Running Up Hills

I took a run the other day. A run. As in, I mostly ran the whole time, which I have only before really wanted to do. I ran because I know now that I can go farther than I think I can. That I can go farther than even the hardest I can push myself. Because I know now that running up a hill feels more doable than teaching my kids German, and I have to do that. So I ran the hill.

When we first heard about this opportunity, to live in Germany for a year, we thought we would homeschool our two kids. Well, we though I would homeschool them while my husband went to work everyday. Because my kids don’t speak German, and the thought of putting them in German school scared the poopy out of me. And them. Then we found out that homeschooling in Germany is illegal. Even the kind of homeschooling where they attend online academies. So we found an international school close to where we would live, one that teaches in English. But it only goes up to the grade below my oldest’s current grade-level. No can do. Still, the thought of putting them into a state school, where teaching German-as-a-second-language is not widely available, was not an option for us. That’s when we found the Montessori school. The one where the teachers speak English, and they start teaching it in 1st grade. The best fit for us.

But my kids will need to know German if they want to make friends, or watch a movie. Or order a pretzel at the bakery. So this summer, I teach them German. Yep. I. Because, although we have a tutor, two hours a week doesn’t cut it for the intense learning curve we have to turn. Here’s the catch – I really don’t know German, either. So we get kids magazines and come up with questions using google translate and play memory games for vocabulary words, and we continue to work through Rosetta Stone, and all of the sudden I am teaching my kids a language with which I am only barely familiar.

Running the hill was easier, I think.

I am learning that God’s strength is really the only kind that can get me up the hills. I started running up the hill because I wanted to know that strength that can only possibly come from Him. The living He offers every morning when I get up and first-thing ask Him to somehow speak life into my soul with His Word, is the only way I can really live while I’m here running hills and teaching kids to speak what I myself cannot.

And He keeps reminding me that those who fear Him lack nothing. He keeps whispering, as I run up the hills, that trusting Him is the key to this living. The key to this year. The key to running up this hill. He keeps pointing me back to the verse I found just before we left, the one I find myself clinging to time and time again.

So I run, and I look for the rich stores of the wisdom and the knowledge and the salvation for this living I know I want to do. I plan a German lesson for my kids, and I wonder what God was thinking when He moved us here with such little understanding of this German-speak. I start to think He might have overlooked this (rather large) detail when He plopped us here in the middle of these beautiful hills. And then I remember the key to the treasure of the rich stores.

So I run some more, and I tell Him I trust Him, and I realize I fear Him more than I fear ordering a pretzel at the bakery. I fear following His way for me, the way I know He has laid out right before my eyes for now, more than I fear not knowing exactly how the German-speaking hairstylist will use those scissors on my long locks. I fear God and trust Him more than I fear the burning lungs at the top of that hill. And that, my friend, is when I find myself running up the hill.