The beauty of journaling, with vulnerability, solidarity, and freedom. It´s so different to journal on paper than on a blog - open for the whole world to see and read, and judge - if they so desire.

I sit here in my "sala" hearing the wind blow strongly through the trees, birds chirping their songs loudly - almost competing with one another, cars driving by, and people talking in the distance. As I write with my blistered hands from picking weeds, sweeping, mopping, and stirring cement and mortar in the days past... I think of how I long to see my kids. I wish I could see them as they worship God. I dream of hearing why they are thankful today. I worry in wonder that my boy might be missing out on a lesson due to distractions, fear, pride, and anger. I stand in awe of a God that withholds so much Beauty, that still is able to break my leg and carry me on His shoulders when I started to go astray. I didn´t see it at first. I knew that I was breaking some rules - even if they were unsaid - but I wasn´t sure if I agreed with them in order to follow them.

I wasn´t the only person that didn´t understand - no one did. Nana Angelica, Yanez, Iliana (the new psychologist), Ana maria... more than them, the kids. Not a single kid understood. Some had so much anger they told me to buy a gun and kill them all. As if that wasn´t gory enough, they added that I could drag their bodies away in my car.

Yet, the leaders knew. The ones that God chose to be the leaders, they knew.

They might not have been right about everything, but they knew that God had to do work in me by myself while I spend time alone and with Him.

After reading the chapter on money in Blue Like Jazz, I was reminded that I needed to tithe. I have to say it is much easier to tithe when you get a paycheck every two weeks or two times a month. It´s much harder when you´re living off support and it comes in by the 100´s. Yet, I can be just like Don´s friend that puts his tithes in a jar and then gives it to the church when he goes. I don´t know why it seems stupid to give $10 today, $24 another day, and so on. I just know it does.

I have learned that even though I long to be a mom and to have my son live under my roof - with my rules, there are lots of other children that are longing for me. One girl, Alicia, wrote me a heart-wrenching letter of how she doesn´t know why they took her best friend away and how her heart left with me. Another, Marlin, who is a jr. in high school, spoke in reassurance that I need more time with the other kids and less with my son. She has been asking me if I can be her partner in class and has been longing for more time.

I am reminded how God is with me. He gives us gifts in His time, and in the same way, we must give gifts in His time as well - even if they are just peach yogurt or bananas. As Ecclessiastes 3 is so overly quoted, its truth still rings loudly - to everything there is a time, to everything a season.

May God continue to ring His truth loudly in my heart, my life (and yours) and may it be a beauty for the world to see.