Category Archives: special needs

trying too hard: the difference between giving up & surrender

Posted on by September 17, 2025

It’s fall, so if you come to our house in the next few weeks, I’m warning you, there will be quail in the main bathroom again. But they don’t stare or gawk, and you can pretty much do your business in peace.

Our last hatch of the year was at the end of August and for the first time, we had to help a few of the quail out of their shells. And if you know about hatching chicks of any kind, you know you’re not supposed to do that.

trying too hard: the difference between giving up & surrender | Shannon Guerra at Copperlight Wood

Three of them were stuck, though. They had done most of the work themselves already, but the incubator’s humidity was off and it had been too long; they were going to die anyway. Their shells were just too dry and wouldn’t crack the rest of the way open…so I helped. One at a time, I took their warm eggs from the incubator and held them in my hand. With fear and trembling, I slid the tine of a fork into the widened crack, widened it a little more, and popped them back in the incubator.

They made it, but two out of the three really struggled – and we did, too. Their toes would not straighten out, so we painstakingly splinted them with bandaids. They had splayed legs (common even in otherwise healthy chicks) so we popped them in small jars for teacup therapy. We tried every trick we knew, and learned a few more from the internet.

By day two, one of the chicks was better but it was clear that the other one’s leg had stiffened wrong and it was still walking on curled toes. It seemed happy enough for the time being, even though it struggled to get around like the other chicks who were zipping all over the place.

How do you put something out of its misery when it doesn’t seem miserable yet? Do you wait for the misery to come, or do you keep praying for a miracle? There are much bigger livestock to apply this too, and I’m grateful we only deal with poultry.

The other chick seemed fine until day three, when it somehow got caught under the food dish and twisted itself all up. It could only spin in circles, could not get right side up again, and was obviously miserable. We couldn’t wait long after prayer for a miracle, so off that one went, too.

And here’s what I kept wrestling with that seemed to vocalize so many other struggles: Do we keep praying and trying, or do we give up?

At what point do we know we’ve really given it all we’ve got?

And, are we really giving up at that point, or are we surrendering?

Which brings me to one of our annual meetings for Reagan, our adoptive daughter. She is nineteen, with many special needs, and she can be finished with school, or she can have up to two more years. It gives us some structure for her life, so we’ve taken it a year at a time, and decided to keep going for now.

But that means we also have to decide what to do about math.

Math has always been so hard. Not just in the normal sense because math is hard for some kids, but haaard because she doesn’t have any comprehension of so many concepts. Money, spatial relations, telling time, they all mean nothing to her. Even simple addition and subtraction is a fight, and whatever aspect we don’t do all the time, she forgets.

So the spiral method of learning – when you cycle through various concepts and eventually revisit them to review before moving on – has never really worked for her. By the time the same concept comes around, she has to learn it all over again. And often, she doesn’t want to. So it’s a battle, and after 13 years it feels like one that’s very much not worth fighting anymore.

She has struggled, and we have, too. We’ve tried all the tricks. We keep explaining, we keep praying for a miracle.

And aside from math, she’s happy. She doesn’t care what grade she’s in or that her siblings can zip all over the place around her.

Like I said a minute ago: Do we keep trying, or do we give up? At what point do we know we’ve really given it all we’ve got?

But also: After 13 years, is it really giving up? Or is it surrendering, so we can move on to other things? Because the line between those feels super blurry.

Sitting across from our contact teacher, I finally ask, “Does she have to do math? I mean, it’s been thirteen years. She’s been in first grade workbooks for the last eight or nine of them, and cannot get through them. Can we just be done?”

Exasperation and tears. It feels so much like failure. All this time, and we could not get her farther than this.

But on the other side of the desk, our teacher nods.

“Yeah, you can be done.” More tears. Because as much as it feels like failure and finality, it also feels like relief.

What is the difference between surrender and giving up? I’m still sorting this out, but I think a big part of it has to do with control. I don’t mean controlling others, or even self control, but how much control we actually have over an outcome. Because sometimes (often) we take an unhealthy amount of responsibility onto ourselves for those outcomes.

We influence, yes, but we don’t cause other people (and certain situations) to change. We pray, we love, we act…but people make their own choices, they decide their own character. And when we’re working harder than they are for a better outcome, that’s a good time to surrender it.

