BT

Tonight was BT night.  Every Monday night we have ISI kids over that want to have "BT" with us, which stands for Bible Time.  We've had a pretty consistent group of 4 boys and about 6 girls.  Tonight at dinner I sat by a boy who's a sophomore in high school.  He knows our situation with Karis, and tonight as we were eating our quesidillas, he looked me right in the eyes and asked, "so how are you doing with everything, like how are you really doing?" First of all, I was blown away that he had our situation on his radar, most sophomore boys in high school wouldn't.  Second of all, I was encouraged because this year Kory and I have challenged him to ask better, deeper questions that actually get somewhere, besides the typical "what's up?"/"nothing" conversation, and he was doing just that.  I told him how I had really been doing, and it was an awesome conversation.  As I was doing dishes later I thought to myself how cool it is when those you minister to, minister back to you.

At the same moment I was doing dishes and having that thought, there was a sweet freshman girl next to me talking and venting about her stress involving a situation that didn't seem super stressful on the scale of stressful things.  I was trying to listen but my thoughts were far from the venting.  It was this same way when the girls came over before Bible study.  They all came over talking about their grades, their boyfriends, and stress.  These are all things that cause legitimate stress, but I was finding it hard to fully enter in and be sympathetic when I was wondering if my daughter was going to survive or not.  I found it really hard to engage and be present with them, I felt disconnected.  But I realized that this is important because it's important to them.  So I asked questions as if it was the most important thing to me at that moment.  I helped them think through their situations that seemed like small potatoes to what I was staring in the face. I really entered in with them even though it was hard to.  I want to continue to step into their world even when they can't step into mine.  This is a type of "pouring out" that I feel like God is deeply connected to.  Jesus continued to pour out to his disciples when they could not understand what he was experiencing and when they were oblivious to what he was having to walk through.  He still cared for them.  He still valued what their issues were.  And I want to be that way for the kids.  Even though we are walking down such a hard path right now, I don't want to negate what they are going through and lose the opportunity to enter in with them.  It's wearing, but I believe it's worth it.