Life always seems to move in cycles here. I’ll be celebrating some good steps forward by one of the guys, just in time to see someone else fall flat on their face…sometimes it’ll even be the guy who just took the good steps forward.

So we deal with those difficult moments, and then celebrate again when positive things happen. Always moments of celebration and thanksgiving…followed by difficulty and frustration…followed once again by celebration. In the difficult times I remember that good things will happen again…and when good things are happening, it’s helpful to remember that no one is perfect and bad choices will once again be made.

I try my best to remain level headed and balanced. Joyful when life is good, and the guys under my care are making wise choices…but not too frustrated when life is a struggle and I want to smack someone upside the head. Some days I succeed better at that, than others.  Although…I have yet to smack anyone upside the head.  =)

At any rate, yesterday was just such a day. I felt like I had a checklist of conversations I needed to have. “One down, three to go…” “Two down, two to go…”, etc. Right now I’m sitting at three down, and just one to go. The first three conversations went well I think. As a result of some of the choices these guys have made in the past, they’re dealing with some fairly serious consequences in their lives. It can get complicated sometimes. Especially when I’m attempting to share advice and counsel in a language that is still a bit mystifying to me most days. But I certainly felt God’s guidance in the conversations, and I think we made some good headway.

But this last conversation I need to have is a difficult one. It’s one of those situations where we were just celebrating how well this guy was doing…and now there’s a potential issue to be dealt with. Possibly a big one. I don’t want to be too cryptic, but it’s one of those situations where someone is lying, wether it’s my guy or someone else. Either way it’s not going to be an easy route to navigate.

I certainly need wisdom and a sense of God’s leading. Feel free to pray about that. I’m trying to be sensitive to God’s timing on this, and approach the topic in the right moment. Sometimes I’m good at that…other times not so much. Usually when I go blasting in on my own…that’s when things get dicey.

Please continue to pray for us here. Some days it’s easy to celebrate and be joyful. Other days the spiritual battle rages. The line drawn in John 10:10 is never more obvious than it is down here.

But God is good, and even though we experience our ups and downs…there are always more up moments. I can see that, where the guys are now is better than where they were a year ago. And that’s encouraging.

Well…to end on a funny note…the vegetables wars have begun in our house. I’ve been trying to get the guys to eat more vegetables. It’s an attempt to balance the fact that the guys fry everything. So I bought some green beans the other day and told one of the guys to add them to whatever he was cooking. Somehow I don’t think three beans chopped into microscopic pieces and added to the pasta counts.

So then I made a stir fry that actually had more than two vegetables in it. One of the guys was really struggling to make his way through the broccoli and cauliflower. I told him that maybe his brain was saying no, but his body was thanking him. Yesterday the guys made soya juice…juice made from soya…one of the foulest concoctions ever created. I was in the process of “politely” refusing, when that same guy plopped a glass down in front of me and told me that maybe my brain was saying no, but that my body would thank me later.

I hate it when my advice comes back to bite me..

Umm…so yea….don’t ask me if I drank it.  I’d hate to ruin whatever good opinions you might have of me.