Sufficient Grace

God has called me to a place where:

• I spend some days sitting in waiting rooms for hours so that children can recieve the medical or psychologocial care they have been without for too long.
• "Progress" may look like a youth yelling and screaming about the pain in her life...finally.
• Grocery shopping takes two Wal-Mart baskets, two hours, and well over two (sometimes three) hundred dollars.  That is for the week.
• I respond to alarms at 1:30am because she's afraid of the dark and is having bad dreams, but I can't just let her crawl into our bed and fall back asleep.
• A single ounce of pain from the life of a youth is heavier than all the pain in my life put together.  In some ways, I am younger than the girls here.
• I am a minority.  I don't usually like the music, I don't understand all the slang.  The way I relate is certainly new to most of the youth here.
• Getting to the core issue is harder than it used to be; there are so many layers.
• Telling them to pray isn't enough.  You have to teach them.  Telling them God loves them isn't even close to enough.  You have to show them.
• You never complete a task in one sitting.  My To-Do list is 3 pages long.
• I have to say "no" when I don't want to.  I have to give consequences even when its hard.  I have to enforce rules whether or not they are understood.
• Going to the store as a family is a stressful activity where I wish I could grow 10 more eyeballs, 4 more hands, and 3 more mouths.
• Almost EVERYthing is a new experience - either for the youth or for me.
• Faking being a morning person is sometimes necessary.
• Being positive about the person who may have abandoned, neglected, abused, or refused the youth in our care is a necessity.
• Attitudes and mistrust grow on trees.
• The unexpected is now the norm.  An uneventful day is eery. 

Yet, His GRACE is sufficient in all ways.