On Being Different

This week I created something very childlike: a paper chain to count down the days to the last day of school. 

I admit that even while doing it I knew it was sort of silly.

Yet, I am looking forward to the end of this chapter with glee and longing. 26 days until I will have fulfilled the requirements of my Montessori training. At that point I will be on my own trying to continue the discernment process for the next step in this crazy life of mine.

I look backward at the discernment that led me to this point. Here and here you can read about the very beginning thoughts. Boy, am I glad I've kept this blog. It really helps me see the road I'm traveling. 

I'm a list maker and a thinker and a doer. My lists of late have focused on my options for "employment." I put that word in quotes because I really want to do God's will for my life. To put aside the things of this world (including that crazy thing we call income and retirement planning) to focus on bringing the love of Christ into the everyday life of children and their families. 

Every little step I try to take seems so outside the norm of our world.

"No one who sets his hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God." Luke 9:62

"For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be." Luke 12:34

I have been struggling. Struggling to figure out how to reconcile my duty as a wife and mother with that of a disciple. To live in this world while striving for the next.

I have finally come to the conclusion that all the trials and struggles of this world will fall away when we get to the next. If we love as Christ loved and work to expand His love into all the world, the struggles will come to fruition in the perfection of Heaven.

So I strive to be different. Frankly, I relish my difference for once. To be misunderstood by the world and most of those within it. That is how I will know I'm on the path of righteousness. Yet I struggle. 

But within my struggle ("Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.") I have trust and faith and hope. Trust and faith and hope that the Lord will continue to guide me on this path. That He will show me the way to go. So I am listening and waiting and watching. 

Oh, and studying and learning.

Lead me on, Lord.