Can I be honest?
Today, this week, has been hard.
We still do not yet have our own cottage of kids and are considered singles, which means that we are sometimes asked to fill-in, in cottages where we do not normally serve. This last week was just such an occasion.
We had a new class of trainees graduate (we are no longer the newbies!!) but one of them dropped out before training was over, so that means that they are still short staffed. So one of the new girls would have been in a cottage her first week on shift alone. They asked Cliff and I to take our four days off early, resulting in the freedom to work with this new girl in her cottage for four days before beginning our regular eight day shift.
(You got it, meaning that we will work 12 days in a row before we get another break!)
Cliff got sick with a bad case of food poisoning on the tail end of our days off which meant that I went in solo with the new girl in Cottage 5.
The new girl will eventually be living in C5 but at the time of my work there the former single for that cottage had not yet moved out. This meant that there was no place for us to stay, but since someone had to spend the night with the kids in the cottage and she was new and Cliff was sick, I was nominated to sleep on a pallet in the office all week.
Not ideal.
Technically this four days fell over what we call an OCV (Off Campus Visit) where the kids who can, get to go home to spend a few days with their families. But not every kid has this option for various reasons, so each cottage ends up with at least a few kids who stay. C5 had four boys who stayed during the 4th of July OCV. The boys really were very good and we had fun with them despite the awkwardness of my living arrangements for the week. And, funny as it seems, it was sort of a good thing to watch the new girl worrying over if she was doing things right and realize how far we have come in our confidence levels over these past two months.
Don't get me wrong, there were very great moments as I look back over the last week. Like the night we got to watch Jaws in the swimming pool, and the day I got paid to watch Jurassic World in 3D with the kids. And I did get some cute 4th of July pics of Bug.
But it was a hard week, too.
The boys, though they were good, were not very grateful for the things that we tried to do for them, like the movie outings and what not. And I mean, they are teenagers, so you don't really expect them to be, but its just hard when you take them to places to shop like Target, spending some of your own money on them, take them to the movies, to Chick fil A for lunch and Sonic after to get ice cream, leaving the house before 10 and not getting home until after 5, and then at the end of the day they complain that they are bored because they didn't really do anything fun all day!
I think it sort of felt like we were just running in circles and doing this dance for them all for no reason.
I had to remind myself, again, they are teens, and they are dealing privately with the fact that they didn't get to go home for OCV for whatever reason. But it still wears on you after awhile. Especially when you are sleeping alone, away from your baby boy and sick husband, curled up on a hard pallet in a cramped office.
To make matters worse ( if I'm going to complain here I suppose I will just get it all out, haha!) Mom and May were both on vacation together in north Georgia visiting with Ellis' family in the mountains where they don't get good cell reception. I know its stupid for a grown 35 year old woman to be complaining that she couldn't get in touch with her mommy and sister, but I have gotten so used to just having them there to text with whenever I want, and so this absence just added to my feelings of being alone.
I suppose I could have considered how these feelings and that situation mimic how the cottage kids undoubtedly feel at times. But in that moment I didn't seem to be able to make those connections. I just felt tired, and alone, and for the first time since coming here I really questioned if I had made the right decision in dragging my entire family out here to Texas in order to live in these conditions.
If I am truly honest, its beginning to wear on us a great deal. Even when we are all healthy and in the singles apartments where we do normally serve the accommodations are minimal to say the least. We have jokingly come to call our singles apartments our closets because they truly are about the size of the master suite, walk-in closet that I left behind in New Orleans.
I have begun to question if we have put our son through craziness in an attempt to help other kids. He is a precious little guy who has adjusted well to everything and has had a ball with all his new adventures, but I know its a very different life from the one he and I used to share in South Ms and Nola where we spent countless hours just the two of us together. My days and time are so divided. He often comes up in the midst of the storm when things are messy with some of the cottage kids or with busy schedules, and timidly says, "Hug a Bug" which means he wants to be held and loved. It breaks my heart and brings me back from wherever I have been in the whirlwind of juggling eight other kids. Cliff and I feel called to this kind of ministry for sure, but ultimately he is our priority and some days it feels like we get so caught up we miss that.
Cliff just came back in with a group of our older Cottage 11 boys who have been the rescue squad for a little girls cottage down the way. They had a bird's nest outside that a snake had gotten into and so Cliff led the troops into battle to save them. They had stories and pics and grins as wide as the horizon when they got back just now.
I guess sometimes its good to set out on an adventure, be it ever small or big, and to come back all the more brave, happy and some how better. And I guess, good days and bad, this is our story of our journey. Some moments will be hard. Sometimes there will be questions and even doubt.
But in the end we will definitely have a story to tell.
Prayer Requests:
Pray that we will soon get our own cottage if that be the Lord's will for us here.
Pray that in the meantime we will see and feel the impact that we are having.
Pray for our continued endurance in the less than ideal living arrangements.
Pray for Bug to feel our love and know that he is a priority.
Pray for all the kids we come into contact with that they may understand Christ's love because of our presence in their lives.
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