Eras

Several eras have come and gone in my life. One is happening right now. With the ending and beginning of eras it is rarely a thing of surprise. I usually see them coming from miles and months away.

Today is my last day working at ISF and I am sad. I will not miss the poor pay. I will miss the people and the atmosphere. I love the people at ISF. I love the earnest endeavorness of them and the heartfelt love that most of them exude like a natural odor. I love the atmosphere of compassion. The sentiment that hangs in the air that says, "We love God as best as we can, but we are not satisfied with our best, so through his love we will love him better. By his grace we are made whole and the miracles of our lives, though painful, can glorify this wonderful being who wraps us with his love."

Today, in just an hour, I will go and meet one of my mentor teachers. Next week I will have a new batch of students to love and care for. A new bunch of young lives to pour myself out for. Most of these lives will probably be a lot more broken than the lives that I encountered at Whitter Christian. Loving someone who is hurt, or damaged is so much harder than loving someone who is whole an well because that someone who is hurt has a lot more needs. Some people who are hurt are like dogs and just want their ears rubbed and are joyous at the thought of you scratching their itches. Some people who are hurt are like cats, who may be purring at your administrations, but will randomly bite or scratch you. And sometimes, hardest of all, there are the people who I desperately want to help but have no idea how to. Those are the God people. Those are the people that I can only pray for and go on living with as best as I can. I know that those ones turn out well in the end because that is what the first two years of my marriage was like. There are people who simply do not make sense to me and I cannot communicate well with them, and those are the people that God shows me his glory through because I never cease to be amazed at what he does with them and how well he knows how to love them. (Nothing impresses me more than seeing someone do something that I can't. It would have impressed my socks off to see the universe made. There's little me, sitting there. "Hey God! Check it out! I'm so cool, I can stack these blocks up and knock them down!" "Hey Rho! Check it out! I'm so cool, I can stack these planets up and spin them in a circle." "Wow God. That is pretty cool. Teach me how?")

But with all of this I have the comfort of reading the Bible and getting loved on that way, reading "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" to stay humble by perspective, and knowing that everything is going to be alright. Plus, just 'cause I'm not working at ISF anymore doesn't mean that I have to leave all my friends there as well. Nope. I'm taking my friends with me!