“For we have found this man a plague, one who stirs up riots among all the Jews throughout the world and is a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.”
~Acts 24:5~

Multiple times throughout the book of Acts you see references to the Pharisees or religious leaders being jealous. It is the jealousy in their hearts that prompts them to act wrongly against the apostles. When crowds were drawn, when people listened, when there were messages being preached against their own protected messages, that’s when it mentions that they were jealous. It almost makes me feel sorry for them.

Like, they had nothing to be threatened by. I feel like it’s important that this jealousy is mentioned because otherwise you might be able to think that they were just being zealous for their old religion. You can kind of understand being protective of that. You can understand them wanting to defend their truth. But somewhere they must have known that they were profiting from this arrangement where they are the truth keepers.

So I think these leaders are an example of how sinful corruption plays out. Good leadership wants freedom for others, not burdens. The yoke Jesus offers is light compared to the burden that the Pharisees offered which was heavy. When we talk about picking up our crosses and following Jesus I wonder if he counted crosses in the definition of yoke. Wouldn’t that be something? That Jesus makes our crosses lighter.

“When we are in the grips of illness, a major focus in our mind is the hope of getting back to where we were before this sickness began. But we are not meant to go back.”
~Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow~

I completely miss the fact sometimes that God isn’t aiming to tweak our lives or even amend our lives, but rather his desire is to give us new lives.

New hearts. New minds. And in this process he becomes like a stranger, not because he doesn’t love you or because you don’t know him, but because

We don’t recognize his coming, and at the same he is there with you, saying, that this person you’re looking for, he’s not in the past. He’s in the future.

For whatever reason today I couldn’t get warm. My son and I went out to the store and shopped, bringing everything back to take over to the Christian Growth Center. It was the kind of weather that causes you to label it as the worst, minus of course some kind of hurricane or anything else severe. It was cold and rainy, grey and cold.

Tonight we went over to my mother-in-law’s for supper. She invited us over to help with Christmas decorations. She’d bought a new tree for the upstairs and her sister had given her an old tree for her downstairs. The tree she had in the old house got pitched when we were tossing things into the dumpster. We had a good time decorating.

Ethan had a race this evening. They had an early bird home meet for their indoor track season. It was happening on our way out to Grandma’s so the kids watched the race in the car from my phone. After supper we watched it on the tv. This time he did the 3000M because he wants to get better at longer races. He got just over 10.

“The Paul answered, ‘What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.'”
~Acts 21:13~

The Joyful Hearts overnight is happening this weekend. I still need to get some apples and oranges for their bags. Dad and the kids are currently over there, minus the one who’s here to help with the dog. All of our kids have ended up volunteering early though the recommended age for doing so is being in high school. Number one, they’ve needed the help, and number two, they’ve seemed mature enough to do so.

My daughter was the only one, who in retrospect, was too young. I think we sent her around fourth or fifth grade and then for several years she preferred to not go back. The double-edged sword of being a conscientious child (or a smart child, or a handy child…) is that people expect things on you. They seek you out for those ways in which you’re gifted but then you inevitably cannot live up to often other expectations.

I don’t know if that makes sense. I’m thinking of it strictly as a personal parenting reflection and not how I was in any way raised. It’s not that kids have disappointed me, it’s more like they’ve helped me to see where I didn’t fully grasp or understand how kids grow. Not that I fully do now but when you have backward time to examine then you can appreciate each one’s journey of where they’ve been and where you have too.

“And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick and their diseases left them and their evil spirits came out of them.”
~Acts 19:11-12~

The boys are sleeping and it’s currently snowing. We keep getting these light dustings of snow but nothing that completely covers the ground or stays long. Paul’s been all over the place on his missionary journeys and he was breaking my heart this morning with his talk to this particular group of believers that they would not see his face again in this life. I love Paul, but the grief he bears, and the way he just continues on–it’s too much.

It just makes me grateful for the apostles God sent and worked through in order to “get the ball rolling” so to speak. These people like Paul are ones you admire so much but would never want to be them because of everything they went through. I was trying to think of any times when Paul complained about his role and I could not think of any.

There is the thorn that he asked for God to remove. But it seems like any other time he is simply calling on God that he might be found worthy of the call he’s received and faithful to complete it until whenever God is finished with him.

The boys and I are finally making some progress on the tree. They were kind of hounding me about it this morning, wanting to start setting things up. I had one more video assignment to complete before the Zoom meeting I had scheduled 12:30. But they weren’t going to let it go so I just went ahead and started putting on lights. It wasn’t ideal because we had two strands of clear and one strand of color.

