New School Year... College..

We are trying to slowly ease back into school this week - trying....     We made some last minute changes in Yan's classes last week, and keeping my fingers crossed and hope we've made the right decision.    He is our first child - our poor guinea pig in every area of our parenthood.    There were so many bad decisions we'd made for Yan before, that I promise I wouldn't do to our younger children.     He is a resilient kid - he took  almost everything comes in his ways, always graciously. 

He is taking (or I should say, We put him in) a math class at Montgomery College this semester.   This is his first college level class.   His first college experience.    His first night class.   

We drove him to his first class meeting tonight.   I walked back and forth outside the classroom - checking out his professor and classmates; And at the same time, tried not to let him see me to make him feel embarrass.    I never expected sending him to his first college class to be so hard.     But it was very hard.   He is totally on his own now.   He will get to know new friends.   He will be exposed to new ideas and thinkings.  He will be making decisions on his own.    All of the sudden, I doubted if we are making the right decision to send him to college so early.    Have we prepared him enough to discern and defend?  Will he make good decision?  Will he stand up for his faith?   Will he continue to follow Jesus - or the world?    I am not sure.     16 years seems so long, but yet, at this moment,  I feel so unprepared. 

All along in our schooling, our main goal as parents is to teach them to be follower of Jesus Christ, to know God, and to live a purposeful life to honor God.   Academic is second.   I feel like the "test" has just begun.  

Psalm 34:8 said, "Taste and see that the Lord is good.".    At mid-age, San and I both have our own shares of mistakes, failures and rebellions.    But more so, by His grace, we have tasted and seen the joy of being forgiven and the rich blessings of knowing God, and wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world.     There is nothing else better we want our kids to know and remember all through their lives.    But how will they chose?

For our son, Yan - borrowing Paul's words in Colossians 1:9-14
"...We have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.  And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.  For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."