A Week of Wind Changes the Landscape

The views as I drive along Gooch Hill Road are so stunning all of the time. This week, they offered an opportunity to catch just a glimps of the wind - see the haze of flying snow close to the ground. This has been a week characterized by wind and drifting snow, and it has had a profound impact on us.

We've spent time plowing driveways that were covered with drifts, although barely a flake has flown through the sky. The roads have been covered with drifts, taking them down to single lane in many areas near our home. The county plow has been busy, clearing the drifts, and creating high berms along the road. For us, that meant the knocking down of much of our front fence and the resulting escape of both of our dogs. That made for an emotional afternoon as Jansse panicked, Andy and a neighbor searched, and we all celebrated to see them come running across a neighbor's field just before sunset. For Andy it also meant hours of digging, plowing, and using the snow blower to attempt to make the fence adequate to contain the dogs. We have to dig out the gate almost daily, which is a bit of an oddity as the snow piles up there, while the lawns become free of snow at all in some areas. The landscape here is unpredictable at this time, to say the least!

The winds have also blown in other ways. It brought in a cold/illness for Jansse, leaving him home from school one day this week. It brought a birthday celebration characterized by children's laughter and a fun book exchange. It brought a visit with Grandma and Grandpa and cousins. It brought some career opportunities we never thought of. It brought an opportunity to participate in a scrapbooking contest, but also the questions of "Am I good enough?" and "Is it conceit to think that I even have a chance?" It brought emotionally heavy cases for Andy, which are such a complement to Andy's skills, but also such a burden as he is more and more involved with dealing with people who have found a home in the darker and more depraved side of life than what we have come to call home.

Most of all, the wind brought with it an unsettledness with our house guest. As mentioned some posts before this one, we have an interesting guest. It was a given when he moved in that he has been damaged by life, hurt and oppressed, and thrown into a life of anger and inmaturity in ways that can just break your heart. It was/is also a given that he brings anxt and caios with him into our household that bubbles just below the surface, but is always present and always threatening to explode. And that anxt is more and more apparent on a daily basis. Nothing too horrible so far, but everything foreshadowing such ugliness as we have never known before. The annoying and disturbing incidents that are like the tip of an aggressive and angry iceberg sticking out in the north seas weigh heavily on us.

He's stretching us, challenging us, and we are in a position of praying without ceasing for God's wisdom in how to handle so many complicated and difficult issues. How do we balance the needs of a human being beloved by God but carrying so much danger to the world with the need of a simple little family of three who are so blessed to be free of so much pain yet wanting to answer Jesus' call to care for the downtrodden? How do we justify exposing our beautiful son to some of the danger of an individual who has been so damaged? But then, how do we justify sending our guest away because of what he might do, but has not yet done? We have and continue to feel so guided by God in this. But we also sense that God does not want us to just continue for the sake of continuing.

Our guest does not want to leave - why should he abandon free shelter and food and transportation to and from school? Why should he look for a job when his basic needs are met without one. Why should he jeapordize his high school graduation by taking on the enourmous task of being responsible for himself? But those questions are juxtiposed to questions like: Is it right for us to allow him to think that free-loading off of others is a legitimate way to get through life? Is it right for us to see major emotional and psychological issues that need to be addressed in order to make him a productive and responsible adult, and not to address them? Is it right for us to allow him to run roughshod over other people in his life and not call him to task for the damage he does? Can we, in good conscious just sit back and let him remain in his damaged state just because the insistance that he participate in healing activities will likely drive him away? Or, hardest of all, how do we deal with hearts that want to help if we can, but that also quietly hope that one of our offers of help will be the last straw that he uses as an excuse to become angry and storm out of our lives as quickly as he came in?

So, those are the storms-a-brewin' here. Want to trade?