Happy (Disgustingly Belated) New Year!

I have discovered something about blogging...it's very much like the diary  that you swear to yourself that you'll keep religiously as a kid after just reading Little Women or an American Girl book (Tom Sawyer never kept one I promise).  You have a super dedicated stretch of awesome meaningful entries wherin you name your super cute journal and write all about how annoying your brothers are...and then after roughly 2 weeks you get distracted by life until inevitably a year goes by and you once again rediscover your "beloved" diary sitting under an old report card covered in a layer of dust.  This reinvigorates your love of diaries and you're off again to repeat the cycle.

Now here I am after a stupendous (and incredibly busy) December and an equally whirlwindesque January coming back to my beloved blog and discovering to my horror how inexcusably abandoned the poor little guy has been.  My profuse apologies must be offered and now as I gasp for breath after the past two months of sprinting I once again solemnly swear to uphold the sacred cycle of blog updating.  Not so much for myself but for all of you who are reading and praying for me.

The hard part is deciding where on earth to begin after missing two solid months of updates (well...2 months and two days but throw me a bone here).  Do I talk about our 5th grade theatrical debute in Christmas Chapel featuring the 10 plagues of Egypt, Isaiah, the Nativity, and the Boom-de-yada song?  Eh...pass...

Do I share about saying goodbye to Vienna for a few weeks on December 22nd to fly home for Christmas? If I did I could talk all about seeing my former Open Door elementary students perform a sneak preview of Aladdin, tea with some amazing girls, being treated to lunch by dear friends and students, opening presents with my family, mourning the death of my cousin's unborn child, ringing in the New Year, apartment visiting....oh dear...that topic is beyond overwhelming.  Let's just condense those whole two weeks into the above paragraph and summarize with the following statement:  Being home was amazing, two weeks is an incredibly short amount of time, and I can't wait to stop back in during the summer to see everyone that I couldn't see this time.  There.  Sorted.  Now back to Vienna...

Fast forward to January.  Said goodbye to my first student who went back to South Korea.  Realized just how heartbreaking life is when you are living in an international community.  Thought about writing some dark poetry about it.  Instead began a poetry unit with my 5th graders.  Turned them into "The Wreck of the Hesperus" fans.  Yay!  Accidently also turned them into Edgar Allan Poe fans...oops...

Okay so what do I really want to take a minute and focus on?  I think it'll be something that James (our school superintendent and my pastor here in Vienna)  brought up in church this past Sunday.  Well okay he brought it up and my mind kind of just ran with it.  As many of you know I'm a somewhat absurdly huge Chronicles of Narnia fan, so I appreciated when he brought in an illustration from the book "The Horse and His Boy".  James was talking about how sharing the gospel with others is so crucial to the faith but that everyone has their own journey to God and that one of our toughest jobs is to know how to play our part in their story and to be sensitive to where they are at.  He used Shasta's conversation with Aslan as an example.

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Shasta is the main character in the book and he has had a rather rough journey to Narnia throughout the story, constantly prodded along and herded by a seemingly vicious lion as he and his friend Avaris travel.  At this point in the story it is revealed that the lion has been Aslan, the Christ figure in the books, the whole time.  Aslan had been engineering all of the seeming misfortunes in the book to guide Shasta to the plan that Aslan had for him the whole time.  This revelation and the good work that Aslan had worked in Shasta changed his life.  After the conversation however, Shasta turned to Aslan and asked him why Aslan had scratched his friend Avaris, making it so that she could not be with him on this stage of the journey.  Aslan turns to Shasta and explains, "My son, I am telling you your story, not hers.  I never tell anyone a story other than their own."  He later tells Avaris the same when she asks what became of someone whom she'd hurt.

We're all on a journey.  We all have a story.  God is working in all of our lives in magnificent ways weaving our lives into a beautiful tapestry wherein he uses our strengths, hardships, fears, triumphs, failures, hopes, and despair for his glory.  We don't always know why God is working our lives in the way that he is, and why our stories are so different than our neighbors.  But what God promises is that he will work all things together for the good of those that love him and are called according to his purpose.

My call and ministry in this season in my life is to be here, in Vienna, a part of the story of the children and their families that I am so blessed as to encounter.  Please pray that in this new year I would remain sensitive to God's timing in their lives, the doors he is opening, and the way that he is allowing me to enter their stories.  Pray for financial security for the school so that this ministry can continue, for sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, and for energy and life.  Pray that I and all of the rest of us here are continuously reassured by God of His call and direction in our life especially in the hardest times much as Shasta was reassured by Aslan.  And help pray for wisdom to know what to say and how to say it to students and parents as the need arises.  I will be praying the same for you all in your journey!

Love,

Amy