When a king's face brightens, it means life; his favor is like a rain cloud in spring (Proverbs 16:15).

A couple of years ago, our family was preparing to leave the Netherlands for a three-month period of "Home Service Leave" in the United States.  It was standard policy for my employer, so I didn't anticipate too many problems when it came to excusing my six-year-old son's last seven weeks of kindergarten.  In January of that year (six months in advance of our travels), we filed the papers with the school.  Within a week or so, I had an appointment with a government official most appropriately entitled as being a "Compulsory Education Bureaucrat" (a literal translation of his Dutch title: leerplichtambtenaar).  After talking for over an hour-and-a-half together, he gave me a massive homework assignment -- translating GCM employmee manuals, submitting a detailed travel schedule, filling out an education plan for Elliot, and more. I estimate that I spent approximately ten hours completing these assignments and turning them back in for inspection and approval by the Compulsory Education Bureaucrat.

Then over the following few weeks, I had another (cumulative) two or three hours of telephone conversation with our Compulsory Education Bureaucrat. I didn't necessarily enjoy these conversations, but in a strange way I came to admire the conscientious dedication of this public servant and the rigorous system for which he was working. The process stretched into weeks -- throughout which the Compulsory Education Bureaucrat repeatedly warned me that he was inclined to deny our application.  After several more hours preparing and submitting other pieces of evidence that might be able to sway his decision -- we learned that our application was definitively denied. In spite of our hours and hours of conversation and administrative aerobics... in spite of impassioned pleas by Elliot's teacher and school principal (who were a great help and encouragement to us in the process)... in spite of our dedicated prayer for a favorable ruling -- our request for a leave-of-absence was rejected.

We initiated the appeal process right away -- which we were told would start with a hearing before a Commission of Compulsory Education Bureaucrats (our administrator's colleagues), and which would eventually move to a court within the regular Dutch legal system (if the Commission were to uphold the original ruling and we still desired to press our appeal) -- however, after filing our appeal we were informed that the first stage of the appeal process could take up to eight weeks... And our predetermined travel dates happened to fall within this time period.  It was entirely possible (and probably even likely) that we wuld have no official ruling on our appeal until after the time had come for us to leave!  So we inquired about the possible penalties for disregarding an official ruling -- which turned out to be a minimum of €250 per week (or a total of €1750 = $2800 USD) plus probation and a maximum of €500 per week (or a total of €3500 = $5600 USD), potentially even including jail-time for "serious offenses!"  As we discussed the options, we realized that even the minimum penalties would have been too much for us to afford... So we had to reluctantly start looking into developing a "Plan B" for our trip back to America -- seeing how doors had been slammed (or were poised to be slammed) on all of the legal channels that we had pursued.

And then the Compulsory Education Bureaucrat's face brightened.

After reading the actual statutes relating to the enforcement of Dutch compulsory education law (not exactly the kind of reading material that you'd like to take with you to the beach), we started to wonder if there might be some room for accommodating our situation based on the issue of school enrollment.  When we asked a Dutch friend to take a look at the statutes for us, to offer some help in interpreting the legalese, he basically finished by asking us the same question:  Well, why don't you just un-enroll Elliot from the school system?  So, a couple of days later, when I was working with our Compulsory Education Bureaucrat on the appeal process, I basically asked him the same question:  "What would happen if we simply unenrolled Elliot from the school system?"

Upon hearing my question, the Compulsory Education Bureaucrat paused for a second, audibly shrugged (if you know what I mean), and replied, "Hmm -- yeah, I guess you could do that" with the tone of voice you might use to decide to go to the movies after dinner instead of going to the library.  I'm not sure if he had ever thought of it before -- but his response was definitely not negative, and though I felt that I needed to be careful not to read too much into his response, I basically got the feeling that he might have even been relieved that we had discovered such a possibility (since, as I mentioned, all along he had only been doing his duty to meticulously follow the provisions of Dutch compulsory education law -- not to meanly and deliberately antagonize us).  Of course, it would have been nice if we could have had the same conversation a couple of months previously!  But better late than never, I guess...

Through it all, I learned the truth of Proverbs 16:15:  "When a king's (or a Compulsory Education Bureaucrat's) face brightens, it means life; his favor is like a rain cloud in spring."  The whole situation with our son's leave of absence caused us so much stress and cost us so much time, energy, and money -- but it was resolved practically instantly, when the official was given an option with which he could live.  It felt like our whole world changed.  Truly, it's good to know that God can work through all different types of circumstances -- even Compulsory Education Bureaucrats.