After the girls went to school this morning, I had the time to just mess around our cottage. I always find new things I didn’t know we had in the closets and drawers. I was also feeling a little under the weather, but I always have the knowledge that God wants me to be whole and fully prepared for my undertakings here. I decided against working out this morning, but just resting, especially because, after having peaked around in the drawers under the television, I found a Rebecca St James DVD (aLIVE in Florida) circa 2007. I remember growing up in youth group with Rebecca St James music in our youth room. I went to a concert with my mom once, and I loved her Christmas album. I had the cassette tape. So, I welcomed the idea of sitting on the big couch, wrapped in my cozy blanket, tissue box next to me with the DVD running in the background while I typed on my laptop whatever ramblings might come out. The second song hadn’t even come on, and I felt this incredible warmth wrap all around me – the warmth of God’s peace. Healing. Love. I broke forth in a cry that became brief groan-like sobs. No words could express to God what I was feeling…

The happy burden I’ve taken on, being a house parent, has stretched me, brought out a deep love, already (and actually even as we were hired), for these particular teen girls. The choices they make bring forth my own emotional responses. Individually, they affect me, even though it is I who is praying my presence in their lives will affect them. Perhaps I wasn’t prepared for this effect they have on me. Yet I am realizing that I am glad of its power. How would I know that I was loving, healing, helping if I did not feel and respond to what it is they are giving out. They give out their pain, their joys, their anxiety, their insecurity, their love. It is one of the most beautiful forms of ministry, this exchange of life, that I have experienced.

And perhaps the most tiring. The constant releasing of my gifts extracts all that I have. But that is exactly the picture that David had in his mind when we took this job – a poured out drink offering. It is just incredible that God gives to you what he asks you to pour out. When I am willing to give it all, he will give it all to me.