Usually answers to this question consist of God, mentors, parents, close friends, or even yourself. But this summer, my teachers have actually been my "students." I nannied this summer for two different families, one has three kids and the other has just one. I love them all so much, and I would say that they taught me a lot about parenting, God's power, and the beauty of families.
In the spring I had been fretting about how I was going to find a job back at home, and I was pursing a few options but nothing really popped up. I kept praying that God would put me in a place that I could really teach children about Him. Suddenly, a few days before school ended, I received a Facebook message from the daughter of one of my high school teachers asking me to join a youth ministry internship at her church. I was all ready to accept her offer when, just the next day, I received two texts messages from different mothers asking me to nanny their kids over the summer. I was stunned by God's abundant answer to my prayers, so overwhelmed actually that I didn't know which job to take! I wanted to be apart of a ministry where God could really use me to impact kids, and I didn't think nannying was it at first. It seemed to common and plain. How wrong I was!
After much thought and prayer I chose nannying because I was closer to the families who asked me, and also I believe that we have a commitment to friends and family who are immediately around us before strangers. Even Christ said in Acts: "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). They witnessed in their homes before they went out to the Gentiles and strangers. So my job as a nanny began right when I returned from college.
These kids (12, 10, 8, 7 years old) mostly taught me what it is like to be a parent. I never really understood all that my parents did for me until this summer. It is so exhausting, and yet so rewarding! One evening I talked to my mom, desperate because I didn't know how to handle a certain situation, and she said "Choose one thing to work on (behavior wise) and whenever it comes up you need to deal with it." Lydia Brownback, author of A Woman's Wisdom said "Discipline of your emotions is the proper training of responses." At first I was overwhelmed at this task. All children fight with each other, all talk back, all have their bursts of outrage... where do you begin? Yet slowly but surely, I began to see a change. It was truly incredible. God was at work within them, cultivating and renewing their hearts, and we had many different conversations about real world problems and also spiritual matters. I was able to share about how God's greatest commandment was to love, and that was why it was so important not to hurt each other and talk back to each other. We talked about the End Times and how Christ would raise us all from the dead to be with Him in the New Heavens and the New Earth. We talked about how we would glorify God forever one day. We talked about courage to stand up for something that was right. Over all, car rides were my favorite time because these topics would come up.
I learned about God's power through the fact that there was nothing I could do to change the heart of a man. No matter how hard and black it is, only God is able to renew it. One day the oldest boy was grounded because he did something to his sister, and so I asked him what happened. He said that it was 100% her fault that he was in trouble, and he did nothing wrong. But as he began to explain the story of how he was unjustly persecuted, his face changed, his voice lowered, and he mumbled out the ending because he realized that he had responded wrongly; and so now he said he was 30% wrong and she was 70%. Only God can make us see that we are 100% wrong whenever we do something that displeases Him. How hard it is to convince someone of a wrongdoing without God working in them! It is truly impossible. I am so glad that He convicts me through different people and through His Word, and that was a reminder to me that I needed to check the plank in my own eye before I saw the speck in my neighbors.
The beauty of a family is something that God uses as a model of the church. Whether or not an earthly family is united or divorced, God says that the family of believers are one. "Rather, speaking
the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love" (Ephesians 5:15-16). I learned that the beauty of God's family, no matter what our earthly family looks like, will always be united through the bond of Christ. A bond that will never pass away or break. He will never divorce us, even though we struggle in our "marriage" to Him every day, He is faithful. God will redeem us.
There are so many other lessons I learned through these kids and their families, but I don't have enough time to keep writing about them. All I can say is that God can use anyone, anywhere, for any purpose, even if we don't understand why at first. He taught me so much through my job nannying, more than I thought possible! And He alone equipped me with the words to speak in the circumstances in which He placed me. All the glory belongs to God.
"Do not say, 'I am only a youth'; for to all whom I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord."
Jeremiah 1:7-8
