She may not have realized when she sent home a letter like this with questions like this that she was sending it to a mama who overthinks everything.
_________________________________________________
I have literally thousands of pictures of Drew. This one is one of my favorites, taken just last summer simply using my phone discretely. The picture itself is nothing special; in fact, it’s really not that good. But, I experienced the moment it captured and know how it stands like a window into Drew’s heart.
Andrew Micah.
Andrew was the first called, the first disciple Jesus called by name. As our third child, we wanted him to know he was valued, called by name, known. Even as we were expecting his arrival, we prayed Micah 6:8 for him, that he would seek justice, love mercy, and humbly walk with God.
We love his heart, the mercy and compassion captured in this picture, the passion he has to see broken things made right, the unfair made fair, and his developing understanding of who he is and how he fits into a larger picture. That’s not an easy process; we see him struggling, easily injured and often hearing the wrong message that he’s not important, not valuable. We want to help him wrestle with all that in all contexts—in our family, as he considers his own physical frame, as he processes every part of school social and academic. His sensitive heart may get injured easily as he wrestles, but it also responds to nurturing easily. So, we work hard to give him what works to build him up, speaking affirming words and giving him lots of physical affection. As he matures and becomes more secure, he will likely need less of that. But, for now, we’re happy to give him what he needs, believing that the encouragement to his heart is infinitely more important than anything else and actually will be what makes all that anything else effective. With that encouragement, he’s better able to learn hard math facts and history lessons, better able to physically do what he thinks he can’t do, more willing to work as part of a team even when it’s hard.
Our desire is that his teachers would trust us and see us as willing able to be what he most needs and then to partner with us to reinforce how we are building him up to be the man God wants him to be and to give him the anything else so we can be freed up to pour into his heart.