The Four Hundred Year Test

Mid-terms.

Final exams.

No matter what bull-dog determination students grab to wrestle through their testing seasons, there is no resilience to compare with a test of a very different sort, one I learned from the traditional American Thanksgiving saga. This is the test I have come to call the Four Hundred Year Test.

We all know about the fabled pilgrims who, buffeted in England for their faith, journeyed first to Holland, and then finally to the “New World” to seek religious freedom. On their ship to America in 1620, their faith and resolve were tested with all the rigors of primitive ocean-crossing travel of that time. Blown off course, their tiny vessel, the Mayflower, brought them to an inhospitable rocky coast where they were forced to winter. The hardship of New England weather coupled with the ravages of disease and near-starvation made it a miracle that any of the little band of travelers survived at all. We owe them much for their desire for God’s direction in all they did. The foresight to anchor their every act in His Word gave our nation the foundation that has made it the strong, blessed “harbor” for freedom that it still is today.

It wasn’t until my daughter stumbled upon those ubiquitous Dear America stories that the well-worn Pilgrim tale took on flesh and bones for me. Patience, the character from whose fictitious pen the narrative unfolds, was reflecting on her personal dilemma. On the ship whose uncertain voyage literally held the fate of her family’s survival, what little confidence she had began to dwindle. Such a price her family had paid—and all the other voyagers—that she mused whether it was worth the effort. They had all put so much into the voyage—not only into the voyage but into their entire lives—to obtain that elusive goal of being able to worship their Lord in the way of their convictions. Would all these hardships just be dashed upon some allegorical rocks and sink them into oblivion in that raging ocean? Would their convictions ever count for anything? She wondered if all their efforts would even be so much as remembered in a hundred years. Would her family’s simple day-to-day choices make any difference at all in the future?

It was from that plaintive entry in a fictional diary that a flesh-and-blood picture sprang up in my mind and took on the form of a rallying cry—a call to arms for a mission much broader than any five-year goal or ten-year plan. It painted a picture in my mind of a mission bigger than life—my life, at least. It stood as a rock-solid reminder that we don’t live for ourselves, that our actions have repercussions that reach far beyond our own life span. Those Pilgrim families chose a path whose impact has echoed through nearly four hundred years of history, and has set the foundation for a powerful government with international influence.

Can what I do in my lifetime pass a four hundred year test?

I am often dismayed to read articles and letters regarding people who agonize over whether they should continue the difficult course they have chosen for their betterment or for the benefit of their family. Perhaps these thoughts come from losing the insight that brought them to their decisions in the first place. Just like Patience in the Mayflower, blown off course in the midst of the stormy Atlantic, these people have lost the vision of what they are really doing. We think we are only attempting high goals for ourselves. But we are doing so much more! What we do may possibly provide future generations with an invincible foundation rooted in God’s ways—just like the Pilgrims—that will provide them with Life that will make a difference in more than just one life span.

While our nation is chipping away at the very bedrock truth that once made it great, conscientious parents and their families are going against that tide, seeking to provide a new generation with the resilience it will take to once again find that New World—and pass it on. We still hold these truths to be self-evident, and are determined to make them part of our lives in everything we do. We want to train up our children in the way they should go, to take on the whole armor of faith, and arm themselves for effective “battle.” But the battle does get weary when we set our sites on a target close at hand.

Instead of aiming for the target of “getting through this year” or even the target of graduation to another stage of life, let’s aim for a different target—the target of knowing that our arrows will make a difference in generations to come. As we set sail into each new endeavor, consider those whom your goals, once achieved, will benefit. Remember the Four Hundred Year Test.

Efficient Planning? Effective Planning?

It was a classic case of “You Can’t Get There From Here.” We were picking up our daughter from a mountainside retreat, and figured we could include a detour to another foothill town while we were in this part of the state. We had mapquested our route, but had been irked to see the required path included a half-hour backtrack along the main north-south highway to the junction with the main east-west highway before we could continue on our way. There had to be a more direct route!

Fine. We’ll just ask one of the local people at the retreat house when we get there. No sense wasting all that time with such an indirect route. Unless....

The route on paper looked a little flatter than it did when our rubber met their road. There was this little matter of a few hills in the way. “As the crow flies” only works for crows.

I’m afraid the same hindrance works its way into a lot of paperwork for planning. Especially the plans involving our family’s so-called three-year challenge. At one point, I had been awakened to the fact—at that time, in three years—we would be moving from our usual life and routine to some very different possibilities. Those possibilities looked so huge, I felt the great need to get started then, planning for the next step. So what if it was only another step; from that vantage point, it looked like a massive one!

