Why was it that every time I flipped through my pictures, I purposefully skipped all the breathtaking shots of our temporary home on the reserve where so much good had happened? Why didn't I want to browse through my memories of the children I had loved or the place where I had nurtured them?
It even hurts to write about that time in my life now. I made up my mind, several days ago, to look back on that time, and to write an honest blog, but but then I set it aside. It may be just too hard. Is it even worth the effort if I can't give you an upbeat ending? If I knew for sure that at least one of the children that I led to the Lord and mentored, was still walking in victory, it would seem worth it. But the problem is, I do not know.
It was pure joy at the time as we led them, one by one, into a walk with God. The classroom atmosphere in the Christian school started changing, and working with these children was just one blessing after another. I will admit that there were setbacks along the way, but the thrill of seeing our students growing in the Lord day by day made it all worth while.
I have memories of sitting at the lunch table with them, discussing their new found joy, and praying together for others who needed Christ. There were memories of finishing reading “Susie's Story” to them and then having two different students come to me privately and confess having told me a lie. Their new found consciences had been awakened, and I was thrilled to know that they had been listening and had responded.
There was the memory of a pair of sixteen year olds who already had a baby but were not allowed by their parents to marry. They had come to us for council, Bruce with the boy, and I with the girl. On the second or third session, I led the girl to the Lord, and at the same time, Bruce in another part of the house was leading the boy in the same direction. They were both thrilled that they had made the decisions independent of each other. I was walking on air as I watched all this happening.
I had a ladies Bible study, and I began to see results there as well. Their husbands were seeing a change in their wives and their marriages were mending. One man started coming back to church. It was all like a beautiful dream.
I should be dwelling a whole lot more on those precious times, but I can't, because with the happy memories, comes the sad ones. We needed to leave the reserve for a short while, and when we came back we discovered that Satan had been working overtime. He had gained a foothold in the school. We were devastated. Some of our most ardent new converts had been turned against us while we were gone, and once again, had become problems in the class. We were stunned.
A parent, the one that was largely responsible for the mess, demanded our resignation. The school board didn't want us to leave, but we only had a day or two before the ice roads closed. After that there would be no way to get any of our stuff out. We felt defeated, but at the same time, we felt the Lord was telling us it was time to go and he would send others to continue the work.
The school hired a brave young man to drive our car back over the melting ice roads, and we took the plane to Red Lake where we retrieved our car and headed, in defeat, back to Owen Sound. The Lord did provide us with one amazing miracle on the way home, (I write about it in my book, “The Path He Chose for Me”) and that helped us to ease the feeling of failure somewhat, but it was still hard.
What happened to the students? I don't know about most of them. I have heard from three. One sounded hungry for the Lord, but was not ready to commit himself. One was struggling after a murder happened in his family. He is still floundering after the Church family handled the situation badly; but the hardest to think about was a message I received on Facebook one day. It was filled with foul language and unbelievable hate. It was from the son of the mom who had demanded our resignation, a boy who had turned his life around while we were there. Now he seemed even worse than before.
I wrote back that I loved him, and I prayed for him and the others. That's all I could do. But then gradually I began to block it all from my mind. It just hurt too much.
I guess the problem with how I handled my hurt is that for the last few years I haven't been praying for those kids much at all, even though I thought I loved them so passionately. Lord forgive me for that! Is my love fickle? Is it right for me to retreat into my comfort zone, to escape the hurting memories?
Lord, help me pray through for those kids.
The Hugh Neelands Story (coming out in a few days) has had the same effect on Hugh. There are some segments of the story that he had a hard time telling, and he didn't enjoy hearing those parts of his life over and over as we went through the first, second and third drafts. It would have been much easier for both of us to entirely ignore the mistakes in his journey, and yet, in the end, he felt that the whole writing process had been a tremendous blessing to him.
I would love for you, the reader, to help me by weighing in on this question: Is it a good or a bad thing to block out scenes in your life that involve sad situations? I really don't know. Please tell me what you think?
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