So I put the color up the middle of the inner part of the tree and used the clear lights for around the rest of it. We still ended up needing to get more lights, which perhaps we can get out and get some tomorrow. I’m serious about this small Christmas, I’m not spending money. The lady I helped this summer with the knee replacement surgery sent me a surprise check for $1408. She said she Googled home health wages.

I told her I’m going to put it toward school. A few weeks ago I was in one of my moments where I started looking into the Marriage and Family degree at Concordia. Long story short, they were going to let me join the cohort in January. It all seemed perfect except for when I asked again to get the final okay for doing it, there was no okay. I’d misunderstood and we didn’t have 8,000 more dollars to spend.

It’s like, at first his job was to keep me from quitting school, and now it’s to keep me from signing up for any more. I had talked to the head of the program and everything who had gotten special permission from the dean for me to join. The way I was going to do it would’ve meant I would have had to take a few more classes which wouldn’t have given me another degree but it would’ve allowed me to apply for a MFT license.

It’s fine. These moments pass and then I look back and wonder what I was thinking. Miles’ family was back from vacation tonight so I picked up Elianna after leaving my work site. We were both anxious for her to get back to the dog. He was very happy to see her and definitely remembered her. Dad had chapel in Altamont this morning so I brought our son to driver’s ed. I feel like I have more to say so I’ll try later.

“I’m thinking about cutting my hair. What do you think?” I’d followed him after a minute when he walked through the living, down the hallway, and into the bathroom. We don’t barge in on each other anymore. When we were first married it was standard behavior to just be in and out of the bathroom no matter what the other person was doing. In our first apartment the photo college from his dorm room leaned against the wall.

I wanted to incorporate his friends and special memories, plus our bathroom was huge. There was room to put a large bulletin board full of pictures. There was that one picture of him and Laura from their Minnesota missions trip. She was the one girl he ever told me that he loved, but not in that way. We stayed up all night in his car by the swing-set, listening to Lifehouse and others until sunrise. She married one of his college friends.

We had a fight one time in Hoyleton that ended the free-for-all bathroom practice, or at least made me question, or think twice, or wonder how we’d gone for so long without me truly knowing how he felt. You can’t always judge the hasty things said in anger, but for some reason those are the words that will stick with you. “Why don’t you treat me like a queen!?”, I had said, or something like it. I can’t even repeat what it was he said.

It’s too embarrassing, at least that is how I felt when he said it. This whole time I thought it had meant we were close. His family did the weirdest things. They all had their own personal time in the bathroom. One after the other, 30 minutes at a time. With us we were in and out, sharing a sink, a hairbrush, towels, asking if someone could bring us some toilet paper. This is how I was fine with things. It wasn’t weird to me.

“Well I wouldn’t do anything impulsive”, he said to me from the other side of the door. “Why would you cut it?”, he asked. I’m bending in the hallway looking into the mirror, running my fingers through the neglected ends. I like my hair my long, but I’m 42 now. I’ve had it this way for probably 15 years, never coloring it, never styling it. “I feel like maybe I need a new look.” Maybe having it shorter would make me look healthier.

Like I was trying and caring. The girls at the shelter change their hair all the time. The women and girls do not have very much hair. They purchase extensions and then weave them in with braids or other methods. It often breaks and is hard to manage. They are very skilled at beautifying and very hair conscious. I watched a girl and mother fight over what kind of style the girl could have or not have. The girl wasn’t happy.

“If you like my hair long, I think you need to tell me more”, I said, still looking in the mirror, but standing up now. I’d put the mirror on the lower half of the wall so it would be at eye level for the boys passing by when they would walk into their room. They are taller than it now but it still hangs on the wall there. We’re still talking through the door. “Do you mean like right now, or just in general?” It isn’t quite a formula but it could be.

“I mean like in general”, I said, satisfied. And that was the end and there was no more about it. I went back into the living room to continue with whatever it was I was doing. I think he came back out and then said something about liking it long. He did. I still will go into the bathroom at times, but I knock first, mostly. He doesn’t care when I’m in there, but I care when he is. Back at camp there were no doors, just the woods and the lake.

The boys and I did social studies and Bible this morning. They’ve been leading up to David and Goliath for about a week and today they finally got to the part when he kills him. After that David cuts off his head and takes the head of Goliath to Jerusalem. They were wondering what he would’ve done with it there. Well it was supposed to be a sign for the inhabitants that the frightening Philistine warrior was dead and that God had delivered Israel from the hands of their enemies.