Many sincere, dedicated believers struggle with tremendous confusion about when it is biblically appropriate to set limits.

– Cloud and Townsend, Boundaries

We invest affection, love, time, prayer, creativity, and effort into these situations. And when it all comes to nothing – or at least, seems like nothing, in the long run – it all feels wasted.

For the ignored friend, the parent of the prodigal, or the spouse who is neglected, abandoned, or abused – at what point do we quit trying so hard, quit striving for the change that someone else can only choose for themselves? We never stop praying, but when do we stop reaching out, trying so hard, waiting for the other person to mature and grow?

Powerful people do not try to control other people. They know it doesn’t work, and that it’s not their job. Their job is to control themselves….A powerful person’s choice to love will stand, no matter what the other person does or says.

– Danny Silk, Keep Your Love On

We can’t just wait for them to change. Sometimes we use waiting as an excuse to not make changes of our own, but we have to be responsible for the changes we should make, and responsive to the things the Lord is telling us to do.

With fear and trembling, sometimes we hold these situations like dry, not-quite-hatched eggs, and we carefully try to help them open. And sometimes it works. But also, sometimes it doesn’t. After we have obeyed, the outcome isn’t up to us.

Hear me, friend: God does not hold us hostage for miracles. He does not need us to strive for them.

And on the other end of things, He does not depend on our steadfast maintenance of the status quo to buy Him time, either.

Circumstances are one thing, but relationships are even stickier. What do we do when someone we love repeatedly shows how little they care, or they seem to thrive in creating chaos, or they indulge their immaturity by hurting you in passive aggressive ways? It’s hard to just move on and go about the daily tasks of life, to put on the mask and pretend things are fine, because that’s what this other person is doing and you know how wrong it is.

Some relationships we just have to let go of. Many friendships are for certain seasons and then they fade away. But certain relationships – like family members, or people you have some kind of ongoing work, ministry, or community partnership with – don’t just fade away. Somehow in these situations, we have to figure out how to love steadfastly, in the way that covers the multitude of sins, because of their proximity.

This kind of love brings us to endurance. We can’t change the other person, and we often can’t change our circumstances or proximity. So we do have to stick it out, and that can feel a lot like failure, giving up, and lowering our standards. This is so far beneath what I wanted this situation to look like. Ugh.

So we pull out all the tricks we know for this, too. We pray. We forgive. We set boundaries. And sometimes we wonder why we have to settle for so much less than what God surely intended for this situation.

It is hard to forgive and even want to keep trying when they use that proximity to make a show of how much more they care for others than you, and they make sure you see it. It is hard to overlook, to keep showing grace, to keep your cool inside your own boundaries. And boundaries, for the record, are limits placed out of love and protection. They are not a cloak for rudeness couched in a desire to avoid responsibility.

As we surrender the outcomes that are out of our control, are we really settling for less? Or is God training us for more?

Because His character hasn’t changed. His will for us and the other person has not changed.

Are we really lowering our standards? Or are we moving on so we can fight other battles – the ones we have a hand in winning?

One of the battles we continue to fight with (and for) Reagan is communication. She is verbal but most people can’t understand her because she slurs, blends words, skips words, and generally speaks in that toddler-like manner that only parents and siblings can decode.

So here’s where we stand our ground: Even when I understand what she’s saying, if it’s not clear, I usually have her repeat it correctly.

“Slow down and say each word so I can understand you,” I often tell her. There will come a day when she needs someone else to understand her, and if we let her get away with garble, she will regress further.

I sat next to her during worship at one of our community-wide gatherings a couple weeks ago, and prayed for the millionth time for healing in her. And because it has been a million times (but who’s counting) I also prayed for healing in my own heart over the hope deferred, the things I cannot change, the things I don’t know how to change, the loss of what seems like things should have been.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

– Proverbs 13:12

I have wondered how sick my heart is, how skewed my perspective is from living so close for so long and not seeing certain answers. I have fought the battle of faith against futility, seen the shimmer of horizon through closed eyes in prayer, and knew it wasn’t a vision, but tears.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.

Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.

– Philippians 4:4-5

The fight is not about what I can change in her, but in what I am letting God change in me.

It is not about lowering my standards or expectations, but about seeing rightly the battles that I can and need to be fighting.

