All the time

I read something this week that sort of renewed my spirits in dealing with crazy children at Spencer. 

1 Peter 5--- “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them- not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away” (v. 2-4).

So God’s flock is under my care. That’s a little intimidating. However, this passage is also comforting to me. I’m doing this year of service out of my own free will “because I am willing, as God wants me to be” so I guess that’s good! Eager to serve, being an example to the flock. I don’t have to be the perfect educator that will lead them to enlightenment. I just have to be an example, a light. That, I can handle. 

However, sometimes even being a light is difficult. Being surrounded by evil and brokenness is sad and frustrating. Many of the kids at Spencer don’t even seem to know the definitions of respect or kindness, let alone how to act those things out. I find myself wondering “How does this happen?” quite often. How could people say these things to each other? Why do 6^th graders know so much about sex and talk about it openly? Whatever caused someone to take another’s life? I have so many questions about how this world came to be so awful. 

Anyway, I got an email forward a few days ago from Carolyn Herren, who is a sweet lady from my home church in Mac. The email was to women from women, encouraging each other and praying for each other. Part of it read “Help her to shine in the darkest places where it is impossible to love. Protect her at all times, lift her up when she needs You the most, and let her know when she walks with You, she will always be safe.”

The piece here that really spoke to me was “shine in the darkest places where it is impossible to love”.  Sometimes, it’s hard to love the people I encounter. The same goes for you and for everyone. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have the strength to get through one more hour of dealing with first grade problems (She took my pencil! He won’t stop messin with me! She keeps lookin at me! He’s talkin about my mama! He won’t share the markers! And on and on and on….) yet somehow, by the grace of God, I always manage to make it through without losing control.

Thursday, my small group and I served a meal at Breakthrough Urban Ministries. It was a pretty fun time preparing the meal with other members from our church, serving the men, and then chatting it up with some of them. The guys there were really cool and I’m looking forward to serving another meal there next month. Two of the three men I talked to had jobs (One had two jobs) but still didn’t have enough to make ends meet. Anyway, they were really cool and we had some good conversations about life and loving people.

Megan and I got a ride home from some of the other volunteers that worked with us and they were mortified that we live in Garfield Park. It was kind of funny actually. The guy, knowing we were fairly new to Chicago, said “let your ignorance be bliss” in reference to our neighborhood. HAHA. I chuckled to myself and Megan said “Oh, we know.” Not that we are Chicago natives or anything, but we do know what goes on in our neighborhood. We know it’s not exactly a “destination” part of Chicago, but it’s a very real part of the city nonetheless. It’s an example of why the world needs more Jesus.

So yesterday the roomies and I went to a morning workshop at Melody, the school we’ve been doing outreach at. We listened to JD talk to some parents about educational rights of homeless students, which was great. Then Megan and I stuck around to hear a guy from UIC talk about nutrition. It was verrryyyyy interesting to see these parents act out some of the same behaviors that I see at Spencer. They were having side conversations, talking back at the presenter, had lots of attitude- you get the idea. To be honest, I guess I should have expected that these kids would only act that way because of their parents, but it was kind of surprising and funny for me to see. It’s also so sad to hear firsthand at how these parents give their kids crappy processed foods all the time. It’s not impossible to eat healthy on a budget, but it seems that there are so many other barriers to a healthy diet here. I haven’t even really identified many of them yet I’m sure.

This morning, I went on an adventure to try out a yoga class in the hood. Long story short, it was in a pretty sketchy part of town (similar to my neighborhood but it seemed extra sketchy due to the cloudy weather and the fact that I hadn’t been to that part of the Austin community before) and I’m not sure if I’ll go back. The class itself was awesome, but I had a couple of encounters walking there and back that could have potentially been dangerous. One thug was trying to scare me, but fortunately I didn’t let him get under my skin and didn’t express any fear so he was like “ah, I just messin wit you”. Although, I’m still sad and don’t want that to dictate the way I live my life. I want to support this yoga class because they’re trying to be a presence in the community and stuff, but don’t want to cause myself any harm in the process. Arg.