But I don’t know what they would’ve done with it. Earlier Dad took our high school aged son to drivers ed to meet the instructor in the parking lot at 7:10. Because we are a private school they have to do driver’s ed through the public school. The instructors can be a little sour about this, or so I’ve heard from some meeting where there were trying to get driver’s ed set up with the new school location. There was another school board meeting tonight that said they will need about 20 million dollars to rebuild.

That includes athletic fields and parking. I have yet to drive by the demolished building. I told the boys after school that we could bring up the Christmas bin and start to decorate some things but that didn’t happen. We played with Zorro outside for a while and took videos to send to Elianna. She said she thinks he’s bigger already and it looks to me like he definitely is, but still small enough to have that very cute puppy look. I feel like I love him and am feeling a bond.

But it’s the boys who are doing most of the work with him. I take that back, Dad is too. He will take him for walks and hang out outside. I will do “down” and “sit” with him for treats but Elianna said she didn’t want us training him too much. It’s fun training dogs because you feel like they’re listening and then you get to shower them with ruffles and praise. I still think it’s funny that we have all these cats and just tonight again there were four in the living room. They just hang out and chill and don’t ask for much.

I slept instead of doing any Christmas things. The boys watched Youtube videos for a while until Dad took them both to pick up their brother. Zorro went with them. The housekeeper knocked on the door a few minutes later saying the power was out in the kitchen at main camp. The fridge and the freezers had started to warm. I called Josh and told him and Josh called Tim and Tim came out and saw a fuse had been blown. The electrician guys came later and did something to fix it.

“And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”
~Hebrews 6:11-12~

There’s this woman at work who works double shift weekend option. So every Saturday and Sunday she comes in at 6:45AM and works a day shift and then an evening shift. She’s done this for years. The catch is that on her weekends she usually leaves at 10PM. For me that means, that on my weekends, I go over to her wing around 9:45PM and we count the narcs so she can leave. From 10-11PM then I am in charge of both wings.

This really bothered me the first time it happened. No one had told me about having to cover two floors and it wasn’t part of the deal when I agreed to work these shifts. I thought about telling my boss, “I’m sorry, but I’m not comfortable doing this. I said upfront when I trained over there that I really did not feel comfortable with the REACH wing and we had agreed that I would not have to work shifts over there.”

I eventually wanted to be able to work over there but it was too much to start with because the people on that wing are always changing, versus the long-term care wings where the residents do not change (as often) and there is more repetition where you aren’t having to learn new people every time you go in. But then I thought, “Okay, well, maybe I just need to be a big girl and do this.” You can’t be having your way all the time.

There is an element of having to “join the club” so to speak. You have to go in early for people or stay later because someone calls in. Not all the time, but this is part of the job where people are fickle, people get sick, life happens, and there are still these wings that need to be staffed. On summer you’re by yourself (1 nurse) with 26-28 people for most of the evening shift which is why I did not want to work evenings there.

So doing it on Spring for one hour is just part of the job. You just pray like always that nothing too crazy happens then breathe a deep sigh of relief when nothing does. The lady who does this weekend option then turns around and works a full-time clinic job all week. You just wonder how people manage and even like to do it this way. We all have our own lives and ways of doing things and for me this is how it is working for now.

“…they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”
~Acts 14:22~

These every other weekends come around pretty quickly but not enough to seem like too much. I still dread going and suppose I always will. It’s not a heavy dread, rather it’s more like a faint one. But once I’m there I’m typically okay and then after the Saturday there’s only one more. I received a card in the mail acknowledging my one year work anniversary. It felt crazy to think that I now have another year of experience.

This passage I read this morning reminded me of something I read a few years ago. Back when Covid was happening in 2020, our church printed out the entirety of the services including the parts normally said by the pastor. There was a part in the All Saint’s Day service that completely jumped out at me. It was the part from the Proper Preface which is the part of the church service spoken right before communion.

“In the communion of all Your saints gathered into the one body of Your Son, You have surrounded us with so great a cloud of witnesses that we, encouraged by their faith and strengthened by their fellowship, may run with perseverance the race that is set before us and, together with them, receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.”

I remember feeling something rather remarkable when I read these words: Encouraged. And while the encouragement came from the words themselves, the shock of them came more from what the words did not say. The lines, for example, did not go like this:

“Saints of God–Even though we are called the body of Christ, made up of brothers and sisters nearby and throughout the world, this Christian life is pretty much one of living life on your own. It’s not ideal, true, but that’s the way that it is. You will, over years and time, adjust. We live in a sinful world these days, which basically means nothing is ever right.”

I felt encouraged by the word that the faith of saints could encourage. I simultaneously felt uplifted but strangely seen in reading that it was communion and fellowship with the body of Christ that strengthens me and not my resolve to keep going.