Grace and Grit

This season at the shelter has been quite full. We've had a house full of non-typical and difficult cases that have required more from me as a manager than I have ever experienced before. Challenge, although not often sought, is something that God uses to bring me to a place of more dependence on Him. This is definitely true for me this past year. I have transferred houses within the Sheepfold ministry and it has taken much longer to adjust than I thought it would. Every home has its idiosyncrasies so it's been fun and stretching adjusting to new families, coworkers, commute, neighborhood, etc. If I could sum up these past 8 months into a few words I would say: Change brings lots of opportunity to practice fully relying on God...not putting my trust or joy in a person, circumstances, or state of mind. I know this is a really short post and that it doesn't really contain any interesting or useful info. It was just time to start blogging again. God is good. He is showing ...

Ironically, a couple weeks after my last post " Goodbyes ," I experienced my most difficult goodbye yet. The grief knocked me off my feet and onto my knees crying out to God. My heart is still aching from it. Sometimes the process of letting go and allowing God to mend a broken heart can take awhile...especially because I have a tendency to work over the past in my mind as if I can change history. Silly Me. I don't really feel like relaying the events of the last goodbye. Maybe at a later date it will come up, but not yet. Forgive me? In the mean time I am re-reading my last post because I need the reminder that God is the mender of all things broken. A little while ago two of our moms made us a beautiful scrapbook that they filled with pictures of them and their children as well as notes of things they were grateful for. It is so precious to each of my fellow house managers, especially after an emotionally difficult week. I am going to share with you one of the note...

Confession: This post has been sitting as a draft for almost six months because I haven't had the emotional energy to dwell on this subject (goodbyes). Although I've known I wanted to tackle it for some time, I also wanted to write it from a peaceful frame of mind and it's taken awhile to get there. With the recent passing of The Sheepfold's founder, Fran Lundquist, I have been spending more time thinking of the thousands of women who must have walked through The Sheepfold's doors over the past 30+ years. Just in my short time working here I have known, loved, guided, served, and been blessed by at least 30 women and 50+ children. Some stayed just a few weeks, others months, and some even a year. That's just at my house, not including the hundreds of women I've met at the Sheepfold's other shelter houses and alumni gatherings. As I have written here before, domestic violence does not effect one demographic more than another. We have young women and ol...