Leonard Cohen

"There is a crack in everything; that's how the light gets in"

I don't know why, but I've been thinking about this line from Cohen's song "Anthem" for days now. It's beautiful and, for some reason, comforting. I guess it reassures me that God can work through my imperfections. I have been seeing the truth of that very clearly lately. Without getting into the nitty-gritty details, I've been battling some pretty serious personal demons. The more I get into them and face them head on, the more I can see how God is going to shine through them and, ultimately, defeat them. If I didn't have these weaknesses and imperfections, however, I don't think I would be as incredibly aware of God's unbelievable goodness and beauty, and my desperate need of them. I know all this is a little garbled, but I think there's a seed of a good idea in it.

On to other things:

This is a picture of the child - K - that I spent a good part of today with, and he pretty much recreated this face for me. He is usually a dear, sweet, child - and I don't just say that in the way that I say every child is dear and sweet. Up until the past couple of weeks, K was all smiles and fun. Then, all of a sudden, he started making this face a lot, and trying to run away from programs.

The absolute worst part of my job is when I have to physically restrain a child, and I've been having to do this with K a lot in the past weeks. He has been getting angry very quickly (and with this group of kids, that's easy to do - they pick on each other constantly) and doesn't seem to know how to handle it. So he tries to run away, and I have to physically hold him back. There is no talking to him when he gets like this, and we can't have a child come to programs who runs away, so our only option has been to suspend him. I hate doing this, because it means he'll just stay at home, and I'm 90% sure that's not such a great place for him right now.

so that stinks.

I still love my job and love the kids, and thank God for putting me here with them. I will leave you with a few pictures of the dears. Please keep praying, for them and for me.