And, as time always does, it passes and leaves us wishing for still more of it to catch up with what is left undone. So, here I am, facing the end of my homeschooling career with my daughter’s high school graduation only two months away. While I am concerned for her and what she is going to do with the rest of her life, I panic when I realize I have no plans in place for what I’m going to do with the rest of my life!

Being the designated navigator for many trips, I’m used to planning routes. When going from start to finish, pick a line (a road) that most directly connects Point A with Point B. It’s that simple. That’s what we call efficient planning.

When it comes to applying this technique to real life, especially something so personal as applying it to my bumpy life, the efficiency becomes more dull, uninteresting—wait a minute, who am I fooling here?—threatening. There are mountains hidden in between these here points, these Points A and Points B. You don’t understand! Insurmountable challenges, risks, sabotages conspire against my better intentions. At least, there have been enough of these usurpers to fill up the allotted time frame. And then: failure. That is the risk when facing the demanding Efficiency taskmaster.

Zigzag has never made for efficiency. Heading in one direction, only to find out you must U-turn and head in another direction, is never the highest efficiency. But it may allow you to qualify for effectiveness. And that may be so, thanks to how our own brains work.

I was recently reading about the wonders of the mind, revealed now thanks to the gifts of technology. Several studies demonstrate that learning to play a musical instrument, of all impractical things, enhances brain function. A 1996 review by the College Entrance Examination Board showed that students with experience in musical performance scored higher on both the verbal and math sections of the SAT than the national average. One university study even claimed that music majors had the highest reading scores of any students on their campus. Several other analyses reported significant correlations between the number of years of instrumental music instruction and academic achievement in totally unrelated fields such as math, science, and language arts. In studying the undergraduate majors of applicants to medical school, one researcher found that 66 percent of music majors who applied to medical school were admitted. Those Point A To Point B plodders, the biochemistry majors? Only 44 percent made the cut.

In citing these and other studies of musicians, psychiatrist Daniel G. Amen observed in his book, Making a Good Brain Great:

The world’s top academic countries place a high value on music education. Hungary, the Netherlands, and Japan stand atop worldwide science achievement and have a strong commitment to music education. All three countries have required music training at the elementary and middle school levels, both instrumental and vocal, for several decades. The centrality of music education to learning in the top-ranked countries seems to contradict the United States’ focus on math, science, vocabulary, and technology.

So there is another way to get from Point A to Point B. The way to get there from here is not always a straight line, especially when we look up and discover the mountain in our way. The zig and zag of life may not be efficient, but can provide enrichment and insight. Perhaps that is why—yet only after the U-turn of hindsight—we can call it effective. But we can’t always call it planning.

Getting to Go: The Three Year Challenge, Minus One

Starting another homeschooling year (junior year of high school this time) brought to mind our challenge last August: to discern our student’s purpose in life. In the past year’s process, however, we hit a snag: how can the student discover Life Purpose when the teachers still haven’t? I’m old enough to be a grandmother now, and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up! We may be the leaders, going around the game board of education once again, but we haven’t seemed to pass “Go” yet, ourselves.

For those who’ve been around since PC was a new thing (personal computers, not “politically correct”), you probably remember the advice to pick the software before purchasing the hardware; launching a student from high school calls for application of the same advice. The traditional route everyone has been programmed to follow, borrowed from public schools, demands that college should be the next step after high school. Students should be cashing in their game chips for great college recruitment hits long before the college application season starts in earnest in the junior year. Last August, it occurred to us that 2007 was the year to get busy. It would be only three years until graduation.

On first impulse, it seemed the natural start was to choose which college to attend. Like buying the proverbial computer, though, that decision required some additional input—like, “What is the purpose of attending college?” And, “What do I want to accomplish by receiving further education?” In other words, what “software” would guide us through this task best? Which hardware (college or other option) would then best run the software we selected?

That’s where the process broke down….

It seems there is a world of space between Now and Getting To Go.

Most of it has to do with examining weighty things like Life Purpose. How to decide that in 3 Easy Steps? Or even 48 Days? These are questions that the “normal” school doesn’t put on their exit exams.

So, last August, in a family conference, our challenge was for Claire (then the lucky sophomore) to pursue the quest to find her Life Purpose in three simple years or less.

And then, the thought hit us: in three years, Chris would be eligible for early retirement. And because of Claire’s graduation, in three years, I would be facing a whole new world of possibilities, too. Then what?

Last August, the challenge became: take these three years to explore what God has for each of us, as individuals and as a family, for future service—whether work or ministry. And the inevitable result was, one year out, we realized that—like so many software programs hawking the same benefits to the unsuspecting, naïve customer—future possibilities can be overwhelming. A lot of thinking has mired us in Analysis Paralysis. The time gap is now two years and counting. The task gap is still three years. Welcome to Phase Two of the Process: thinking (blogging) out loud as we explore the possibilities.