a change of plans

This past week was extremely, emotionally stressful - I even wrote a poem about it and I never write poetry! One night, when I was on by myself, 7 out of our 10 girls got sick. Fevers, puke, excessive trips to the toilet....it made for a very hectic and hard to control night for the supervisor (me). Also, my friend, Christy, was supposed to fly in on Saturday night, but hurricane Jeanne kept her in Florida and she's not coming until tomorrow. I realized however, that her visit was what I was looking to in order to rescue me from the physical, emotional and spiritual exhaustion I was feeling. Finding out that she wasn't coming an hour prior to when her flight was supposed to arrive was the straw that broke the camel's back - and God's gentle whisper "won't you look to me to rescue you?" I'm in need of prayer. Even with my friend being here, pray that I look to the Holy Spirit to minister to me, and pray that I be a blessing to Christy.

Peter

Peter is a fellow groupleader like myself, but at a boys house. Thanks to him there are now web links on this blog! My favorite thing about Peter: he is a presence person, like myself. We can just be, without having to chat it up all the time.

His Quiet

It's Wednesday night and I'm on QR (quiet room) duty for one of my girls. That's a nice way of putting solitary confinement. I hope that doesn't upset anyone. These moments are necessary for some of our students when they become a threat to the house or themself. It de-escalates their irrational emotions and helps bring them back to reality.
Sometimes I wish someone would send me to a QR! I'm learning that the harder I try to chase after Jesus the more unstable, desperate, crazy and unpredictable my life gets. I think that the "abundance" Jesus spoke of comes from the adventure of a life laid down, a passionate suffering. And in the midst of suffering, emotions stretch thin or explode all together. Or at least mine do. Yet when He calls us to the quiet He calls us to the corner, rest from the fight, to His whisper, a pep rally if we need one, living water if we thirst. He desires us to focus, to be revamped, to not grow weary in doing good. Which is why He calls us to His quiet.
Pray that I accept the invitation.

bitten by the blog bug

I'm here and someone else is here, so just real quick....my name is Autumn and I'm now a blogger.