Thankful Thursday

My kids went to the most-wonderful-in-all-the-world PDO and preschool (CWM). The school also offers kindergarten (though not any higher grades), and since Kloe's birthday is in August, when it was time for her to start school we decided to send her to CWM to see how she would do and to give us the option of repeating if we felt that she needed to.

She did great and at the end of the year was very ready to move on to first grade. And so the debate began. Public school or private school? The church we attend also has a school, and I so desperately wanted her to go there. I prayed and prayed and cried and prayed, asking God to make a way for us to be able to afford for her to go there.

Along about February of her kindergarten year I began to sense that God's answer was NO. I ignored Him as long as I could, continuing to pray and pretend that I hadn't actually heard Him right - that it was just my fear making me think He was going to say no, and in fact He was going to come through at any moment and show us some miraculous way we could afford private school. After all, God is never late, but He is seldom early. :)

After a couple more months, through some group intervention wise counsel I finally admitted that God was choosing public school for Kloe. I was devastated and petrified all at the same time. I felt like I would be sending my baby girl out into a den of wolves every day. But my sweet friend Ashley gently reminded me that Kloe would always be safer inside of God's will - even in public school - than she would be at private school if that was not His plan.

So....now you're all caught up on the story behind today's Thankful Thursday post. I am humbled and grateful to be able to say that I am SO THANKFUL for the school Kloe (and now Jacob) goes to. God has been so faithful to provide for us in awesome ways. We have had fabulous teachers, many of whom are Christians, and a principal who is a Christian too. We have made some great friends, I've gotten really involved with PTA, and last year a couple of other moms started a Moms in Touch prayer group for our school.

It's still public school, and there are definitely things about it that still frustrate me. Like some of the movies they show the kids. Or the book that Kloe's reading class is reviewing right now. Jacob told me yesterday that his teacher "doesn't even let us pray before we eat!" That just doesn't make sense to him.

I still sometimes long for my kids to be learning science from a Biblical perspective and to have chapel every day. To be in a place where their teachers will pray with them and train them in Godly life principles. But God has them there for a reason. I pray that He will use them to be His light in the dark places. To be His witnesses to those kids (and teachers) who need to know Him. If every Christian kid only went to Christian schools, who would take the light into the public schools? Today Jacob told me that he used the "moment of silence" they have every morning to pray that God will be with him and help him do his best. How great is that?

God knows what He's doing. He has a purpose for my children. And for that, I am so very, very thankful.

The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your love, O Lord, endures forever -- do not abandon the works of your hands. Psalm 138:8

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you and appointed you.... Jeremiah 1:5

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," declares the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9

What are YOU thankful for today?