Why We Have No Choice But to Trust

My daughter Imogen offers to take sisters Charlotte and Sophie to their piano lessons. “I’ll go to McDonald’s while I’m waiting, have a coffee, and do some work on my computer,” she says.

So the three older girls head off to town leaving Gemma-Rose and me at home.

“What shall we do?” I ask.

“I could do my piano practice.”

“And then we could walk to the village to post some letters.”

“Let’s go to the post office first,” suggests Gemma-Rose.

We can’t go for a walk without Nora. Just imagine if our dog found out we’d gone without her. So we find the leash and soon we’re strolling down the middle of the road. (We live on a quiet street.) Dogs bark from gardens as we pass by. Nora ignores them all. She grins with her nose in the air.

I leave Gemma-Rose and Nora outside the post office while I buy a stamp. It’s been a while since I last bought one for a local letter. How much do they cost? $1? That seems rather a lot.

“You could send your letter by the premium overnight service,” says the post assistant. “Premium stamps are $1.50.” Should I spend an extra 50 cents and get a premium stamp? Before I can decide, the woman adds, “But I don’t have any.”

I stick the regular one dollar stamp on the letter. I slide it into the mailbox. We’re finished. Time to walk home.

“It feels like spring,” I say to Gemma-Rose as I push up my cardigan sleeves. Sunny days, plants growing, not shivering as I dress for a run. I smile. Yes, spring is here!

But summer will arrive hot, very hot on the heels of spring. The heat will sit heavy upon my head.

We walk past the rural fire station. I glance at the ‘Place of Last Resort’ sign. And I think about bushfires. Soon we’ll be on alert. Every hot and windy day we’ll be saying, “This is real bushfire weather.”

There’s a new house on our street. It took longer to build than expected.  It had to satisfy new bushfire building standards. Each window of the house has fire shutters. And there’s an ember-deflecting roof under the tiles.

What if our house had fire shutters? What if it had a special fire-proof roof? Would I enjoy summer more if we lived in a fire-protected home?  If flames approached, we could close the shutters and leave our house to fend for itself. Maybe it would still be there after the fire had burnt its way through our village. We wouldn’t have to worry about saving our possessions. I wonder if we’d be safe in the house if a fire passed over it. I’ll have to do some research.

Or not. We can’t afford fire shutters. The special roof is out of the question. And anyway, a fire may never arrive. How many summers have we been living in this house? I think this will be our ninth. Our house is still here even though we had a close call several years ago.

All we can do is be sensible. Prepare our home as much as possible by clearing the gutters and cutting back the vegetation. Know what we’ll do if a fire ever does threaten our village. Then we should get on with life without worrying. No looking out of the window, peering at the horizon, wondering if that’s smoke we can see. If a fire arrives, we will deal with it then.

We can’t control everything in life, can we? We can’t arrange everything perfectly so that we’ll avoid every difficulty. We do what we can, and then we trust we’ll be okay. Because what’s the alternative? Worry and never enjoy life?

We often worry about our kids. We might be tempted to make them do a whole long list of things just in case they might need them in the future. We could try and cover all bases. We could cram as much as possible into our kids’ childhood years. Maybe we want to send our children off into the world prepared for anything so they’ll have perfect lives. But that’s not how things work. A perfect life isn’t possible. Nor is it desirable. Difficulties make us stronger. They help us become the people we were created to be.

So how can we help our kids if it’s not possible to control their futures? We can nurture their love of learning and build up strong family bonds by accepting, respecting and loving them unconditionally. Then with this framework in place, we can concentrate on living our lives in this present moment without worrying. Enjoy. Appreciate. Relax. And trust that our kids are learning what they need to know. When difficulties arise, our kids will be prepared because we’ll have done the important things.

So we trust. We trust the unschooling process. We trust our kids. We trust God.

Of course, we could try not trusting. We could cling onto control. But I don’t think that’ll work. Do you?

I wrote this story three years ago. It’s been sitting forgotten in my draft post file. The other day, it caught my eye because of this sentence:

’And anyway, a fire may never arrive.’

Recently, a fire did arrive. It swept through our village threatening our homes. What did we do? We dealt with it.

The fire-proofed house down the road is still standing. So is ours. I know that things might not have gone our way. There were some very sticky moments during the bushfire crisis. We could have lost everything. But, I’m certain if that had happened, we would still have been okay. Losing a house can’t be as difficult as losing a child. If we can survive one then we can survive the other.

Talking about bushfires, I have some news: a few days ago, ‘our’ fire was officially declared extinguished! The recent heavy rain helped to put it out!

Enduring the bushfire crisis wasn’t easy. However, we learnt a lot. We have grown stronger. We experienced compassion and love. We are extra grateful for all we have. And now we have a lot of stories to tell!

Something Extra

Here’s a very short vlog that Andy and I made together. In it, we mention trust.

Photos

I took these photos several days ago. As you can see, there’s new growth in our local bush that was burnt not so long ago! Sophie and I came home from our photography shoot covered in ash. We both crouched low on the blackened ground to capture pictures of the shoots of grass. Hopefully, it won’t be long before the ash is hidden by new vegetation.

So, I’m wondering if you ever worry that you’re not preparing your child adequately for the future. Or maybe you’ve been in a situation, like us, where you’ve had no choice but to trust. And what about the weather? If you’ve been affected by the drought, I hope you’re now getting plenty of rain!