Lessons from the kids

Because of my work with the daycare and my church's VBS program this week, I feel like my life is filled with kids. I've worked the last couple of mornings, so I wake up and bike to church to take care of children, and then VBS is at night, so three hours after I get home I find myself heading back to church again for the evening round of kids.

I'm not bad with kids. Really...even my VBS kids who have only known me a week still always turn to us teachers at the end of the evening and point to me and say, "I want to sit next to you!" The other teachers, mostly moms, chuckle at my popularity, but I sigh with my smile because I have always been the popular one and never been the actual safe, disciplinary teacher who commands respect and obedience.

This summer, however, I think God is rubbing the idea of obedience in my face. One of the reasons I decided to work with kids for the summer is because I knew that I wanted to be a better person than I was in Japan...that sounds silly. Not better, but older. More mature. More able to be responsible for others and to lead. I want to have a clearer definition of what is right and wrong and be able to communicate that without always just going with the flow of what feels right. Call it exercising a different part of my personality...anyway, this is what I've been wanting to learn.

I guess God has honored that desire to learn, because where better to learn about boundaries, respect, and obedience than with kids?! The first lesson I have learned is that boundaries are set before the problem occurs--not after someone gets hit in the eye with a stick or hit in the head with a ball. I don't tell the kids to walk nicely after someone gets a sprained ankle...I tell them beforehand, so they won't sprain their ankles. Or at least, I try. :)

But what caught me today was it really is all about listening. Obedience starts with listening. If the kids don't hear about the boundaries or rules being set, they don't know to follow them, and the injuries still happen.

It all makes me think about deeper things...like God and me, and how little I like obedience, and how little I even try to hear God's voice...Not that I have to sit and listen hard, because I know God has made me differently from that...but we all have our forms of listening and learning and aiming to be obedient.

Sigh. It's still coming out confusedly. Ok, so I'm learning about boundaries, but not about communication so much. :)

On a completely different note, tomorrow a person from my Japanese life is coming to visit my American life. I'd be lying if I wasn't nervous...The lessons make me feel like a different person...much harder...I say, "No! Don't do that!" an awful lot more now than I ever did in Japan...