To be suprised by toil.

I'm not sure how it keeps taking me be surprise. It's something that has always come with work. My earliest memories of working involved toil and ample frustration. One of my chores sometimes in the fall was to rake leaves. It seemed like every time I'd almost be done, the cat would jump in the pile and scatter it out a little. Later, the wind would blow and the cascade of leaves that flew across the yard was beautiful, but it added toil to my work. (Of course, sometimes, I was the one jumping in the pile to add to another's toil.)


In college the work was different. Instead of the long hours outside trying to tame the weeds that sprung up as the curse fell on Adam, I found my self hours and hours into papers in the dark basement of a library. The effects of toil on work in that basement looked different. The frustration of the power flicking when you forgot to save that last page of a paper. Crying over spilled milk because it landed on the laptop that you knew you couldn't afford to replace. I wrote more than one paper on my old blackberry because I couldn't get my laptop to turn on and the work had to be done.

Every job I've ever done has had toil and frustration to accompany the work. But it still takes me by surprise. I keep forgetting that I lived in a world marred by the effects of the fall. I live in a world that is so messed up by sin that it should surprise me more when things do work.


So when my work seems unproductive, when my voice goes out right as I'm starting to feel like my class is working, when half the class fails an exam that I just knew they were going to ace, when I realize it's been two weeks since I had a planning period, when schools get consolidated right as we see progress, when class sizes balloon to 32. Why am I surprised? In a sinful world, entropy rules. It takes work to simply maintain the current level of disorder. To bring things from a state of disorder toward order requires significantly more work.  I feel like I'm failing to simply maintain. Progress seems impossible. But my God is bigger than even the laws of physics. My God can take something from disorder and move it toward order. My God can change sinful hearts, even of the confusing hearts of 13 year old. I can't.


So I work, and I toil. I don't work with the assurance that anything will change, but I do work with the confidence that God is good and he's called me here. I do work with confidence that one day, when this world is no more, I'll know what it means to work without toil. I pray that God would allow the toil of my work to point me to that day when I'll no longer feel the heavy weight that sin had placed on this world.

"O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day."

          - Ro­bert Ro­bin­son

To sell a dream.

"At this point I've taught them everything that I can. Two more days of review isn't changing anyone's test score. Right now I'm just selling the dream." -a coworker of mine right before standardized testing last year

As we just marked the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a Dream" speech, I've been thinking a lot about dreams. The last time I read that speech was in college, before I had any idea what it really meant. And to be honest, before I realized the King's dream was not yet a reality. But that's a different post for a different day.

When you are in middle school, as I perpetually am, you think a lot about the future. I'm still not yet 30, but I still have a lot in life to look back to. I think about great losses and great triumphs that I've already accomplished. But for the 12 year old, everything that matters, at least in their minds, is still ahead of them.

So how do you teach a child to dream. I may have been a more reflective child than most, but most of my middle school years were spent thinking about who I would one day be and how I would get there. Maybe it was all the times my dad sat me down and told me not to ever let anybody tell me I couldn't do something great with my life. Maybe it was all my teachers saying how bright I was and how excited they were to see where I ended up. I don't know. But I need to figure it out, because I want my kids to dream. I want them to honestly believe that "smart" is not out of their reach.

Maybe it's the little things. Subtle hints about keeping grades up because you'll need to get into a good high school to go to a good college. Maybe it's sweeping lectures about how "you're better than you're showing me right now." Maybe it's convincing parents that even though the high school is across town doesn't mean it's not a good choice for the kid. Maybe it's the big things. Maybe it's raising a stink that all the "good" high schools are across town. Maybe it's in asking harder taboo questions about race and culture and urban poverty and violence. Maybe it's all above my pay grade.

But I've seen the good that selling a dream to a kid can do. I've seen kids steeped in violence and restlessness worry more about their math grade than their street cred because they had been sold the dream of a specialty arts school. I've seen what a dream can do for a kid, but I'm not a natural sells man. I've never been a peddler of any sort no less the stuff dreams are made of. I've never mastered that art. But it's a big part of my job.

So I pray. I pray for my kids. I pray for their parents. I pray for my coworkers and the authorities here. I know not if I'm changing anything, but I know that God is good. I know he's placed me here. I know that he is sovereign. My job is to work and wait.

To make good use of the time.

Our day today involved:

1. A steam mop. 

To clean the basement floor. 

2. Two trowels 

To level the basement floor 

3. a canner

To make pickles with some of the 50!!! Cucumbers we picked this week

4 Two trips to target. 

one to return the hammock and a second to return the two chairs we bought that wouldn't fit in the car

5. a large pair of tree trimmers

to tame the backyard jungle.

6. A trip trip to the grocery store to buy pickling salt (instead I bought three types of peppers)

7. A trip to the garden

For a quick photo shoot and to pick 15 more cucumbers and 5 more squash 

8. Making lasagna using squash for noodles

9.and... About 6 episodes of white collar. 

To move in.

I've been in the house a month now. About thirteen of my friends from church came over a few weeks ago to help us move. (One even brought lunch for everyone!) My aunt and uncle drove up from Georgia for the weekend.

Here's mom's chair. Newly covered. It has been amazing to sit in this chair every morning. It's like sitting down at home. It's so calming, so stable. I feel at rest in this chair.

Here's the steamer trunk turned vanity. I'm not sure where my grandfather found this thing, but he started to restore it for my mother many years ago. I think they got distracted and it turned into a storage bin. I'm so excited about it.

To my sister.

My sister is a much more stable person than I am. She is calm in decision making. Level and steady. She's the person you call when you need to talk a decision through. She'll ask you really good questions and give you really good answers. I don't thank God for her as often as I should.

I marvel at her ability to keep three kids fed, (mostly) clothed, home school, and somehow work several 12 hour overnight nursing shifts. I can barely work teacher's hours and occasionally eat something that didn't come from a drive through or Chipotle.

She's always had superhero like status in my mind. Someone to want to be like. Someone to tell you when you were about to make a mistake so you could go the other direction. She always let me learn from her mistakes.

So this whole home buying thing comes along. We talked it through. As much as she hated the idea that my buying a house meant I would probably stay in DC a while, she agreed that it made a lot of sense.

I remember comparing it to a missionary going off to some faraway place. Is it safe? I'm not really sure. Will it be easy? Most certainly not. Is it good? I think so. God didn't give me the skills and passion to move half way around the world to share the love of Christ. But, looking around, it seems like he did give me the passion and gifts to move across the river.

When we started talking about it that way, it made perfect sense. Maybe not in a worldly sense, but most good things don't make sense that way. It made sense in that heavenly minded way. It made sense in a look back and marvel at God's kindness kind of way.

So my sister started a housewarming party. Well a digital far away using facebook kind of housewarming party. She also didn't tell me about it! So after one exhausting day at work where it seemed like no one had heard any thing I had said all day and there was just a little more toil than fruitful work in my day, I came home to a few cards from dear sweet friends from my childhood. They included gift cards and sweet encouragements and recollections of God's faithfulness.

And now, after a couple weeks of not posting, I can come before you all praising God for his kindness to me in the form of my dearest friend. My sister.