So I'm going to be working with kids . . . shocker.

Yeah, I've found work! And, big shocker, I'll be working with kids and in education.

Starting Monday I'll be working at the Santa Barbara Charter School in the 2nd/3rd grade mixed class as an instructional assistant from 9am to 12 or 1pm and then in the afternoons I'll be an after-school instructor for Girls Inc., a non-profit offering programs designed to encourage girls to be 'strong, smart and bold.' Both jobs are working with one of my favorite age groups and have what I anticipate will be very creative and encouraging environments. Both are located here in Goleta and aren't more than a 15 minute drive, which is nice since my car is still running a little rough despite the $225 air-filter I had changed last week. That's pretty much all the diagnosis came up with. I don't really buy it but the check-engine light is off and I have the car back now (so I guess technically I DID 'buy' it) and it has been quite liberating being able to scat about willy-nilly as whim and responsibility require.

I spent about 3 hours washing, waxing and detailing it on Sunday. After the cross-country drive, the ash from the Zaka fire (which is still falling) and it's time "downtown" in the hands of strangers, I figured it needed a little TLC. But so did I, and since I'm mildly OCD ;) when it comes to cleanliness, it was a meditatively therapeutic afternoon for me as well.

"But why," you may ask, "would you need three hours of meditative vehicular cleansing therapy after only three weeks?" Because, my dear friends, last week I came to the end of my natural capacity for extroversion, and the strain was beginning to show.

The thing is I hadn't wanted to say ‘no’ and close doors so the whole time it’s been: “Yes, let’s have coffee . . . Yes, I’ll go to the prayer meeting . . . Yes, I’ll go run errands . . . Pick you up from work? Okay . . . Hiking? Great . . . Ballroom dancing? Sure . . . Dumpster diving? Why not?” But I felt like I was all over the place and never alone and I started to lose my patience without knowing exactly why. I quickly realized how much I need the Lord to show me how to be strategic with my time and energy . . . it disappears so quickly when I’m investing a little bit at a time here and there just according to what opportunities pop up.

This week has been much better. I’m getting up early for quiet time and taking moments or hours (when I can find them) throughout the day to connect with the Lord, sit with him and chat, read the word, sing with him. I'm also scheduling time with people one-on-one and letting people know when I need to be alone more often.

Still, as I sit writing nearly a dozen people have congregated in the living room for no particular reason at all, except to simply be together, and that when we have already been meeting tonight by apartments and then as a whole house for the last 4 hours. Leslie is baking cookies for the whole group from dough my roommate Tiffany prepared last week. Tiffany went to pastry chef school but for some reason hates baking. Nevertheless, she can sometimes be coerced into grand dessert-making extravaganzas and last week she prepared $120 worth of cookie dough. It is rolled into tubes, labeled with cooking directions and sitting in our refrigerator in a large brown grocery bag.

"Cookies in the mornin', cookies in the evenin', cookies at supper time!"

I'm going to try not to gain a hundred pounds this month.

"You should come hang out," Leslie says, popping her head in the door. I hear Tommy playing guitar, or then again it might be Jon. Both are extraordinarily talented and lead us fearlessly into worship but never in meetings and never at church, only at odd moments like this in the living room or in the prayer shed or at the beach or . . . you can't anticipate when the Spirit will fall, but sometimes you're lucky enough to be there. So I think I'll sign off now. I could go to bed but I think I'll head into the living room for a while instead.

"And with outstreched arms, I will sing your melody, and my beating heart will cry out a symphony. Hallelujah's in the morning. Hallelujah's in the night. I will wait for you, as long as I have life." -Phil Wickham