Tuesday, September 30, 2008

"Miracles" or "Brought Into Breathing"

I think that this year is the year that God said, "Genevieve, your priorities have gone wonky. You need to wake up." Then he woke me up. It was a painful rousing, like a child emerging from the womb terrified and crying and being slapped into breath, but I looked around and saw a completely different world. It was like I'd been blind for the last 20 years.

The minister at my church has taken in two children who have nowhere else to go. They both have special needs, and he has asked me to help him take care of them this week. To see this man step into their lives and take them in when he by no means has to, but just out of the goodness in him, is uplifting. And today I saw two kids who are fun and laugh all the time, and do their work and love to show off everything that they love. They dance and laugh and ask a million questions, and are always smiling.

Before this year, my priorities consisted of:
1. boyfriend
2. boyfriend
3. school
4. boyfriend
5. money
6. friends
7. family
8. art
9. being as childish and cute as I could manage
10. African charity

After everything this year, some things have shifted. And despite still being the same girl, things have certainly changed. When I broke up with my one true love this year, I told him that my priorities had changed and that was true. That sort of love fell off the list and I had a new set of rules:

1. Family
2. Children
3. Love
4. Quiet
5. Prayer
6. Belief
7. Taking care of each other
8. Appreciating every single thing in the world
9. School
10. Dreams

I have been very stressed with working for the Obama campaign, doing what is required of me for Apwonjo, keeping my grades up through the struggles, and my to-do list keeps going on page after page. And last night when helping taking care of these kids was added to the list, I felt overwhelmed and unable to take it. I stayed up too late and drank a little too much and had a headache in the morning and thought that maybe I was going to stay in bed all day and ignore everything I felt that was required of me.

But it was too pretty outside.

I'm still pretty worried about the economy, though.

<3gen

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