What Back-to-School Season Offers Our Souls

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.

I suspect that’s why the tears pushed through. The ushering in of this frenzied back-to-school season brings those longings to the surface. What waits deeper is beckoning. Below the calendar chaos, my heart is hearing an invitation to come, learn, grow, and become.

I’m guessing you know the whisper, too.

It’s the same low whisper that comes in the daily tensions. As we try to perfect our families and fix our hang-ups, we ache for peace. As we pack lunches and wonder if we’ve done enough, we long for transformed, unshaken hearts. As we bandaid the pain and keep on going, we want rest and wholeness.

Friend, let me encourage you. This tension is evidence that we aren’t settling. We know there is more. We are sensing an invitation from our teacher during our own back-to-school season.

This tension is what’s tucked inside the tears this morning. 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.

As children put on backpacks, carry lunchboxes, and walk through new hallways to learn, grow, and become, let’s do the same with our souls. Let’s choose His paths, which are lined with promises of grace and growth.

What does it look like to embrace the invitation that back-to-school season offers our souls?

1. Choose to keep becoming.

“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:6, NIV).

Our invitations into new seasons never stop. When we invite Him to work in us, it’s like climbing onto the school bus for the new year. We open ourselves to continue becoming. We are only becoming as long as we are still pursuing. As long as we’re willing to yield to His Spirit to grow us, we’ll keep growing. When we pause our pursuit of Jesus, we pause becoming who He made us to be.

2. Embrace the unfamiliar.

“I will lead blind Israel down a new path, guiding them along an unfamiliar way. I will brighten the darkness before them and smooth out the road ahead of them. Yes, I will indeed do these things; I will not forsake them” (Isaiah 43:16).

He promises to lead us. What if we see these days as an invitation to follow His leading down a new path, even when it means going an unfamiliar way? What if we trust Him to brighten and smooth what waits? When we believe we can trust Him to lead us and our families in our blindness down unfamiliar paths, and know that He will not forsake us, we will find ourselves drawing closer to Him – and closer to where He is taking us.

3. Set aside the fear.

“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity or cowardice or fear, but He has given us a spirit of power and of love and of sound judgment and personal discipline [abilities that result in a calm, well-balanced mind and self-control]” (2 Timothy 1:7, AMP).

At the root of unsettled hearts is fear—fear of change, failure, and inability to control. But God did not give us a spirit of fear. In fact, with Him, we can have complete confidence, as He gives us the same power He gave Jesus. If we cling to this truth, we can know that He is always for us. Instead of holding fear when we walk into new situations, we can hold peace and calm.

4. Trust the Teacher.

“For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him” (Phil 2:13, NLT).

The truth that He will complete His good work in us is a long-haul promise – a promise that tells us He’s in every second of every chapter and season. This truth is made more powerful when we also remember that He is at work in us. Why do we doubt anything when we’re promised that He gives us the desire to do what He has planned, and then He gives us the power to do it? What more assurance could we need to keep growing and walking out His plans than to hold these truths together? We can trust our Teacher and what He has planned.

As we step into whatever changes August brings, let’s acknowledge the longings we arrive with. Let’s reframe our mindset to see August as an invitation for our souls to meet our Teacher anew and settle ourselves into Him more deeply. In this back-to-school season, let’s embrace the excitement that we have more to learn and the joy of knowing that we are still becoming. And that He will bring to completion the good work He begins.

*Full credit for the phrase “bouquets of sharpened pencils” goes to Tom Hanks, offered to Meg Ryan, in You’ve Got Mail, which is truly one of the best movies ever about seasons and becoming.