Skip to main content

This Week


This week, I let a kindergarten kid play with my iPhone to coax him into the tutoring classroom.  I set up a plan for dealing with this ongoing issue and consulted with his mama.  She’s a tough one to get to know, his mama, but I try.

This week, I promised two little boys I would pick them up on Friday and take them to my house.

This week, on a crazy afternoon, a granny asked me for alcohol and I thought.  I wish!  I could use a swig.  But that's not what she meant.  She was looking for rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide to take care of an injured kid.  A few months ago, we were awkward because we didn't know each other but now the awkwardness is gone and I can’t help but hug her every time I see her. I love that granny. 

This week, I dropped off a little girl and shook hands with her father.  His hand was dry, he had a tattoo on his neck and he's just fresh from jail.  He asked how his daughter was doing in class and they both basked in the rain of praise.

This week, a first grade child sulked and balked and rolled her eyes.  I scolded and cajoled and got nowhere.  I dropped her off at home and shared the day’s report with her granny. (Another granny.)  Granny took my hands and leaned in.  “Her cousin died in a fire this morning.” (Note to self: There’s ALWAYS a reason when a kid drives you crazy!)

This week, I was twenty minutes late to pick up the two little boys.  They were waiting expectantly in the yard with their eleven-year-old sister who was hoping to come too.  The car was packed with my kids and company kids and there was no way to shoehorn one more child in.  Disappointed, she couldn't look me in the eye.  I could see her in my rear view mirror as I drove away, still standing in the yard.

This week, I made plans to pick up an eleven-year-old girl on Saturday. 

This week, I held a preschooler in my lap in time-out, three times in sixty minutes. We were armed with dolls and a timer to get us through.  We practiced, I’m sorry for punching and then, I’m sorry for throwing and  finally, I'm sorry for stealing and all three times, I forgive you. 

This week, my husband drove the preschooler home an hour early for throwing bread for a second time the full length of our dining room table. 

This week, I dropped off a two-year-old three houses down from yellow Police Line Do Not Cross tape strung across his street.  Three hours before, there was no tape.

This week, there was a sixteen-year-old  with a gunshot wound trundled into the back of an ambulance.  The reason for the tape.
  
I went to a city-wide safety meeting a few weeks ago to discuss this wave of gang violence that is sweeping across Chattanooga and mingled with people in business suits.  They pulled business cards from their pockets. I wore my yoga pants without pockets so I had an excuse for not trading my Just a Mom card for their Head of Parks and Rec, Professor, Researcher, and Upper Management Police Dude cards. Lots of ideas were brought to the table from vocational training for teens to more staffing for community services. Good ideas.  But I am learning that the Mom card counts.   There is much work to do here.  I thought it would be hard but it is not.  It’s overwhelming maybe but not hard. It turns out that parenting skills and a bit of love go a long way.  All over the city, there are people who see these issues as their responsibility.  And wouldn't it be an awesome, if Chattanooga was not known as a city with  gang and violence and crime problems but as a city with a redemption story?  It could easily happen if hundreds of whole and healthy people across the county breathed hope and righteousness and discipline into a few fragile lives by doing things that are no harder than what I did in five hours this week.
Labels:

Comments

Jennifer Jo said…
This is so true. And beautiful.

The Mom Card packs a punch.
April 6, 2013 at 1:15 PM
Xandra@Heart-of-Service said…
It's so good to hear your voice again, so to speak. I hope that this is the beginning of more to come!

Xandra
April 7, 2013 at 5:21 PM
Amy said…
WOW!!!

That is all.
April 9, 2013 at 11:58 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

4-H Exhibits-Updated

Update: Blue ribbons all around! 4 of our projects will go onto the state fair. John's headboard exceeds size limitations and so we will lug it home tomorrow. We are relieved. That thing is heavy! ************* For the past few weeks we have been busy sewing, sawing, quilling and painting 4-H projects. The kids have been in 4-H for about a month and they started with a bang. The annual 4-H fair is tomorrow. So this morning we loaded these projects and four kids wearing slippers into the car. The fifth one had sense enough to wear flip-flops. (The other four complained as we pulled out of the driveway that their feet were sweating.) John reclining against the headboard that he built with Stuart. He wrote the 10 Commandments of Table Saw Safety to accompany this project. Claire's quilling project. Lauren modeling the apron that she sewed. Lauren and the dog painting she has been working on in art class for the past few months. Faith and her quilling project. So now...
27 comments
Read more

Finding Rest: Part Two (Scroll down three posts to read this story from the beginning)

Why share such a personal story ? I share it because I have talked to enough women to know that underneath the makeup and the matching outfits and the small talk that make up our exteriors, we are a broken people. To pretend otherwise creates isolation. Thoughtful honesty creates closer relationships and greater understanding. When we share the way God works in the difficult things of life it encourages first oneself and then others. For some of us, the pieces have been patched and restored and there is wholeness where there was none before. But some of us are walking wounded, barely hanging on and wondering if there is hope. We have a choice. We can either be completely shattered by bitterness, depression and anger or we can lay the fragments before the One who can take the sharp slivers and jagged pieces and create a beautiful, productive life. Here is the conclusion to John's story. When John was ten, he was sullen and moody and difficult and so was I. But I was no longer proud....
28 comments
Read more

Aviary Amphitheater (Wordless? Wednesday)

We're slow starters in the morning. The children lie on the sofas and read. Charlie sits and eats a graham cracker and a bowl of yogurt at the table before breakfast. Lauren and I take turn cooking oatmeal, or muffins, or scones... We eat somewhere between ten and eleven. Today, in the midst of all this leisure, the house became exceptionally quiet and I went to figure out why because "too quiet" is never a good thing. Except that it was today. I peeked out the living room window into the backyard and found five chairs and five children lined up on the patio. I opened the door and everybody shushed me. "Hush, Mama. We're watching the birds. Come sit with us" Six or seven hummingbirds were zipping around the feeder, frantic to fill their little gas tanks before they migrate. The children were silent, heads tipped up, eyes squinting against the morning light. I went in to get the camera. I took a few pictures of the children but could not capture the hyperacti...
22 comments
Read more