wwW Week 3: Bending not breaking

I'm sitting down to write this post and my first thoughts are that I don't know where to begin. It has been a whirlwind day of biting, hitting, scratching, bullying, toilet accidents, and beyond that some real hard issues. The things you can't fix - at all. The discouragement that comes when a plan to help a special needs child fails. A little one struggling when things at home are tense and intense and there's yelling and fighting from the grown-ups that gets taken out on them. Watching a friend struggle with a debilitating disease that is robbing him of mobility and ministry at the same time.

And a part of me just wants to have a good cry, fall into bed and face tomorrow when it comes.

But,

I made this goal of blogging                                                                                        

on Wednesdays                                                   

about what is going right.*

And God has sent me some pretty straightforward encouragement to keep doing that. From one of my favorite bloggers who talked this week about being a writer and "folding inward" ** to some folks I respect telling me that it was making a positive contribution, I need to write today. And I am praying that He will give me words right now.

Encouraging words.
Maybe even some funny words.
I'd settle, through this fog of fatigue, if what I write just makes sense.


Today on the way home my kids threw a CD in, and I needed to hear the song that came on.

And as I thought about it, I realized that there are still so many things God is putting in my life to make today a bending experience instead of a breaking one.

• My family, a husband who thinks nothing of loading the dishwasher and throwing clothes in the dryer.
• My girls who, tired from camp themselves, are willing to pitch in.
• Left-overs for dinner and cookies for breakfast.
• Playing dead ant tag. Only to be beat out by toilet tag.
• Worship music with preschoolers - who are singing and dancing. For real!
• Air guitar.
• Bible stories illustrated in legos: so very cool! Yep, I get as excited as the kids.
• Hot dogs, freeze pops, duct tape and puppets. Yes this line all goes together. "are we siblings?" I am still chuckling.
• The absolutely ingenious idea to sit in cardboard box "cars" and watch a movie pretending that it is a drive in. I believe God has a hand in Pinterest , because I so needed that respite today.
• Friends - the ones you can tell anything, and the ones you are getting to know better every day. And the ones who like Hee Haw.
• Still being able to find my sense of humor when a camper calls me grandma.
• One camp nurse who has unending patience, and office staff who have huge hearts.

The details that God brings into your life, the things he allows you to see and experience, from a snippet of misbehavior, that gives you a window on a child to the deep things buried from the dark places in my own childhood. I just cannot get away from the idea today that he has this all in hand. That it is orchestrated in this micro-cosmic scale by a God that knows about the bird that got hit by a car today on the road in. The God who knows how many blue hairs I have, how many bleached and how many were really grey before all of that.

Because I wouldn't have thought that my childhood ghosts could be used as a good thing. But today they were.

I wouldn't have taken seeing yet another camper misbehave as a good thing. But today it was.

                             bending
                             not
                       breaking

Insecurities, disabilities, scars from wrong choices - God can make it all work. And I am convinced that some day we will get to look back on this bendy path and see it as an amazing thing of beauty.



* I've had a few folks ask what the wwW stands for - it's a convoluted explanation that can be found here.

** Enduring and After - one of my favorite blogs, Deb has a true gift.