Transformed Minds as a Way of Self Care
Last year was the first year we homeschooled our kids.
It was a new season of life for us where we felt strongly that logistically in a COVID world and for our own benefit of family relationships, God was calling us to keep our then 3rd, 1st, and PreK children home. I decided early on that I would need a verse to guide our time and the difficult work of teaching children — a job that’s many difficulties and joys are not lost on me. Romans 12:2 immediately came to me.
Do not be conformed by this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what the will is of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2, ESV).
I memorized it. As we had hung it on our dining room wall, I stared at it for months on end. I thought about how learning at home was growing their minds, but something still nagged at me. This felt like a classic case of pulling a verse out and memorizing it, but not truly knowing it. The word that kept smacking me in the face was “transformed.”
When I think about transformation, I think about when someone or something completely changes. For example, how a fat green caterpillar can take a cocooned nap and emerge a completely different animal. It’s dramatic. You wouldn’t know that that butterfly was once a bug that inched its way along the leaves of plants. There is a process to the transformation of the caterpillar into a butterfly. It doesn’t all happen in a day, or even in two. And once the transformation is complete, the butterfly can never go back to being a caterpillar again.
So what does “transformation” mean for our minds?