day 190: same kind of different as me

One might think that an English teacher would read a book a day.

She could.

She occasionally and selfishly does.

However, she's also quite busy.

Sometimes it's sad how long it actually does take her to get through a book.

That is a book for fun, enjoyment, not one with a due date and lesson plans attached to it.

This book has been around me for a while.

My mom and sister read it in their book club and told me about it. Probably years ago.

I filed it away on that unwritten and always growing list of books for me to sometime read. Sometime.

This spring, I bought it. A student had given me a Barnes & Noble gift card, enough to cover one other book I really wanted and just had to have. But there was a little left on the gift card, and on my way to the check out, I spotted this. It rang a bell. Then it ended up in my hand, next to the other book.

It sat on a night stand for months. In good company, next to a slew of other books that will one day, sometime soon, be picked up again and devoured.

Finally, Memorial Day weekend. I cracked that sucker open.

And sadly, just a week ago, I finished it.

NOT to say that it was a slow read. NOT to say that it wasn't the best book I've possibly ever read (more on that in a sec). Simply to say that if you're at all like me, busy with a career and three kiddos and managing a household all by myself, you may not speed through it.

And, quite honestly, I think it was better in small sips.

That way, its content sloshed around in my head between readings.

And oh, did it slosh.

I've never been the pray-er that I always think I can be. I do think I'm getting better. But compare me to Denver Moore? Well, shoot. That once-homeless man has me beat. His wisdom simply astounded me. His perspectives left me biting my lip. One dog-eared page, 169 to be exact, holds these words: "Our limitation is God's opportunity. When you get all the way to the end of your rope and there ain't nothin you can do, that's when God takes over."

Slosh, slosh, slosh.

I've been saving this book to write about ever since I've finished it. Now, oddly enough, I'm writing about it on the night I need to go say good-bye to two precious little girls, two used-to-be-homeless little girls, who floated into my circle of life a year ago. This good-bye is bittersweet. It's happy that, with God's timing, their life might now return to what normal should be like for them. It's sad, though, letting them move on, and not keeping them here under our wings......under the watch of all of us who have invested hours of teaching, tutoring, playing, praying.....all for two little girls.

My eyes have been opened--due to Denver, and Ron, and Mary, and Kayla--to a very real problem that is in my figurative backyard. To a problem that I shouldn't keep at arm's length. To a problem that I've always known it was simply a good thing to want to help with. To a problem that I've realized that I need to help with. Not at arm's length. Not in an easy way. But up-close and personal. And I'm going to. We're going to. Cause it's already scheduled and written on the calendar. In Sharpie.