It is about seeing how other desires are fulfilled, and focusing on the tree of life.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

– Philippians 4:6-8

The leaves are falling outside and the season is going fast, racing toward the long winter. And we grieve over the loss of time, the speed of time, the lost opportunity of what could and should have been. In the storm and shadow of these deep struggles, our efforts can feel like such dim lights in such darkness. Our small influence, our private lives, our humble gifts, what can they do amid the raking waves in the present, violent tumult?

In that moment during worship as I looked down and watched my tears hit the hardwood floor, I knew with certainty that next to me Reagan was just giddy over the volume of the music. Delighted in the moment, flapping her hands, utterly apathetic about how I was even at that moment fighting for her.

Jesus, receive the reward of your suffering. We sang it that night, and we live it every day as we give it all we’ve got, and then surrender.

grit: how we wait & keep His way

Posted on by March 6, 2025

I sat at one end of the couch, and our six-year-old with his pink cheeks was at the other. Our nine-year-old had the other couch, and both were banked by coffee tables littered with half-empty beverages.

Up too early with two feverish boys, trying to keep myself healthy and hydrated on only four hours of sleep, I remembered how just in the last post I said my mind was ambitious but my body said no, take a nap. And I wondered if this day would be the same but for different reasons.

grit: how we wait & keep His way | Shannon Guerra

I had just written about limitations, so I guess it was fair that I got to relive it: Limits force us to focus. I could only reach my end of the coffee table, which held my tea, planner, bible, book for class, a scripture verse on a slip of paper, and The House of Seven Gables, all of which I’ve been working my way through.

That sounds productive, but I spent plenty of time just staring blankly out the window, watching the chickadees at the feeder and the cars on the highway. Also, I checked temperatures. Reminded Finn and Kav to drink their tea, and they made slow progress.

Both of the boys had a day – separately, though, praise God – when their fevers spiked high enough to peak with delirium and tachycardia, which is a fancy way of saying we could see their pulses tapping under the curve of their necks while they mumbled nonsense about ice cubes talking and the walls changing shape and color.

It was alarming, but twenty years of reading classic literature hasn’t been for nothing. Everyone who’s read Sense and Sensibility knows that Marianne raved incoherently before her fever broke, too.

So we kept their foreheads cool and let the fevers do their job. And they did, but when we thought they were finally on the mend, a new phase started with congestion and coughing, which didn’t seem fair because that’s not how it’s supposed to work. You’re supposed to get over whatever it is and move on with life, not just transition into a new form of sickness.

But no, two days later, both boys and I were all coughing and sniffling. Still drinking all the fluids and doing the right things, but also, still working our way through whatever it was. My head hurt when I turned too fast to look left or right, but I mostly felt fine as long as I didn’t do anything ambitious like leave the couch.

Sometimes we think we’re making progress, but then we suddenly realize there’s so much more ahead than we had anticipated. And it doesn’t feel like progress anymore; it feels more like discouragement, or even defeat.

He sees you when small steps forward cause you to grieve, because it seems like they ought to be bigger steps forward by now…or they ought not to have been needed at all because the circumstances should never have happened.

You’re not in trouble for having mixed feelings over progress that restores the regress of hard situations.

It’s okay to be both grateful for the progress and grieved over its necessity.

He is doing something in both the grief and the gratitude.

– Grit: Kindling to Relight the Wounded and Weary

I gathered the empty cups and crumpled tissues, thought about the work that would need to be set aside for another day. Wondered how long it would last, and how much I wasn’t going to get done this week.

And then I heard the Lord say, What if this isn’t sickness, but immunity?

Because that’s what perseverance and grit develop.

Wait for the Lord and keep to his way,
and he will exalt you to inherit the land;
you will look on the destruction of the wicked.

– Psalm 37:34

When we learn to focus and persist in the task that’s right in front of us, we protect ourselves from a lot of the drama and distractions in our periphery. We’re not necessarily unaware, but we’re on a mission.

(Like right now, she typed, ignoring the cat who repeatedly walked across her lap, meowing for attention.)

Being stuck on the couch with sick kids is not all that different from being stuck on the couch nursing a baby, which is how I’ve spent almost eleven years of my adult life. Those were the short years filled with long days; different couch, but the same coffee table. Those slow days taught me to steward what was in reach no matter how chaotic everything else out of reach was – drink the water, read the book, memorize the verse. Look out the window, observe and pray.

