What Back-to-School Season Offers Our Souls

Published at Family Christian.

I sit down to read a few emails when involuntary tears spill over—the kind where I didn’t even think a sad thing, but suddenly, I can’t see my screen. What is happening right now?

Rather inconvenient, yet telling of a soul that feels tension.

Today teeters on the edge of summer. In just a few more days, my family will be in full-on back-to-school season, with sports and schedules and all the things. For this mama, that brings feelings.

Don’t get me wrong—every August, when even the grocery store is filled with school supply aisles, I want to fill my house with bouquets of sharpened pencils*, don anything plaid and search for rational reasons to buy a new backpack (preferably a soft brown leather, please). That familiar August rhythm, that pull toward learning and growing, lives in our bones.

But today’s keyboard tears reveal something deeper than shopping for fresh notebooks. Tears don’t come from filling in color-coded boxes on my calendar—they come from longings. And I’ve no shortage of those. Longings line up in my heart for my kids in their new endeavors, for the places where I’m called, and for my family and friends. At the same time, on this side of summer, I am feeling a bit thin and dry.

Amidst the changing season and very full-of-new-things calendar, my longing for more of Him seeps out.

What if this pull we feel is for our souls to meet Him anew, as if we’re entering a new grade ourselves? What if this back-to-school season comes with an invitation to come and settle our souls into Jesus more deeply?

This is the August invitation that my soul needs.

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