Up ridiculously early today - not on purpose. After a while, I give up, come downstairs, have my coffee, read the news, workout and today I'll write and read, all well before there is movement upstairs.
Yesterday was a great day. There are so many ups and downs in life that is nice to write about just the "ups" sometimes. First of all, I cannot say enough how impressed I am with my nearly 18 year old daughter. This is such a shout out to the power of God as I honestly wasn't sure how things were going to go with her once she started college - would she do well? would it be a struggle? I didn't know. This girl had some pretty serious health struggles for a loooong time which left her feeling awful and really unable to do school most days. She would attempt, but always fell behind. I knew she was a great writer though and very mature her whole life, so I knew once we could get her health back on track, which we did by God's grace, she could pick up the pace and hopefully be ok.
So that's what we did. She got healthy and went at it at school, graduated last year and now is in her first year of business at Niagara College. She is excelling and has become a peer tutor for 3 of her classes! Yesterday she had her first tutoring session. She was so nervous, so I prayed for her while she was upstairs online with the student. It went so well! She met this other student through the college and was able to easily help her with her struggles. It turns out she is from Mexico and really doesn't understand the retail world up in Canada so the assignments made no sense to her. After it was finished the girl asked if my daughter was Catholic or a Christian as she follows her on instagram and noticed all the posts she made were related to church or worship nights, etc. She is Catholic and is looking for a church, so my daughter immediately invited her to our church! It was such a neat moment!
As soon as she got off the computer she saw a message from my son-in-law-to-be asking the young adults if anyone wanted some extra cash by doing janitorial work for the church - she immediately responded yes and then came downstairs to tell me about it. My next immediate thought was to see if my 15 year old son could help out with her. So she asked and hopefully this will work out. Now, once again, this might not seem like a big deal - BUT IT IS. My 15 year old has been watching how all his older siblings are making money, even his younger 13 year old sister who now babysits every day, and he is broke. He would apply for work except covid has knocked all his social confidence out of him and he isn't sure that he would feel comfortable in an environment that is new. Even so, we are always hesitant with part-time work because of negative influences, etc. so what else could I do, but pray, and on Friday I prayed and prayed for him. My daughter has also been praying for work that is "safe" and was given this AMAZING opportunity, literally from heaven, to sanitize an office near us twice a week - so many opportunities literally dropped into my kids' laps. But the office sanitizing job wasn't enough money for her so to get this other janitorial job might be just the thing. AND if it works out that my son can go with her, it solves all my concerns about putting him in a safe place, literally a church, with my daughter (kind of fun to work with a sibling), plus I don't have to drive as she now has her license (another miracle), it's only part time so won't impact his or her schooling - I just couldn't believe it. So I pray this will work out.
And that was all before noon. Meanwhile, I was supposed to be getting together with a few young moms for the Bible Study I hold with them. It has been so inconsistent because so many viruses have been going around week after week. So we had to cancel again yesterday. I got a text from one of the moms who seemed unusually upset about her day and how she has been struggling with homeschooling and life. I thought I should probably try to reach out to her to see her in person, but then I thought, no I'll just call her. I had barely dialed her number when she answered the phone crying. The poor woman! I was so glad I called! It turned out to be one of those pep talks to pick her up that was apparently just what she needed. I praised God for the timing.
After this I went home to prep for dinner - for the first time in months we were having multiple families over for a Taco Tuesday meal. I wasn't prepared how great it felt to be with others again. We've had family over and individuals, but not large groups and it was awesome. At the end of the night, we all just sat together and talked about how wonderful it was. That was when my oldest son shared a really neat thing he had read. He is in the middle of the longest waiting game of his life so far - waiting for rejection from all the medical schools he's applied to. I wish I could write "acceptance", but he just feels so hopeless at times as the stats are against him. However, I always encourage him to stay hope-Full. So this week when he was feeling so down again, I just told him to keep surrendering, to keep praying, to attempt a fast, to trust God, to cry out to Him.....I saw him head down with the "giving up" look and just committed to him to prayer all day yesterday. God showed up, as He always does, in such a neat way. Without me knowing. my son did cry out, he did pray, he got into the Word -he'd been reading in Esther - and he came to this passage where Esther didn't know what to do as she and her people were going to be killed. After fasting, she summoned up her nerve to stand before the king, trusting the he would not kill her because she hadn't been asked to come see him - this was against the law. At that point the king held out his royal scepter and she was allowed access to his inner court. My son, too, had fasted that day, and when he read this he felt like it was a direct encouragement to him. Not unlike Esther, he, too, is outside the inner court of medical schools. He feels as hopeless as she did that he can do anything to get in. Yet, he has done all he can do to be faithful to what he's been shown to do and his prayer became yesterday that God would extend the royal scepter to him just as it was to Esther - "And when the king saw Queen Esther standing in the court, she won favor in his sight, and he held out to Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand." I actually found that so powerful. I was so encouraged for him as he felt like that was just for him. How I pray he will be accepted and not rejected.
All of this - in just one day.
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