And this, too, is progress.

Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him;
do not fret over those who prosper in their way,
over those who carry out evil devices.

– Psalm 37:7

A few weeks ago one of our pastors said the difference between persistence and stubbornness is the direction you’re going, and that’s familiar because we’ve talked about holy stubbornness for a looong time.

Things don’t always go the way we want, but when we practice patient self control, playing it cool, we look like Jesus because we’re doing what He did. The Bible, of course, doesn’t say He “played it cool;” it uses phrases like divine forbearance...but the essence is the same. We, too, are looking past the wrongs and trusting Him to bring things right as we press on in the face of less than ideal circumstances.

We’re doing what needs to be done, no matter how humble or ugly or unimpressive it seems. We’re pressing forward through the obstacles. And we’re letting go of the things out of reach, out of our jurisdiction and control.

We’re (a)biding our time in gritty surrender.

Our steps are made firm by the Lord
when he delights in our way;
though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong,
for the Lord holds us by the hand.

– Psalm 37:23-24

I didn’t want the kid to make that choice, I didn’t want to have to prune that relationship, I didn’t want that to happen. But it’s less about what we want, and more about how we respond once we see things as they are: Will we look to Him? Will we sit at His feet? Will we trust Him and forge ahead, however we’re able?

…let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

– Hebrews 12:1b-2

We are image bearers, becoming Who we behold even (especially) when it’s not easy to keep our focus. Like Mary of Bethany, who defied all kinds of opposition – including her closest family member and the cultural expectations of the day – to enter a room of men (scandalized gasp!) in order to sit at Jesus’ feet and learn from Him. She defied religious norms just like she’d seen Him do, and whenever she was attacked, Jesus came to her defense.

Mary was mantled with authority because of her grit.

The Lord helps them and rescues them;
he rescues them from the wicked and saves them
because they take refuge in him.

– Psalm 37:40

Another thing we talked about in church recently was the process of refining gold. My friend who has personal experience with this pointed out that when gold is refined, impurities are removed – which means the weight is reduced but the value is increased.

I must become less, He must become more…so we make space for Him to move, and give permission to Him to refine us.

Friend, if you are in a hard spot, do you see how He is letting you in to see the inner place, where most people aren’t willing to go? He’s showing you the place in His heart where He also went through change that felt like loss. Betrayals, misunderstandings, moves, and new directions. Rejection, people changing, culture shifting.

And He’s not wasting any of this.

…we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.
And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions,
knowing that affliction produces endurance,
and endurance produces character,
and character produces hope,
and hope does not put us to shame,
because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

– Romans 5:2b-5

You know that one area that you’ve struggled with for so long – the one you’ve confessed and repented and prayed and changed habits for, but the battle is in the mind and you’re still at war, wondering if you’ll ever see victory. Wondering if things will ever change.

What if you started seeing yourself in that situation from God’s perspective? What if you saw it as He sees it now: after the resurrection, after death and hell have been defeated?

What if you stopped seeing yourself as bad at handling this situation? Because we fight from victory, not for it.

Much of the enemy’s game is just bluffing and confusion. He wants to convince us to agree with him that this is just how it is, this struggle is our “cross” (ooh, he’s good at twisting scripture!), and we just aren’t spiritual enough to figure this out yet.

But if we agree with God and know that we have been given every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, including the authority to trample the enemy to pieces, we’ll look at it (and ourselves) differently.

We’ll know this is a work in progress but that God is making the progress, and our situation was never hopeless.

We aren’t bad at dealing with it. We just haven’t seen how good we are at conquering it yet.

No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us.

— Romans 8:37

In difficulty, opposition, or loss – or sickness or frustration or lack – we can choose to forge ahead, even when we’re sitting still. We’re not looking at this through fear’s lens anymore, focusing on the negative possibilities. We’re not looking through defeat’s lens, feeling like it’s over too soon and we blew it.

No, now we see through victory’s lens: abiding, watching it play out, not responding with knee-jerk reactions, but making deliberate moves in trust, confident that the Lord is at work, and He’s giving us the wisdom we need for our work, too.

What will we do when there’s so little within reach? Will we build even when our resources are limited and the materials aren’t ideal? Will we keep going even when the way is more uphill than we expected?

