surround you and Scripture to reflect on. Subscribers also get a custom playlist and designed wallpaper, along with a benediction.

Change is Inevitable

How do you handle it? Do you embrace change like a soft, well-worn blanket or try to throw it off, fighting it as you twist and turn at night?

In the introduction of Every Season Sacred, I write that:

“Parenting brings us in and out of seasons. Babies turn into big kids; big kids turn into teens. Change is gradual yet seems to happen all at once.”

What does change look like in your life right now? Are you embracing change or fighting it?

Seasons Change, and So Should We

I wrote a short essay called “Seasons Change, and So Should We” that I want to share with you. You can listen to it read on the (in)courage podcast as well, but the site has been attacked by hackers, so I’m sharing it here, too:

“I will never move back to this town.”

I whispered it as my parents packed the minivan with my college dorm supplies. I was ready to leave and wasn’t going to look back.

And for a long time, I didn’t.

Seasons changed. I changed too.

I found myself shifting and growing into new versions of myself. I made mistakes and learned lessons that only come with figuring life out as you go. I sat in lecture halls and realized the world was so much bigger than I ever realized.

I learned. I unlearned. I relearned.

Time shifted and changed, and I changed with it. I graduated. Had a job with my very own cubicle. Got married. Became a mother. Bought a house. Moved. Moved again.

I reconsidered things. I looked at life and all its beautiful, terrible glory from different angles. I prayed with an open heart. Sometimes, I was surprised at the miracle. Other times, I was heartbroken at the silence. I read books and kept reading them—novels, memoirs, and how-to’s. 

My world expanded, and so did I.

Change is obvious when we’re in a transitional moment – graduation, marriage, divorce, birth of a child, retirement, diagnosis – take your pick. But we’re always changing, whether we like it or not. Our bodies renew themselves over time. Skin replaces itself through a natural process every 27 days – we are not the exact same people today that we were a month ago.

As summer gives way to fall, no matter what season of life you’re in, what would happen if you approach this transitional time as an invitation to be transformed?

We are all capable of change. Every minute, every second of the day, we’re becoming.

So the question is: Who are you becoming?

Where have you drawn lines in the sand? What have you made up your mind about?

Where do you get your news? Who do you interact with who doesn’t look or think like you?

Do you listen to understand or craft your argument of being right?

Are you living among your neighbors, or have you shut the garage, locked the door, and called it a night?

In fourth grade, my teacher invited us to grab our three-ring binders (mine was of the Looney Toons variety) to create what she called our Life-Long Notebook. She invited us to grab loose-leaf paper and her pre-printed tabs, offering an organized place to add our observations about the newly-built butterfly garden, our wonderings about the world, and our hopes for ourselves. She encouraged us to stay curious and open in our classroom and wherever our lives took us, too.

My first college internship was at a local newspaper. My editor, then in her early 40s (I shudder to admit to thinking she was quite old at the time), told me that she stuck around day after day because she was always learning something. She met new people, asked new questions, and learned new things.

You don't have to be an eager third-grader or a seasoned editor at the paper to be a life-long learner. 

A commitment to learning about the world, the people in it, and the God who made it all is a cornerstone of a faithful life. We can trust God with our wonderings because God gave us that spirit of curiosity in the first place. It’s when Christians refuse to learn and grow that we get into dangerous situations.

I’m not the same person I was five years ago, and I hope that in five years, I’ll be a different person than I am now. I don’t want to alter the fundamentals of who I am but want to grow fully into who God created me to be. I want to keep learning – to be, as Romans 12:2 says, transformed by the renewing of my mind.

Spiritual transformation is not always comfortable, but it is sanctifying. Faith journeys—our spiritual walks with Christ—are ongoing. We don’t stop learning the vastness and fullness of God, of our world, and of ourselves the day we say a certain prayer or hit a specific milestone.

When I read my Bible, I feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland, opening doors and going down rabbit holes, often finding more questions than answers. The more I learn, the more I wonder. The more I wonder, the more I learn. A life walking with Christ is comforting yet often confounding. The more we embrace a posture of Christian curiosity, the more our worlds get, as Lewis Caroll put it, curiouser and curiouser.

You are allowed to change your mind. You don’t have to draw lines in the sand and dig in your heels.

After fifteen years away, I began dreaming of moving back to my hometown.

I changed.

And by the grace of God, I will continue to shift and change with the seasons, knowing that in all of my shades of becoming, the steadfast love of Christ never ceases.

As we begin to bid farewell to summer and shift into fall, may you form deeper connections with yourself, your neighbor, and the One who breathes every season into existence.

A Hand to Hold

We need a hand to hold when change happens. For me, it’s when my babies aren’t babies anymore. Maybe for you, it’s when your child starts school. Or moves away to college. Maybe it’s when the little one you used to play blocks with is suddenly getting married. Or when the daughter who once played with Matchbox cars has passed driver’s ed and is now behind the wheel. Time passes. Children get older. It’s marvelous and heartbreaking all at once. New experiences and adventures, heartaches and victories loom on the horizon for all of us—and our sons and daughters—but often we can’t see what will happen next. We just have to trust (see Proverbs 3:5-6). So we whisper thanks for what has been and pray for God’s provision in what will be.

To Light Their Way: A Collection of Prayers and Liturgies for Parents

A Back-to-School Prayer

As this child begins this new school year,

We are reminded that they are Yours

And Yours alone.

We have filled their backpack,

And we ask You to fill their heart

With the joy of new friends

And their mind

With the wonder of learning new things.

You are the God of science

And the God of art,

The God of equations

And the God of song.

Be with them,

This piece of my heart,

As they embark on this new adventure,

Becoming more themselves

And needing me less

Every day.

This excerpt is from a much longer prayer (A Prayer for the First Day of School) from my book To Light Their Way: A Collection of Prayers & Liturgies for Parents.