I Want Out…

Have you ever felt the urge to get out of a touchy situation or a difficult to read room? I know I have felt the need to get out. The desire to escape. As I’ve talked about before on recent posts, I teach special needs children. We lock our doors on the inside and on the outside to ensure our children do not escape our care.

At first I didn’t even know how to escape my own classroom until the sweet teacher next door taught me how the child lock worked! Special education is definitely a team approach. I have a sweet assistant named Mrs. J. She is precious and has done this type of job for decades. She homeschooled her own children and then went to work in special education. She has worked as an assistant for enough time to be wiser than I am! I am grateful God placed her into my life and into my classroom.

We have one especially difficult student. B, oh sweet but challenging B. He is a hurricane of a kid. He comes in quietly but usually ends the day with a flourish of feelings and physical behaviors. I love him, but he also has me wanting out of the room sometimes! We take breaks for sure, but we still have to be with him most of the day and make sure he and others are safe.

Have you ever wanted out? Did you want to escape? Did God provide a way for that?

God gave me a mixed blessing this week. The little B boy was sick with a strange virus that dropped your temperature to 96 degrees with cold chills/fever. Then the feelings passed within 12 hours. With fatigue remaining. I loved on this little boy on Tuesday at school with these symptoms. And of course that evening I had the same requiring me to escape a day of work! LOL!

I felt like a million bucks come Thursday (yesterday). I was so grateful for a chance to escape my daily routine in favor of much needed rest, a chance to read many books and finish 1 of the 5 I have going. I had the chance to escape the many directions that my usual days pull me into. God gave me a way to escape the everyday in favor of calm. In favor of rest. I’m grateful.

Dear God,

YOU are our escape sometimes. Forgive us when we don’t run to YOU first. Give us hearts that seek you and YOUR word. Thank you for the ways you keep us safe with NO escape, and the ways you do allow us to escape in out ways. We love you.

Always,

Jennifer

p.s. Below is a chapter of God’s Word that I’m reading everyday in September thanks to an Instagram challenge from another Christian author: @amyelainewrites…read on…it’s GOOD stuff…

Psalm 139 The Message

139 ^1-6 God, investigate my life;
    get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
    even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
    I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
    before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
    then up ahead and you’re there, too—
    your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
    I can’t take it all in!

^7-12 Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
    to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you’re there!
    If I go underground, you’re there!
If I flew on morning’s wings
    to the far western horizon,
You’d find me in a minute—
    you’re already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, “Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
    At night I’m immersed in the light!”
It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you;
    night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you.

^13-16 Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
    you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
    Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
    I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
    you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
    how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
    all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
    before I’d even lived one day.

^17-22 Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful!
    God, I’ll never comprehend them!
I couldn’t even begin to count them—
    any more than I could count the sand of the sea.
Oh, let me rise in the morning and live always with you!
    And please, God, do away with wickedness for good!
And you murderers—out of here!—
    all the men and women who belittle you, God,
    infatuated with cheap god-imitations.
See how I hate those who hate you, God,
    see how I loathe all this godless arrogance;
I hate it with pure, unadulterated hatred.
    Your enemies are my enemies!

^23-24 Investigate my life, O God,
    find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
    get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—
    then guide me on the road to eternal life.