To plant a garden.

Several years ago, a dear saint came to me after church saying I should plant a garden at school. Little did I know what that would spark. I love watching my kids eyes light up as they taste the watermelon that they just pulled off the vine. I love hearing the excitement as they discover a praying mantis for the first time. Both terrified and intrigued as they realize the diversity God has made in his creation. I love the smell of fresh figs as the kids are tentatively tasting the strange looking fruit. I loved the taste of the fresh salsa the kids were excitedly begging everyone in the building to just try. After an amazing summer of sowing, harvesting, and feasting last year, I find myself a little scared.

There is so much faith required in sowing. I plant the tomato seed. I test the soil and buy the right fertilizers and make sure it gets sunlight and water. But I can do nothing to make it grow. There are no guarantees  in the garden. So much is outside of my control. Then you add the variable that is gardening with children. My garden club right now is entirely made up of 12 and 13 year old boys. Some of my boys come from situations you could only imagine. It reminds me that only God makes anything grow. When sowing requires a child that can barely read and doesn't really do chairs to read and understand the directions on the back of the seed starting kit, you never know what's gonna happen. But, despite the fiercest odds against them, I come back from the weekend to 16 lovely, but fragile tomato seedling about to bust the lid off the little container.

So many Biblical stories are about planting and growing. My response to fear in the garden is over planting. If all my tomato seeds grow, I'll have thirty or forty tomato plants to find room for. My sowing the word should be similar. Sow widely. Sow where it doesn't look like anything should be able to grow. Water even the weakest plant. I don't know where God will choose to grow anything. He chooses the weak things to shame the wise. So I pray that my garden will grow. I pray that my desire for evangelism will grow. I pray that Christ's church will grow here. I pray. I need to persevere in prayer. I pray for more faith in the sowing. I pray for the courage to pray for even the most desperate situation. The ones that have already been written off by statisticians and politicians alike. I pray for my gardening club. I pray the act of sowing and reaping would create a wonder for God's miraculous creation.

To learn to remember.

I've found myself taking a step back and asking myself how I got here a lot often. I'm getting to the point in my life where there are enough years behind me to get lost and distracted in regrets. I find myself swirling in discontent. I sit and let the waves of what could have been crash over me until I'm nearly drowning. Once I get to that place I find it very difficult to drag myself from seashore to go on living my life.

It's so easy to sit here and imagine what amazingness would have befallen my life if I had known I'd still be single and had gone to medical school. I wonder what my life would look like it I had gone to the University of Georgia instead of George Washington. What if...

But as I was lecturing my sister today about trusting that God's grace is sufficient for what she has been given today. Reminding her that she doesn't need to regret yesterday or fear tomorrow because the only two days that actually matter on the calendar are today and that day. I, just a few hours later, find myself needing the same lecture.

I find my faith weak. I find it quite difficult to praise God that "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance." Because the boundary lines of my life right now actually feel quite difficult. I'm finding myself taken by surprise when there is much toil in my work. I'm finding my mind and body wearier and wearier as the days of the year toil on.

But as I read the rest of Psalm 16, I find my God kind in his comfort. David's words are not being sung out of confidence in his circumstances. David's words are being sung out of confidence in his God. "Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure."

I can look back and see that my level of discontent seems to rise inversely as my time in meditating on the word and the gospel ebbs. I see the way out of this seemingly hopeless swirl of discontent in my circumstances. My God has placed me precisely where he wants me. He knew exactly how difficult it would be, and he calls me to depend more and more on him as my circumstances seem to get more and more difficult.

My anger at the toil in my work is rooted in laziness and a lack of self-control. Sins I should be actively fighting and praying for deliverance from. Instead I feed them with excuses, excess, and limitless procrastination.

So how should I remember? Why is it so easy to remember the parts of my life that are hard and still raw wounds, but God's faithfulness in answering prayers and providentially leading me to places I never would have chosen but have been great places for me. When I think about the past, I think abou

Psalm 16

"A miktam^a of David.

1Keep me safe, my God,

for in you I take refuge.

2I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;

apart from you I have no good thing.”

3I say of the holy people who are in the land,

“They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”

4Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.

I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods

or take up their names on my lips.

5Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;

you make my lot secure.

6The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

surely I have a delightful inheritance.

7I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;

even at night my heart instructs me.

8I keep my eyes always on the Lord.

With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

9Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;

my body also will rest secure,

10because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,

nor will you let your faithful^b one see decay.

11You make known to me the path of life;

you will fill me with joy in your presence,

with eternal pleasures at your right hand."

So I take a moment to remember God's faithfulness. God answering prayers. And ultimately, God's supreme kindness at the cross. 

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.