First week of homeschooling second grade and kindergarten. From Middle East geography to tadpole life-cycles with one perfectionist and one 2-second attention span...that was something.
Matt and I were yelled at this week. I know I'm the kind of person who feels like anything over a kind word is yelling...but this was actual yelling. THAT was awful.
Had to painfully expel two beloved students. Sat through a dozen interviews and accepted 3 more.
Had to file a discipline report with a beloved staff member. Blessed to catch up with 10 others back from break.
A crunch day counting on child-care and Micheline was too sick at home to come and her phone was too dead to call...a blessed time praying with her in her home the next...a blessing of Gertha coming the next day when she didn't have to.
A million office items from still trying to close December to accepting student payments to purchasing a huge scary cow...trying to get ready for new semester Monday.
A team of 8 lovely college kids come and go...the Heckmans wonderful family have come for a week, visiting professors and a wife and a daughter arrived yesterday.
An awesome talk with Junior and a follow-up meeting with our Fev students and alumni yesterday...so many good things happening there, through little-by-little faithfulness.
Five hundred dollars came for BIBLES. SO EXCITED to have Bibles. They will go as quickly as they came, His Word going OUT.
Some painful conversations. Some unexpected encouragement. Some. Kinda. Week.
Through it all is the verse Sharon sent me sitting on my desk:
"you're my place of quiet retreat
i wait for your Word to renew me."
Psalm 119:114
Isn't He?!
He is.
Don't you love that God is also a place?
This week, I love that God is my home, the place where I lay my head, my place of quiet retreat. The place I can plant my feet and my heart, wherever they are, wherever the day takes them.
Is it possible to live with far more grace?
In our Quiet Retreat, we find grace so deep and lasting and surprising and life-giving. Is it possible that I might actually BE that astounding grace to others, as natural as I am to grudge and hold and hurt and stew?
Is it possible that I might offer that life-giving grace to myself, as natural as I am to punish and guilt and remember?
Is it possible that my grace for others and for myself might actually be REAL, not just a coping mechanism for the moment, not just an excuse for a hard day, a hard time, but true, TRUE grace? Letting go? Forgiving truly? Abandoning what is natural, by His power, and embracing what is HIS? What is Him?
We're truly in this together, aren't we. someone noted to me this week through email and I resoundingly YES.
We truly ARE, Christ-followers. Let us BE. Pouring out His mighty gifts upon each other, giving and receiving His grace from each other, loving each other well and finding in Him all that we need...
it starts with me.
My wonderful people headed to the beach today, but littlest and I are home, attacking a to-do list that includes long neglected ironing, cleaning, paperwork, thank you notes and shaving...and a rare quieter day to focus-dwell on the Him I need so badly.
Kind. Patient. Grace.
Thanking my God for you!
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