"...grief is upon me..." Jeremiah 8:18

1. Director has been called home. I don’t know all the details, only that my Beloved and Trusted Director, Boss, Father-figure, Pastor, Mentor, Friend was seen as a hindrance. And his and his family’s hearts are broken, and the students hearts are broken (especially my precious junior APs), and my heart is broken.
2. The group from Logan Church will probably NOT come to California this summer as originally planned. They feel no one is interested in them. No one will help host them or is eager to hear their songs of praise and their testimonies of what God has done and is doing.
3. Mizpah may not survive. Many of my students are planning on leaving or doing something else for schooling. As said before, probably 7 of Mizpah’s 10 teachers will be leaving.
4. I feel rejected. It would be hard leaving here this time around anyway because I knew I wasn’t coming back next year. It’s ten millions times worse leaving with everything so completely messed up. I cry and cry and cry and cry and cry and cry and cry. This has been the hardest year of my life for reasons that most of you will never ever know anything about. But if I have learned two things it is that God is far more gracious than we will ever know and that by that grace… I LOVE THESE PEOPLE. Yes, sometimes I wanted to ring some sophomore necks and other times I was completely disgusted at my junior boys' disrespect and disgusting jokes and sometimes I wanted to walk out of my senior classes and say, “Forget you. You don’t care anyway.” But what kept me here was God’s grace towards me and how I wish and long and pray for my students to know my gracious God and to realize their potential through Him and for Him and because of Him, the truly abundant life they can have – not necessarily of physical things but of everything that matters – using the gifts that God has given them to their full capacity, working hard for Him, praying and reading His Word because it’s how they can know Him more.

…I was listening to a song earlier. Here are the lyrics:

I will praise you, Lord my God/Even in my brokenness, I will praise You, Lord/I will praise you, Lord my God/Even in my desperation, I will praise You, Lord/I can’t understand all that you’ve allowed/Just can’t see the reason/But my life is in your hands/Though I cannot see, I choose to trust You//Even when my heart is torn, I will praise You, Lord/Even when I feel deserted, I will praise You, Lord/Even in the darkest valley, I will praise You, Lord/And when my world is shattered and it seems all hope is gone,Yet I will praise You, Lord

…

“Though the fig tree should not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines,
The produce of the olive fail
And the fields yield no food,
The flock be cut off from the fold
And there be no herd in the stalls,
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
He makes my feet like the deer’s;
He makes me tread on my high places.”
Habakkuk 3:17-19