December 3, 2006
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John is going to be “Charlie Brown” in a Christmas play. i am so excited. He only has one line, but i am confident that he will make it more than enough interesting.
Rachel J.: How old do you think i am?
John: a thousand
Rachel J.: No, a real number
John: that is a really number!
Rachel J.:a number that real people live to
John: a hundred
you can’t win with 6 year olds. He told me he’d gotten his first “fire carpet.” After seeing it, i deduced it was a rugburn.
i thought i was used to being cussed out. i guess not. why do words still have power?
Timothy is 8…actually, i think he is 7, but since he wants to go to the youth center, he is 8. He reminds me alot of John. very innocent and naive. very. sometimes the kids go up to him and tease him with a straight face…and he never gets that they are teasing. i look at him and wonder “what if that had been my brother?” he has so many rude awakenings ahead of him. i try to step in and help him out…but i won’t be there in the times that really matter. i am not enough to protect him. He’s growing up in such an ugly world. but for now, he just does random things like play in the balls until he’s so wet i send him home to change.
I ended up taking the youth center kids to Ponderosa. What Donald said to the waiter to get a free drink…i will never know. how does he always get what he wants? We had a mall scavenger hunt, and then the van died on the ride back. rainy and wet and in the middle of the road, i made all six guys pile out and push us to the gas station…only to call and find out there was a full tank if i flipped the switch. opps.
On to adventure. Air plane tickets. yikes. i read this book and was very inspired. i found all these lovely cheap flights online. after checking things through, i now have a ticket to Miami, where i will stay for the weekend in a hostel ($17 a night baby!–see it at www.evergladeshostel.com) hike, bike, and snorkel (weather permitting) in the Everglades and Keys, then fly to Sao Paulo via Costa Rica. Still working on the rest of the details, like what to do with my bags…I am really excited about this God and i time. It is all in getting where you are going, right? enjoy the journey.
i don’t have relationships
i have mutually agreeable encountersi find my plan for the day and if there is time
i grab from my list of people that i want to spend time with
i say when the conversation starts and when it ends
i make sure what is said is satisfying
and then i go back to being productivei have my plate full of being useful, nice, and kind–christian ministry for goodness sake–and then that is that. there is nothing else. no room for whatever God wants to put on there. and He’d better not take away something good…he’d better not put on there something else or i’ll freak out and start stressing about where the time will come from. My mentor told me its like a buffet…learning to come to God with an empty plate, and say “what would you like to put on it?” learning not to complain, even if it is liver. Control is me filling up my plate with “good, godly, Christian things” so fast that i look good to everyone…and won’t have room for liver.
“It is much easier to do something than to trust in God; we mistake panic for inspiration…the degree of panic is the degree of the lack of personal spiritual experience.” –Oswald Chambers
ouch.
1 Peter. 1:22 “Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart.”
This is what i want. sounds like a good verse for 2007. because i am so not there. yet.
