The Field Trip

It's been an exhausting few days. Since God spoke to me at Costco, I've finished grading, attended graduation, hosted a birthday party, attended a going away party, took the dog to the vet, adopted a rat, nursed Andrew through his first migrane headache, and accompanied the sixth graders on their big field trip to the science museum and state capital buiding. Life has gone on and I've had very little time to reflect, much less write about what has been happening. Whenever life gets this way, I get a little ragged around the edges (okay, a lot ragged), so I'm glad to be sitting at my desk today, alone in my office with a bit of time to process life.

But even in the craziness that I get to call my life, God has seen fit to inject some truth and encouragement into my life. Both of these came, from all places, the dreaded field trip. Now I love these sixth graders and I like the science museum. But by the time Monday rolled around, I was so exhausted that I felt like there was just no love inside of me to give. I needed affirmation in the worst way, but couldn't ask for . . . didn't really even know how to ask for it. I probably didn't even know in that moment just how much I really needed to hear an affirming word.

I was standing with the group of girls that I was chaperoning and trying to figure out how on earth I was going to keep track of them. I didn't know them, as my sixth grader is Jonathan . . . and Jonathan has not yet discovered the joy of spending time with girls. I know the boys in his grade, but the girls . . . well they are just as much a mystery to me as they are to Jonathan.

So, Jonathan was in a group with his best friend, whose mother was also along on the trip. I was standing just a bit behind Jonathan and got to overhear him say something that made my day . . . He said to his friend, "Yeah, I just know after today all these kids are going to come up to me and say how much they like my mom, how nice she is, and how fun she is to be with. Everytime kids meet her, they say that." I gasped silently and immediately had the energy to spend with these four delightful young ladies. Somehow hearing truth about myself enabled me to live it. A gift of grace, no doubt. God knew just how much I needed to hear those words in order to be present to the task of the day.

Then later in the day we were touring the capital. It is not the most interesting tour for the kids, and it was very difficult to hear our guide because the capital was so busy yesterday with it being the last day of the legislative meetings. So I was trying to help remind tired kids to be respectful, when I happened to look up and saw the following words written outside the doors to the Minnesota Supreme Court, "Laws can discover sin, but not remove it." The most beautiful thing about my discovery is that Jonathan was standing next to me as I jotted the words down in a book I had with me. He asked why I was writting in my book, and I got the opportunity to talk with him a little bit about how we were not created to deal with our sin and that all of our attempts to do so have been a dismal failure. We need a Savior to deal with our sin, both for the next life AND for this life.

My little family is just as prone to a legalistic way of life as I am. I so long for my children to be freed from the need to perform their way back into God's delight, and realize that they are already there. Their heavenly father delights in them, right now, today. I didn't expect that our trip to the state capital would give me an opportunity once again to share the message of grace with my son.

I am realizing that it is in the ordinaries, the dailies, where God speaks the loudest to me.