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!)