I am sitting here listening to Mika radio and staring at the laundry piles on the other couch and I don't really have anything to say but I wanted to write a little without having to think too hard because it has been a long, long day and now that I am near the end of it writing sounds like a nice close.

I think I want to be a grocery store clerk.  Or a barista.  Or maybe a grumpy secretary with big glasses.  And I won't get holes in the knees of my pants from being on the floor with children and I'll take time to brush my hair, wear fancy shoes.

That's pretty much what I say to Nate every night after work.  I spend my days with children who have obstacles in their path-  some giant ones and some small ones and at the ends of my days I am about done with everything-- the system we function in, the way some families are constructed, the absence of Him in little lives and the slow dying of any maternal dreams I have left.  I am sure He has me here, for now.  I am not sure how to fit well here, though, and when my heart is rotten and my attitude tired I am not sure I deserve to be here pouring into these little lives who are so different from the other blessed littles I have known.

Sometimes I drive away at the end of a visit and I am glad to be driving away.  There.  That's the truth.  I had a friend call me a saint last week and I tried to correct her but she said it again and that made me almost crazy because I am the worst most times and if I am ever good it is Him.  I am trying hard to not become too cynical, too indignant, too dismissive.  I am trying to be understanding of our country.  I am trying to be proud of it.  I am not sure that functioning in this part of the system is making that possible, though and I am not sure what grace and love look like here either.

I could be a produce stocker.  Or a coffee shop live-in with my computer and my words and I could try to piece together something longer than an essay.

Or I could stay here in this space where He has put me and I could keep working at reconciling and deconstructing and advocating for people who would be easy to walk away from.  I could lose more of myself and then I might be able to squeeze into these young lives that are already hard and closed.  I could spend more time on my knees and on my heart.  I could.

“Whatever you do, He will make good of it. But not the good He had prepared for you if you had obeyed him.”  C.S. Lewis, Perelandra