Bureaucracy

Our lovely bureacracy,
elegant insanity-
fractured, far-fetched, fantasy!!!

Maggie, Jezzie, and the new work schedule

Well, I've been doing assessments only since the beginning of the month, and  I have to say that so far it is great:). My dread of going into work is replaced with a desire to work faster and more productively. My phone rarely rings and I never receive frantic phone messages anymore. My office is quiet and I work quickly by myself, which is my favorite way to work anyways. So far, so good.
And at home, the new dogs are filling up all our nooks and crannies of free time. If only I could get them to sleep through the night...then things would be just about perfect.

Rage

Never before have I raged.
Yet I find myself, fist to the sky,
raging over perceived injustices where no one can see me.
My left wrist throbs from squeezing the blue jelly wrist saver in front of my computer too tightly,
and I imagine escaping to the batting cages to hit and hit and hit-

Why now, Rage?
No one is hurting me.
Why now, Rage?
If they do, they don't mean it.
Why now, Rage?
You have never before haunted my door but, suddenly, here you are,
full fledged, as if to make up for lost time.

Living for Christ- The Widow's Mite.

We are so blessed to have a God who knows the hearts and minds of His saints. In human terms, the flashier, more dramatic your ministry, the better! We give Billy Graham and Rick Warren accolades, and assume that their sacrificial life lived for God is of more value than the desperate Bivocational preacher whose church is struggling to survive, or the Sunday School Teacher who has been working with 2 and 3 year olds for 40 years. Yet God does not measure our worth in scalps, in who appears to have the greatest number of conversions or miracles under their belt. God is equally glorified in the Widow's mite as He is in the healings of the apostles. He is glorified in a quiet, steadfast, obedient life, just as He is in the extravagant shows of miraculous power that He calls some of his people to. He is glorified by the family who chooses to stay at their church even though there is a crisis, because God has called them to stay. He is glorified by the pastor who stays at his post even though the church will never pay him enough to live comfortably. He is glorified by the little old ladies who pray faithfully at Wednesday night prayer service for the infirmed, and for the salvation of their grandchildren. He is glorified by the couple who sticks through a difficult patch in their marriage because they entered a covenant with God and they will remain faithful to their promise. He is glorified by daily, quiet prayer and Bible reading.

I hope this is a helpful reminder to you, if the miracles God has called you to seem small, or hardly miraculous at all- He asks us to be willing to be unglamorous, as Christ himself was willing to do, to glorify His name.

It's the Little Things

I watch my youth kids, and I am acutely aware of how much our brains change and develop from our teens to our 20's. They seem to require constant stimulation, and they are always trying to do more than one thing at a time- they are on their phone, playing a video game, and talking to someone all at once and then wondering why adults keep telling them to pay attention. They are frenetic and seem unable to settle down and focus on one thing at a time. I remember bits of pieces of this, always craving excitement and social actitivies, even if I didn't have that much fun once I was partaking in them. I remember watching the worst movies and wondering why I felt the need to sit through them. I remember feeling bored a lot. Fast forward 10 years, and suddenly trying to multitask feels overwhelming, I crave contemplation and concentration, and I have gained the capacity to be much more in the moment and experiential. I can lose myself in thought more often, and I can focus on tastes, noises, images, and feelings so much more. I also jealously guard my free time and refuse to watch movies I won't enjoy.Additionally, I've begun to crave beauty, perhaps because there is so little around me. I desire to make the places around me lovely, nurturing, and warm, as if to nurture my soul and the souls of other people around me.  Suddenly life is about the little things, and my capacity to enjoy the little things is directly related to my own ability to concentrate and meditate on them.

To the youth, I'm probably becoming boring, but since I'm no longer bored, I think I'm coming out ahead.