Tag Archives: in brief

Boys. Mostly.

It’s a pretty good day when three of your kids make the jump rope team at their elementary school.

Also, the Lord keeps overwhelming my life with small boys. The ones that were once small, my soon-men, fill my days with history and life discussions and the constant guessing game of how much food it will take to fuel their constant growth spurts. My smaller boys fill my afternoons with math homework and questions about Moses and requests to jump over things and make lots of noise. (Most often I say no, but you have to say yes at least once a week, I’ve found.)

Six boys and one girl make up my One Hope Academy class. I teach them history and art this year, and plan and make their lunches. My after-school fifth graders are made up of three girls and (as of today) six boys. And boys have this way of seeming like more than six when you turn your back on them. I have actually grown eyes in the back of my head. We do homework and play games and read Harry Potter.

And these are my days lately. These are my people. Their minds and bodies are my responsibility. Their hearts are my prayers.

staggering thoughts lately:

 

  • it should make me more upset that my students hate God than that they hate me, yet i am so much more focused on my own glory than on God’s.
  • the average age someone enters prostitution is 12. twelve years old. this ripped through me like a grenade.
  • according to 2 thess 1:3, my love for my brothers and sisters in Christ should always be increasing. and my faith should always be growing. and yet i so easily content myself with maintaining the status quo.
  • of the 985 million people living in extreme poverty in the world, 70% are women. this is just one of the factors contributing to the ease of exploitation.

 

tonight’s observation:

the audience enjoys the show more when the band is having fun (and not “performing” per se).

 

this, of course, comes about in the wake of my baby brother’s songs tonight as part of what my dad dubbed “laurelpalooza”: one gazebo, three bands, and a solo act. and though i believed this to be a music festival, audrey refused to let me take off my shoes and dance barefoot in the grass. what a spoil-sport.

 

(jake was the only one who really seemed to have fun up there…)