Jay’s Blog – No More Dog Days

When you’ve been in the school business for as long as many of us have, or even if you’ve had your kids in school for many years, you notice that the school year tends to have its ebb and flow, its rhythms, its seasons. I think of this time of the school year, from January through spring break, as the “dog days” of the school year. Christmas break is over; school has started again, it’s cold, no one feels very good, there are lots of illnesses, and people are cooped indoors…there are many reasons, but have you noticed that people start to get cranky this time of year? For years, I’ve joked that in the fall, I run the best school in the country, and it’s the worst by the winter–just ask everyone in the school family. Once spring break hits, we hop on the roller coaster of activity, our hair blown back, racing toward the end of the school year, until it comes to an abrupt end, the roller coaster ending in the brick wall of summer (unless you’re in club sports, which is a whole other thing-IYKYK). After spring break, the dog days are over. But they’re here now.
It’s the same school as it was in the fall. It hasn’t changed, the teachers haven’t changed, the kids are the same, maybe a little smarter, wiser, and more mature (hopefully) than in the fall, but basically, still the same when we all thought everything was awesome and we were so excited. What’s changed? Not in every case, but in most cases, it’s our mindsets, attitudes, and moods. And it’s a cyclical thing; it tends to be this way every year. I’m not picking on any one parent or group of people. This is a pattern from over 20 years in the school business, long before most of you got here. It’s a human nature observation, including all of us: teachers, parents, and students alike. Me, too.
So, what’s happening here? Does this time of year always have to be the dog days? I was at a CESA conference listening to a C.S. Lewis expert remind me about some timeless truths from the great Christian writer, and it sparked my belief that maybe the dog days don’t have to impact our attitudes after all.
The speaker, Andrew Lazo, reminded us that C.S. Lewis defined “faith” as “the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted despite your changing moods.” My faith–the act of believing or how hard I believe–does nothing for me in and of itself. The power of my faith comes from the God in whom I believe, the one in whom I place my faith. And having faith means that I believe that God is working in my life, in my children’s lives, in my community, and my school, and through these teachers I’ve come to trust, even when the enemy and the brokenness of the world tries to confuse us to the contrary.
Our moods are going to change; they just are. We wake up one morning and feel great; another morning, we feel terrible. Our body chemistry, daily circumstances, whether our football team won last night, and other issues guide these moods. Up one minute, down the next. Incidentally, when I hear moms and dads say, “I just want my children to be happy,” my first thought is, “Ugh! You are condemning yourself to a life of misery.” Because our moods change, chasing happiness is the cul de sac of futility. Round and round, never going anywhere, traveling from emotional experience to emotional experience, looking for excitement. It’s ultimately a recipe for misery.
Instead, we have to become the kind of people who go from moods and daily behaviors to habits. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about building good habits, but it’s more than just habits, like exercising and eating right. It’s about nurturing the habit long enough that it becomes a virtue, a character trait, who you are. Rather than being a happy person, which is totally dependent of what’s happening around you, you can become a joyful person, full of Jesus and life, and endure and press on even when hell’s breaking loose around you. Even during the dog days.
This happens by intentionally holding truth out in front of our faces every day. This helps us further our faith and the new life in front of us. As Andrew Lazo reminded us the other day, conversion to faith in Jesus doesn’t just happen the day I first say “yes” to Jesus, but in the million yesses, I say to him every moment after that, the million acts and words of obedience and surrender. These are what form me and make me and us who we are. I truly can avoid the “dog days,” meaning I can train them out of me not to where I don’t days where circumstantially bad things happen, but to where I don’t think ill of you and everyone around me because of it, where it doesn’t impact how I care for and love people. It’s by being a “yes man” or “yes woman” to God.
How do we become a “yes man” or “yes woman” for God? Spending time alone with him, developing such a deep intimacy for him that my heart becomes aligned with him, that I desire to do what he wants for me, because I realize that what he wants me to do is not only for His glory but my good. If I’m so intimate with him that I know the depth of his love for me, I believe with all my heart that he’ll never ask me to do anything that isn’t for my ultimate good and for furthering his Kingdom which, if I really love him and know him, is what I want to. If his desires are mine, then it’s pretty easy to say “yes.” It’s also pretty easy to know that whether I’m having a good or bad day or week or month, I’m constantly on mission for the Lord, so I’m not defined by those things, and I’m not defining everyone around me by them, either.
If I’m a “yes man” for God, it doesn’t matter whether circumstantially good or bad things happened to me this day, week, or month. Most of the time, we define whether we had a good or bad day by these things. What if, instead, I defined whether I had a good or bad day by whether I was a “yes man?” Was I obedient to the Lord today? Was I faithful? Did I love people well? Did I spend time alone with him, focusing on what was true, aligning my heart with his? Did I surrender myself to him? Not only is this how the Lord defines whether I had a good day or bad day (not that he loves me any less when I have a bad day- he doesn’t), but if I view life this way, then every day has the potential to be a good day.
We will all go through seasons of deep grief, loss, illness, and pain. That’s one thing. But when we let the “dog days,” when circumstantially bad things, the daily grievances of life, define our moods or attitudes toward how we live, we’re just letting the devil control us. That stinks and it isn’t how God intended us to live. He wants us to be joyful (though not necessarily always happy from moment to moment), and he wants us to love, trust, support, and think the best of each other.
Lewis called this pushing back the wild animals of life that rush at you when you awake each morning. He said the first order of business is to press back and listen to that larger voice, the voice of the one who loves you and wants your glory and your good throughout the day. Whether we embrace the dogs or chase them off is really just up to who we’ll decide we’ll be.
Jay Ferguson, Ph.D., Head of School at Grace Community School, writes regularly on his blog, JaysBlog.org.