Anyway, the Wildcats took on TCU today (the other, less cool purple team in the Big 12) so Billy and I went to Murphy’s again to watch the game. But this time, my lovely bestie Chelsea came down from Evanston to watch it with us! So fun to catch up with her and hang out with other K-Stater’s for a few hours. The game was really good and the atmosphere was even better than last week. It was a really close game and when Cantele kicked a field goal for the win with only seconds left on the clock- WE WENT NUTS. It was awesome. 

My apologies for the random assortment of stories, but those are some highlights from this week. Overall, life is pretty good. I still really need prayers. I still really need encouragement. Life is full of ups and downs here just like always. But hey, God is good all the time. All the time, God is good. (Shoutout to my friends at Highlands! Camp love!)

Hello November!

Guys, it's November. That's crazy. I feel like lately I've been getting into the groove of things in Chicago so that's exciting. A few things have happened lately...

Last Saturday was Grace Seeds' Share the Harvest Thanksgiving Celebration. I put in some extra hours preparing for the event, which went off really well. I even brushed up on my sign language and led the group in a sign language litany. It was really fun to practice ASL again and a nice reminder of embracing other cultures. It's just a beautiful language. Anyway, the event went very well. It was nice to meet more of the Grace Seeds community face to face!

Last week was Halloween (in case you didn't know) so Ms. D and I had a little fun dressing up.

In Art that day some of the younger kids made little Halloween collages by cutting construction paper into pumpkins and ghosts and such. One little cutie named Markell gave his picture to Ms D at the end of the day, while all the other kids took theirs home. (His picture is actually on the board behind me in the picture) I ran out into the hall after class thinking that Markell had forgotten his artwork, but Ms D told me he was giving it to her. After school that day, Ms D said that he always gives her his work because it doesn't get appreciated at home. :( It broke my heart to think of how excited I was as a kid to see my family gush over my creations, while poor little Markell doesn't get any appreciation for his artwork whatsoever. Soooo sad.

Then Tuesday, Markell was so sweet to me and gave me like three hugs. One of which was very much needed after dealing with a bratty child. But that's another story.

Back to Halloween. I didn't really do anything super exciting for Halloween. People watched at a bar to see some fun costumes. But Halloween night I had my small group through Soul City Church so that was fun. Our group is small but going very well. I'm so glad for the fellowship and accountability that it provides me.

Yesterday was a fun day, I was finally able to watch a full K-State football game at an alumni bar in Chicago. Billy went with me since he loves me (not really) and loves football (really) so it was fun to have company. And the Wildcats kicked some Red Raider tail, so that was also great! It was really fun to watch the game with some fellow K-Staters, sing the fight song, and all that. I'm excited to go back again next week hopefully!

After Billy and I walked around for a little bit, I went up to see my cousin Hannah in Lincoln Square again. We got ice cream (it had been far too long since I'd had my favorite treat) and then went shopping for a friend's birthday dinner. We went over to her friend's house which was very fun although I felt a little bit out of place. They were all so classy with their sweaters and boots, wine and cheese, and other fancy appetizers. I was wearing a K-State t-shirt and tennies. It's just very interesting to live where I live (in a very impoverished, "sketchy" part of town) and then to go and hang out with people from middle class society that never have to worry about where their next meal is coming from or whether they'll get offered drugs every time they step outside of their homes. That's an interesting part of life for me as I go through this year and balance what feels like my two different lives.

The bar was right by Wrigley Field, here is a statue
of the famous announcer Harry Caray.

Anywho, today was a fun day so far. Megan had friends in town this weekend which was exciting so we all went to church together this morning. After coming back, I went to the church next door at the end of service to say hi to some people. I got to listen to Duane give a mini piano lesson to some little kids. It was precious. Then I watched part of the bears/lions game (we lost, so sad) and napped at the same time. Yes, I am a middle-aged man, thank you very much. Now it's off to downtown to get some art supplies and do other fun things! Adios my friends, take care!