It's Wednesday. And I'm thinking this.....

This evening?  So much swirling in my mind.  It goes from random to profound.  I smile at myself sometimes.  Who could, or would want to, trouble themselves with keeping track of me?  I spent time today at the school I will be working at, come next Wednesday, helping out with needed tasks, a fun lunch and outing getting to know the other staff.  I sat across from one woman, sharing our stories.  Ah, how I love to hear stories.  Hers resonated with me and I reached out eager and touched her arm.  "Yes.  YES.  I know that feeling," I said to her and I knew I'd found a sister friend.

Later, I came home, my girl waiting for me, having spent her day doing chores around the house and we shared supper and bought shoes and sunglasses and went for a walk around the lake to try them out and she mocked frustration at her mama for "always stopping to take pictures and that's why we never get anywhere on our walks."  Who is this young woman, I think to myself, and she stares confidently into my lens.

We talk school schedules, and she's memorized all the upcoming holidays.  "You know," I say to her....."I won't get paid for any of those...but......God......so.....I'm not going to worry about it.  It'd be ridiculous to."  I laugh to myself.  Who is this woman who used to think it was irresponsible not to worry?   I once thought people never really changed.  And then I did.  That verse in Proverbs...She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come? I get that now. I wear that strength easy now, because He put it there. And as I lay in my bed at nights, sorting out the uncertainties, I laugh at my lack of control. I read words true tonight in A Grace Revealed by Jerry Sittser. "Adversity does not have to be dramatic to have an effect. Strangely, I realize now that it has not been the grandiose events of suffering that have proven to be so difficult for me but the lesser disappointments along the way that have eroded my spirit, sapped my energy and put me to the test. Mundane adversity, like any other kind, reminds us that we are not in control." I look forward eager to see how My Provider...provides. I've learned to enjoy the lack of control, in a nervous laughter sort of way. I've learned that sometimes I have to look hard to recognize the provision.

My girl goes to read in her bed, tired from training herself to get up early for school. I sit on my porch, pondering getting irritated at her earlier for interrupting me....again...when I hear a siren scream by and I remember a family who lost their father sudden yesterday and I call her out to talk. I love you so much, I tell her. Just know that I love you so much. I pray those words thread their way into her sleep.

It's night time now and I gather up my thoughts like balls of yarn in a basket and offer them up to My Creator as prayers. I'm grateful full up that He enjoys hearing me ramble; that I sense Him dancing over me when I turn towards Him.  I've learned to make Him the man of my dreams. "I'm no longer a slave to fear. I am a child of God," I hum to myself and remind my sweet friend who sends me a message tonight.  And now I will make popcorn with my girl.