As we look to Him, we start to see like He does, too, and our perspective changes. So…what if this situation isn’t what it looks like? He’s teaching us to be alert, and to recognize that some things are not just what they seem.

What if it’s not really sickness or hardship or loss? What if it’s actually protection and preparation and provision?

It’s not sickness, it’s immunity — this situation isn’t taking from our lives, but adding to it. With the right perspective and gritty surrender, it’s gain, not loss. It’s adding steel to our spines, integrity to our intentions, wisdom to our experience, strength to our mind and character, and the ability to withstand.

Because slow progress is preparation, not punishment. Every time we trust Him, we protect our path forward. So much is happening that we can’t see, and God is doing miracles in us in the meantime as we look toward Him.

This is now available if you’ve been burned out or discouraged, and need some fuel for your calling. Grit is the first in the Kindling series — short, powerful, beautiful books to help relight you. Just $7 for the instant download, and you get both the full-color version and the black & white printable version, too. xo

trying my patience: grace for others as we grow

Posted on by January 27, 2025

The kids were pulling presents out, and Kav held one up.

“Who’s this for?”

I pointed to the name written on it. “It starts with V. Who do you know starts with V?”

“Dad,” Finn answered for him.

Um, okay. Right, Dad starts with V…if his name is Vince, at least.

trying my patience: grace for others as we grow

We’re all working on the English language here in this house, even the parents who write and wrestle with commas for a living, and also the older kids in various levels of literature and language arts.

Reagan brings me her journal and holds it out to me. The sentence she’s trying to write is “Finn is coughing today,” and I bet you can guess which word is tripping her up. Because English is hard, and also stupid.

So far she’s tried “koring” and “caing” and I’m super excited that she’s figured out the “ing” part consistently. And I know you can’t sound out the word coughing because the letters don’t make sense, but she needs to at least try. She knows what the sounds are.

Often though, she doesn’t want to try, so we get these wild random spellings that aren’t even close. And I can’t blame her, sometimes laziness is my default, too.

I could just spell it for her. If she copied it enough times she would probably learn it, and learning is why we’re doing this, of course. But we’re not just wanting her to memorize; we’re wanting her to think, and solve, and resolve. And for that, she needs to sound it out. We want solving problems to be our (and her) default, not just memorizing answers.

And when she tries that, that’s when I’ll give her the real answer and explain that English is hard and stupid. (Okay fine, probably not.)

But I won’t step in if she’s not even trying. I’m not playing tricks on her; I’m teaching her that we can do hard things. Simultaneously, God is teaching me the same thing, because this slower-than-molasses progress tries my patience like you wouldn’t believe. Her way is not my way. But if I push her to do things my way, we take a small frustration and turn it into a much bigger conflict.

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

– Ephesians 4:1-3

I’m helping her navigate problems and grow, and we all do that growing and navigating at different levels. We understand things differently because we have different perspectives.

For example, most of us know exactly what’s happening in this verse:

…for [Jesus] was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”

– Mark 9:31

It’s pretty straightforward to us. We’ve read the Book, seen the crime play out; we know what happened and we’ve heard the story a zillion times.

But His disciples – those closest to Him – didn’t get it. They didn’t see what was coming, and this was their response:

But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him.

– Mark 9:32

To us, there’s no ambiguity. The way Jesus said it is the way it actually happened. But if we put ourselves in the disciples’ shoes, what He said was totally bewildering. Is He really talking about Himself? Is he being symbolic? Does “killed” really mean “killed,” or does it mean something else?

Are we dealing with something that’s straightforward, or is there more to it than that? Is “cough” spelled C-O-F-F, or does it have some of those confusing extra letters in it?

So in their misunderstanding, they respond in a way we totally relate to. They were afraid to ask Him. The Greek for fear here is “phobeo,” and it is a strong fear, meaning to put to flight, terrify, frighten, or incite dread. It’s the kind of fear that avoids and leads to more misunderstanding. I don’t want to know, so I won’t ask. So they didn’t.

Maybe they were too proud, too insecure to reveal their ignorance. Maybe they were hoping the situation would just go away. And we do those things too sometimes, glossing over and avoiding what makes us uncomfortable.

