My Pal Werhner

Today was the day of our big field trip. Kim and I both decided that since neither of us had bags of money lying around the house, this year we were going to really make our field trips count. So, that meant no Children's theater, no American Village, no trips that don't tie in with the theme of our studies.

Well, tomorrow is the end of a 9 week unit study on the Solar System. Maggie, Ty and Gracie each have a three-ring binder full of 'space stuff'. Maggie and Ty's are much thicker than Gracie's. They have studied : the Sun, stars, Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars and its moons, the Asteroid Belt, Jupiter and its moons, Saturn and its moons, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and its moon, comets, meteors, Ptolemy, Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Jules Vern, Werhner von Braun, rockets, the International Space Station, and all things NASA. That is A LOT of stuff!

There have been lots of worksheets, science experiments, books, videos, and discussions. I felt like they had enjoyed it but I wasn't very confident of how much information had actually sunk in. That is, until today. We got about a mile away from the Space Center and pandemonium broke out in the van.

Loud choruses of "Look! It's a rocket." "It's a Redstone rocket!" "It's the Saturn 5!" They were so stinkin' excited! I was amazed. Then we pulled into the parking lot and they spotted the Space Shuttle and another round of hysterics let loose. Now I was getting excited. Kim was too.

Do you know where my kids remembered the most information? In the section on Werhner von Braun. Don't get me wrong, they remembered a bunch of other things, but that section on von Braun really brought things to life for them. They were fascinated by his pictures, his models, his desk, even his pencils on his desk. It was like they knew him or something. Ty, for one, seems to admire him. I think it has something to do with von Braun blowing up a toy wagon when he was 16 trying to build a rocket or maybe the fact that he "stole" a train in order to save his research team during World War 2. That's cool stuff to an 8 year old boy. Makes me a little nervous though.

I watched my kids run through that museum, laughing, talking and remembering what I had taught them. It was very gratifying. For Gracie to want to buy postcards of the planets because she remembered them was great. Maggie got animated when she saw a parachute. She thinks it's cool that the Orbiter and Solid Rocket Boosters use them to slow down.

I'm telling you, it was a sight to behold. And it made me think... I spend so much of my time worrying about my kids. I worry over their education, their imagination, their socialization, etc, etc, ad naseum. But I did the best I could and God blessed it. He took my efforts, done out of love for Him and my kids, and made it fruitful. It wasn't me. It was Him.

He knew when He rescued Werhner von Braun from the Nazis that, one day, a little boy named Ty would be amazed by it. God knew when He gave these scientists and engineers the ability to envision a way into space that 2 little girls would see the bigness of God through that.

He has my name and my children's names on His heart and has since before the foundations of the Earth. He is interested in all the things that happen in their lives. Because it's through the daily things that we really see God's face. I've always thought that I would see God more through miracles but didn't Jesus say "Blessed are those who haven't seen[miracles] and yet believe." I think that's in John 20:29.

Does that means we know God better and more deeply through the little things? Is that why He tells us in Deuteronomy 11 to teach them to our children when we are going out and coming in, when we lie down and when we get up, when we are sitting at home and when we are walking down the road? I don't think those verses mean we are to be spouting theology and catechism questions all the time, but showing our kids that God is present in all of those instances. I mean, these are random thoughts and I might be wrong, but lots of people saw Jesus' miracles but the ones who really, really knew Him were the ones who ate with Him, walked with Him, went to the bathroom with Him, and did all of the mundane, ordinary things of life with Him. That's where we tend to live and He meets us where we are. I think that until I realize that God is big enough to fill up my world, I won't ever be able to completely trust Him with it.

"In all your ways ackowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:6

all- adj.- the whole of. noun- everything
acknowledge - verb - admit as true