One of the Distinctives of Lorien Wood School is that we seek to cultivate the uniqueness of each child. This is set forth more concretely as:
“Our faculty strives to develop a deep knowledge of and appreciation for every child at Lorien Wood. Our small, mixed-age classes are designed to provide a supportive environment in which each child’s unique and God-given design is revealed and developed, while also providing the freedom for each child to progress at an appropriate pace.”
That phrase, “each child’s unique and God-given design is revealed and developed” is important as that is our prime job as parents as well! We are to help direct our children to become who they are meant to be in Christ. Obviously as they grow and develop, they take more and more ownership of their faith, as well as their desires and proclivities, but while they are school-aged, we have a unique ability to shape and nurture their faith and those desires and proclivities.
So, WHAT do we do with that time, and HOW do we do it? This is maybe the age-old question of parenting, that each of us has expressed at more than one point. The struggle often is that as individuals, we are not ourselves sure about who we are meant to be in Christ, much less how to teach that to our children.
In this “Part One” post, we will explore how to discover how God made us, and in a future Part Two we will explore how to help our children discover that same thing (and how to understand when they are different from us), and in Part Three, we will focus on learning how to discover God’s purpose for our lives.
In order to delve into this big question, we need to think about a few smaller, but no less important, questions: Who am I? (Who does God say that I am?); What am I like? (How did God make me?); and What is my purpose? (What does He want me to do/be?)
So, who are you? It is important to start at the very beginning of humans in general:
“…God created human beings in his own likeness. He created them to be like himself. He created them as male and female.” Genesis 1:27 (NIRV)
And to start at the very beginning of you, articulated in Psalm 139:13-16:
13 “You created the deepest parts of my being. You put me together inside my mother’s body. 14 How you made me is amazing and wonderful. I praise you for that. What you have done is wonderful. I know that very well.15 None of my bones was hidden from you when you made me inside my mother’s body. That place was as dark as the deepest parts of the earth. When you were putting me together there, 16 your eyes saw my body even before it was formed. You planned how many days I would live. You wrote down the number of them in your book before I had lived through even one of them.” (NIRV)
At bottom, you are God’s creation, made in His image, AND God made you very particularly.
As humans, we have a God-given desire to classify things (and people!) to make them understandable. We want to be able to put people (and ourselves) into categories so that we can make sense of the world. Some aspects of ourselves are easy to see and categorize. Physical differences and abilities is one of the easier classifications. And we have differing academic abilities and our brains might work differently from others. Those differences and abilities are often assessed and tested and discovered in a school environment.
But God also made each of us in a very specific way, with particular gifts and abilities and personality and proclivities and desires and needs, as well as vulnerabilities and weaknesses. It is useful to understand how you are made, particularly your strengths and weaknesses, so that you can honestly take those before God and ask Him for help and direction.
So, how to assess your personality and giftings? There are some tools and resources at the end. But you can also just reflect on what you DO know about yourself. Maybe make a list. For example: What is your favorite creative outlet? What is your own learning style? Do you need to have things in their proper place? When you are stressed, do you clean or disappear into a book? Take some time to assess your own personality and giftings. Then in Part Two we will take a look at how your children are similar and different!
Resources
Remember, these are only TOOLS…they do not have the final say about who you are.
https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test
https://www.strengthsprofile.com/en-us/products/free
https://learningstylequiz.com/quiz/start
Learn more about Lorien Wood Elementary School in Vienna, Va.