And sometimes we’re afraid to talk about things directly, so we talk behind each other’s back. We don’t want to look stupid or wrong, so we put other people down, instead. Which is interesting because in the very next verses, here’s what the disciples do:

And they came to Capernaum. And when [Jesus] was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.

– Mark 9:33-34

They competed. They puffed up. They pointed fingers. And then they avoided again, refusing to admit what they’d been doing. Fear, pride, and insecurity were still driving them, and they didn’t want to do the hard work of considering something unfamiliar and seemingly impossible.

Which leads me to something that happens in our house occasionally: Vin or I will explain something to one of our kids, and they’ll interrupt us with, “I know.”

(Right, this never happens at your house. Humor me.)

So Vin or I will answer, “No, if you knew, I wouldn’t need to be telling you,” and then continue what we were saying, hoping that this time they’re paying attention. Because we know the “I know” is blowing us off. Sometimes it’s insecurity and pride, pretending to understand something they don’t; and sometimes it’s laziness, not wanting to take the time to consider a different perspective. It could be any number of things, really. If solving problems were easy, we wouldn’t call them “problems” in the first place.

And we don’t solve problems in all the same ways, any more than we sound things out in the same ways. For example, I have no idea how they teach language arts in the South, where they are reckless with vowels. Excuse me for yelling, but I AM SO GLAD I’M NOT TEACHING MY KIDS ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH.

Because in some places there, for example, little i says ee, and big I says ah. As in, “Be steel and know that Ah am God.” If I’m quiet, I can hear this in the voice of my pastor’s wife.

But it’s not just vowels; it’s also syllables. In the South they remove them from some words (I was shocked and bewildered the first time I heard a Southerner pronounce “oil,” which to me should sound like “oy-ul” and not just “ull”) and then, messing with vowels again, they put extra syllables into other words where God never intended them.

How many syllables does “sin” have? Two if you’re from certain parts of Texas: See-in. Clap, clap. Two syllables. No big deal, we both agree sin is wrong. We just say it differently.

Months ago I went to a reception for a new friend and I didn’t know how to spell her name on the card I brought for her. So I asked a mutual friend. Unfortunately, that friend is from the South, and I don’t even know how to phonetically write what she said. But as she coached me through the spelling, it was sort of like, “Kye (rhymes with eye) – ah – ee – ayus –”

And I thought to myself, What’s an Ah? What the heck is an AYus? I knew it made perfect sense to her, but I had no clue. So I smiled, nodded, and happened to look down at the cake, which had our friend’s name on it in frosting.

If you’re from the South, I hope you know I love you. We’re saying the same things; we just say them differently.

Communication can be hard. Understanding and loving each other can also be hard. Jesus didn’t buy peace with compromise, but He also knew His disciples were befuddled, wrestling, and had their own insecurities and growth to overcome.

So He patiently let them wrestle – you think He didn’t already know what they were talking about along the way about who was the greatest? – and then He brought some gentle correction and perspective.

And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”

– Mark 9:35-37

The thing about little kids is that they love to learn. They don’t pretend to have all the answers. They love risk and wonder. They’re not afraid to ask questions and they’re not driven by pride or insecurity. And generally, if they’re with someone they trust, healthy kids are excited about the unfamiliar instead of afraid of it.

But when we see people doing something unfamiliar or unexpected, we tend to create circles of belonging and exclusion, like the disciples did in the very next verse:

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

– Mark 9:38

Jesus responds to their tattling with perspective and wisdom in His correction, because He knows they are still sounding this out, too. He doesn’t want them — or us — to just memorize; He wants us to broaden our perspectives and consider new things. He wants us to think, and solve, and resolve.

But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.”

– Mark 9:39-41

We often misunderstand things that are perfectly clear when they’re not what we expected or predicted. But the Holy Spirit is teaching us, making us like Him, and He doesn’t want us to just memorize principles, because memorizing answers isn’t the same as solving problems. He wants us to walk in a manner worthy of our calling:

With all humility and gentleness. With patience. Bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

(Even if we don’t know an A from an Ayus.)

To do that, we need to consider the unfamiliar, and do hard things. We need to grow deep and wide. We need to snuff out comparison with humility. We need to try our patience, stretching it farther than we thought it could go. And when we do, grace will press out our insecurities and pride and unnecessary conflicts, as light presses out darkness.

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