Tales from the Crevices of My Heart

Today at church, Kyle asked us to think about where we have seen God at work this past week and share. Right away, I thought, I'm not sure I've really seen God this week . Much of what is dominating my thoughts recently is that there's a war going on in the Ukraine! And then another thought came to me. I saw God at work in the ISS room on Friday!   In School Suspension, aka ISS, is the place kids go when they have crossed over some line or forgotten that their actions have consequences. I have duty there during 8th grade lunchtime on Fridays. Often there is a "customer" as we sometimes say, because by the end of the week, well, we all lose track of what we're doing! This is where I met Darius*, an 8th grader who had just recently moved into our school district from Trenton, which is a very urban district plagued with urban problems.  I walked into my "customer" hard-core sleeping. I roused him because ISS is not for sleeping, although it is a boring ...

 A piece of mail.  Something so ordinary that we often quickly flip through the stack, sorting out the junk mail for immediate recycling. This past week a piece of mail looked ordinary, yet it was not, by any means. Well it was ordinary in the fact that it served a purpose and was indeed from the USPS. This item was a change of address form from the USPS confirming that our daughter had indeed initiated this change.  I texted her the photo of this item of mail, which is what I usually do since she does live about five hours away. "Cool!" she says!  She had initiated the change of her permanent address. Hmmmm. Okay. I sit pondering how I got to this point and felt a bit of a void. So yes, she indeed is not moving back home. I knew that, but somewhere down deep inside, I needed this piece of mail to be in my mailbox to help me see that this is for real what happens when your kids grow up and move away, chasing their dreams as they go.