adjusting and dreaming

I am writing from the place where I belong: the single wide trailer from which I just spent a painful year away. I am sitting at our kitchen table, wrapped in a blanket because this wonderful house doesn't actually have insulation. Our clanking furnace does it's best, and it is a noble effort indeed, but the parts of the house farthest from it remain chilly nonetheless. Oh well.

Like anyone, I'd love to say I'm a selfless saint and that the return to my lifestyle here is an easy adjustment. Granted, the small discomforts of the house are minimal--just getting used to small spaces and the need for blankets. It is the re-adjustment to the demands on time that are more difficult. I have just spent a year where my time off was, well....mine. Very few demands were placed on it, and I generally resented even those because I was so worn out from my job. Here, however, one must get used to knocks on the door at any time, requests for company or homework help or a grocery trip that are not conveniently organized around when you do and do not feel like it. Much to my chagrin, I feel the selfishness in me resisting, resenting...it is putting up a fight. Prayer and time and conscious choices are what will overcome the selfish one within me, the "old man" that the gospel calls me to trade for a new one, one created in the likeness of the Christ who gave and loved relentlessly and without regard for self-preservation.

I am often amazed when I think back over how the kids have grown--how our littlest one was just 4 when we moved in, and how she recently celebrated her 7th birthday. I am amazed to recall those first days, when most of our friends and family were skeptical, and when even we weren't sure if this experiment would last more than a few months. It has passed the 2 year mark now. What a gift.

Personally, I return with a dream. My year of advocacy for the homeless began to teach me that we really aren't too small to make changes or to have an effective voice. And so my long-lived hope of calling others into the life we are living here seems less far-off and impossible. Rather, I want to be taking small steps in that direction. The grand dream is to begin inviting recent grads to spend a year living in low-income settings and learning about the issues behind non-urban American poverty, and about God's heart for the poor in our back yard. Where to start? I pray for God's direction. And so here I am, writing from the place where I belong, asking that you, too, can pray for how God might have us raise our voices for those whom are seldom heard.