This Is Goodbye

At least for now...I am leaving this blog live in case anyone stumbles across it and is encouraged or likes what they see. Find me on Instagram or Facebook if you are looking for me. :)

Well Then

Or, a not-so-well-thought-out post that just kind of rambles, because it has been over six months since I wrote anything, and anyone who still reads this likely believes that I'm dead or missing in action.

Everything is turned upside down right now because this lovely little school doesn't have kids.

So I have been here since August (well, all summer really), trying to figure out what a teacher does with nobody to teach. It's been interesting.

I visited my best friend a lot over the summer, also visited family, took a class for my certification. Got a very mischievous ginger kitty from said best friend's family. ^_^ Read new books, enjoyed them, got new plants (currently have an African violet, an aloe vera, a basil, and a viney thing). Tried to recruit kids with not a whole lot of success.

Continued to repeat that last sentence indefinitely this fall. Did finally register one child officially for the January semester--yay!! Also heard that two will not be able to come back till next fall--hrmm. :/

Created a school website, chased my (proverbial) tail in circles over various projects, some of which were accomplished and some of which weren't, and here we are at the end of September and I have received a tentative offer to do a long-term substitute position somewhere in Georgia (the level of secrecy regarding location is both amusing and frustrating, you'd think it was classified CIA information). For various reasons I said yes (with my board chair's approval) and so I sit here and wait a final decision that will launch me southward, at least for a short period.

But I did talk to one of my eighth graders from last year, just yesterday, and she is in academy and doing well and enjoying herself. Which, I like to think, she would not be if it hadn't been for what we'd been able to do last year. So it was worth it, however it turns out.

I know this time will be, too. Some things just take longer to see results than others.

When Love Shatters

It's a drippy, foggy week before Christmas and I am on a trail run in the woods behind my house (family's house, my second home--or maybe my first). Feet pound rhythmically and the questions fire beside and behind them. And foremost among the questions is one:

Why does love break?

Because I'd said before, I told it to my parents, what I'd been thinking for months now: Everything I touch shatters. The friendships, the love, the relationships, community, everything. Everything breaks, sooner or later, when I've touched it.

Why? All I did was love them. All I did was care. And it shatters. Time and time and time again, it breaks. Is it worth it, to keep loving? Is it right, to keep reaching out, when it will only cause them worse pain later? (And that's not even counting what it does to me.)

So my feet pound the trail and my heart pounds questions. The trail slopes downward and I break to a walk to save my knees. My prayer drifts out, mist into mist. "Why, God?"

And just like that, there's an answer that stops me cold; my feet freeze in the trail and I grab the nearest tree and hang on, like the force of the thought might knock me over if I'm not careful.

Love always shatters. 

Always?

Always, on earth. Because Love will always be colliding with evil. And that causes shattering.

The lyrics of a song drift into my head: "Love's like an ocean..."

Those waves--they roll on and on across the deep, strong but peaceful, gentle--until they reach the shore. That wave breaking, it can break you, it can kill you, it can drive you under, make you feel you're drowning. But it's not the wave that does that. It's the wave breaking. Striking the rock. Clashing with something completely opposite to itself.

Like Love. Like Love always is, always will be, as long as there is evil in the world.

Love's collision will break others, will break itself, will create a million pieces out of things that looked whole. But the only alternative is to abandon Love and choose evil. Because there is no middle ground, no safe walled-in place, not in this case.

And perhaps, as we choose, it's worthy to remember that sometimes, breaking is the only way to healing.

Love by the Wayside

I have wondered, in the dark damp days, Can love be wasted?

I see it lying by the wayside, after all, in the ditch, like a tossed away rag, like a child given up for dead. It looks wasted. It looks used-up. It looks dead. It looks as if it would be useless and inefficient and half-broken and hopelessly out-of-date, even if you could and did revive it.

But Love is not a rag and Love is not even a person. Love is greater than all of these.

Love is a seed. A seed that never dies because it is a piece of the very heart of God. And so when it appears used-up and dead and thrown away, that is the most magical time of Love. 

Because that is when Love grows. It sends out a root. It anchors itself deep. It brings out leaves, more roots, stems, and, eventually, it blooms. 

Oh, the birds will try to snatch it away. And the thorns will try to choke it out. And the winds will try to blow it away and sometimes they succeed. You know what? 

They only blow it somewhere else. Where it's dropped, and it looks dead once more, and then, bit by bit, it revives. 

Nothing that God IS will ever be wasted. Ever.

May He give us courage. Not only to be the seed, but to accept it. Not only to grow again, but to nurture what comes to us. Not only to love, but to be loved.  Because Love is never wasted.