home

i'm sitting in huntington, fresh from an evening of fun and festivities with the boys and girls club kids. it has been so wonderful to come back here and to visit all of these kids once again. it's amazing how deep a kid can set their hooks into your heart, and the more you try to pull them out the deeper they go. it was so wonderful to see smiles on my kids faces and to feel there arms wrap hugs of love around me. these kids are mine. they're my babies. it doesn't matter how many miles from them that i will go, or how many more children that will hook my heart. they will always be mine and have a special place in my heart.

i miss working with kids on a daily basis. i miss knowing that the smile that i gave or a word that i spoke may have been the first good thing to happen to them all day. i take forgranted the "posh" lifestyle that i live. but i'm always brought back to earth and humbled by the small things that bring them joy.

My favorite and perhaps most impacting quote from tonight came from Autumn.
"I like this new gym!"
"Why?" asked Jeff as we exchanged glances and looked around the new room. The floors are bare concrete, the walls are plastic covered insulation with exposed bars and pipes.
"Because its comfortable"

Comfortable. wow. something that seems so terrible and dangerous to us, is comfortable to her. and why is it comfortable? because it is home.

Home. More of a home than what some of them maybe used to. Some of them spend more time their with part staff members than with their own parents. Some of them respond better to part time staff members than to their own parents. But it is home.

And it's my home too. And i miss it. I miss them. I miss their hugs, and thier tears, and their fists, and their hurt, and thier anger. But most of all i miss knowing that i am impacting someones life. i think that is what is so frustrating about where i am in my life right now. i can't see how i'm impacting anyone. in the summer...yes. but that is only 9 weeks of the year. But there are 43 other weeks that go by when i don't. I never thought that i would miss serving so much. serving with an honest heart. not with the bible. not with an ulterior motive.

I think that sometimes serving becomes too much about our reward; our fame; our pride; our money; our reputation; our heavenly reward. i hate it when christians serve expecting to see results. when we set the mood for things to change. for hearts to be affected. we play the right music. we read the right bible verse. we share the perfect testimony. and then what happens. there is a flood and an enormous amount of people wash forward. and the accept. they change. they commit. but what are they commiting too? the the God of the person that planned the evening? to the God that is presented to us? the God of emotion, the God moment. But what about God. Their God. The God that they can find by searching for him instead of blindly trusting the words of a 10 minute preacher, a motivational speaker.

I think that serving is much more than that. It's showing right and wrong in a way that is simple and applicable. It's facilitating interactions that foster social and emotional development. It's reaching people in their environment. In their home.

And i miss that. I miss being in their home. I miss being involved in someones life. I miss being able to see how someone is at home. and being able to make home better. I don't want to transplant kids to a false envronment where i know that i can force an emotion out of them if i say the right words and turn the lights down low enough. i don't even know what i'm talking about anymore. i'm sure if i read this again i would see all of the error in my thought. the mass contridictions. i would see that nothing flows. but i need this again.

i need home.

home.