Don’t worry, I’m not going to do a blog about a rather tired old classic Christmas tune and how it has spoken to me about God. It just seemed an appropriate title for today’s blog.
Tomorrow, after our final Secret Agents club of the term, I will be making my way back up the A34…and I am SO excited about it!! I am so ready for a proper 2 week break; where I get to do no work; not have to go back early for a meeting; and really just spend time with all you lovely , lovely guys In MK.
So Tomorrow marks that I have been here in Weston a full term now. That is completely nuts!! It honestly seemed like yesterday that I moved down here, and this whole surreal, challenging, wonderful year began!! But it wasn’t yesterday, it was three and a half months ago…and the time has just gone like that (imagine me clicking my fingers here)!! But, I guess, in another way, So much has happened that it could almost be longer than three and a half months. Lots of people have said to me “oh, you’re so grown up now” and at first I couldn’t see it at all. But I was talking to my Pastoral Carer on Saturday and I have started to see that perhaps I have had to grow up quite a bit in my time here. Simply because I had to to survive in a place like this! I guess I have seen, first hand, a little of what my young people have to do. Put childish ways aside to be able to cope with the harsh reality of life on this estate.
I was thinking on Sunday about what can sum up this whole term. What has made this term a success? What has happened to make me want to come back in January? What has changed that has suddenly meant that I’m no longer feeling unfulfilled?
Cos while all those things are awesome, and I’m so glad that’s how I’m feeling now, I was confused as to if it was just a time thing. That being here three months is how long it takes for things to click and to properly fit in. Or if it something had actually happened to make things change.
And it hit me, on Sunday evening, that something really amazing had happened and I hadn’t even noticed….
If you cast your mind back to my blog about “the soul being healed by being with children”, I talked about a little girl in my year 3 class who had real anger issues and I went and talked to her when she’d legged it out of class. Well, since then, to my knowledge, Megan has carried on doing really well with controlling her temper and she has continued to be one of my favourite children to work with. Last Monday I told the class that it was the Secret Agents Christmas special on Saturday and that we really needed some more people to be in our nativity on Sunday too. Megan seemed interested, so I gave her all the details. However, working in Weston, you learn to take interest with a pinch of salt and expect no one to turn up even if they have been given all the details a hundred times!!
Megan did turn up on Saturday… she also turned up on Sunday.
She wasn’t already on our books, which means that in all the clubs we do she’d not been along to any. Apart from the termly assemblies we do in her school, the church had not yet made contact with her. Megan has now, not only, come along to one of our clubs and seen the fun that we have; but she has been to a church service….probably for the first time in her life.
I thank God that I felt inexplicably prompted to tell the kids about the weekends activities (having never made any announcements about what we were doing at WCYP in Year 3 before) because if I hadn’t said anything Megan wouldn’t have made that step forward.
It makes me want to grin like a mad thing, jump about a bit,cry and endlessly just say “thank you” to God all at the same time when I think about it. Because of what I said, a completely unchurched child has come on to our radar and what’s more, has come to church!!
Because of this. All because of one, wonderful 8 year old girl my term has been a success. I can say without a doubt that through God’s strength, relying entirely on him, I have made a difference here.
And I can not wait to come back and make two more terms worth of difference!!
Thank you, Lord. Thank you for the shining light moments, for the gems, for the moments where it is so obvious that you are here in this estate and working in the kid’s lives. I pray for more of your strength, Lord, fill me up entirely…cos I have seen that things CAN change through you!!!
Lex xx
Lexisms 