After three weeks of desperate waiting, the package finally arrived. Through a shrewd bit of online detective work, I was able to find the elusive “Home Haircutting Combination Trimmer and Shaver Kit” that my family and I so badly needed and wanted. And now, on this rainy, dark afternoon in early May, here I stood with shaver in hand. I skipped the instructions, fumbled with a bunch of shaver attachments and other assorted plastic bits, and then just started shaving. I didn’t even wait for Monica or one of the boys to help. As it turns out, you need to attach a “guide comb” to the shaver, or it will shave you right to the skin. This was disappointing to discover. The bald patch on my right temple is just starting to grow back out. Turns out doing it yourself isn’t always the best way forward.

When things get chaotic, it’s tempting to jump in and just start hacking your machete around the jungle—trying to clear the brush and find a path forward. Happily for Surrey Christian School and its community, that is not the approach we’ve taken during this pandemic state of limbo.

I am grateful that, even during this time, our school has made decisions based on facts, extended collaboration, and prayerful wisdom. We have had to completely re-imagine what educating for wholeness looks like when we can’t be together. It has taken a variety of forms—from students reading a virtual book together to conducting experiments in the kitchen to collaborative videos on a class novel. The common thread, however, is that there has been rich and extended thought given to how to best provide a Christian education rooted in discipleship and consideration of the needs of a diverse community. The Spring of 2020 has been a rich, messy, confusing, exciting, fearful, and hopeful time for all of us. Like many of you, I’m ready to be done with the virus and its effects. But I’m not sure we need to return to the way things were. Maybe we can be better, more streamlined, even more aware of the real reason we are here—to educate for wholeness in the servant way of Jesus. As we journey through a summer unlike any before, may we all continue to reimagine the what and how of Surrey Christian School.

Now I’m off to the barber to get a little repair work done.