In Your Right Brain

Last night, I had one of the most satisfying experiences I've had in a long time.  I was asked by the board of our local homeschool group to speak at our Mother's Night Out on the topic of right-brained learners.  It's a topic I'm fascinated by and I loved preparing for it.  I had a blast presenting it.  And it hit home for so many.

I had moms telling me, "Yes!  This is my kid!  This explains so much!"  I had moms tell me, "Yes!  This is me!  You just described me!"  One mom said, "I almost cried while you were talking because that is me, and I remember being in school, like you described, and failing over and over and how awful that felt.  That's why I homeschool -- I never want my child to feel like that."  Oh, friends!  It truly was so gratifying to be used by God to speak liberating truth to his children.  There is nothing wrong with you.  This is how I made you.

Because even though right-brained learners feel handicapped sometimes in our left-brained world, they are designed by God to think that way because we need them!  We need global thinkers -- people who mentally climb to the mountain top to see the lay of the land on a subject before diving into the details.  People who see connections and relationships between things that the rest of us don't.  These are the geniuses . . . the Edisons and Galileos . . .

We need people who think in pictures.  Even though their communication with us left-brainers is slowed by their mind's need to translate words to pictures and back to words again (like when I tried to speak Spanish to the storekeepers in Panama).  Their ability to zip through mental images in their mind (research shows that picture thinking operates much faster than thinking in words) allows them to reach intuitive insights that change our perspective.  It's a gift -- if we see it as such.

One mom last night told me about her husband who was put in special ed all through school and ultimately gave up on academics because it just wasn't happening.  He's a right-brained thinker.  Once he found his niche, his brilliance became apparent.  I'm so grateful for that.

But oh!  The wasted years!  The pointless pain!  When will we learn that God doesn't make mistakes?