So I haven't been blogging regularly for a while for two reasons...
1 - Believe it or not, my life isn't THAT much different than yours, though it's happening in another country. I'm honestly not sure what to write about most of the time.
2 - I love reading other people's blogs about all their thoughts and things, but I don't think I'm quite up to that par and, quite honestly, I'm not sure what you would think if you knew what all goes on in my head...
That being said, here are a few of those thoughts...
Where do I begin? Maybe with Jonatan in August of 2008, my first year of teaching, when I realized that, contrary to how I'd always unconsciously looked at myself, I had lots of areas to grow in and I realized for the first time that my sinful nature was much more active than I'd ever realized. Jesus said that if you are even angry with someone it's the same as murder. Well, I, this good girl raised in the church who'd always stuck to all the rules, I was a murderer, then. Cause I was sure angry with Jonatan and it scared me silly.
That was also the day when God told me that, though I'm surprised by my own sin nature, He wasn't and it was for that precise reason that He died. It was a turning point in my walk with Jesus.
Ever since that day, there has been a battle inside of me between Romans 7 (I do what I do not want to do) and Romans 8 (there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus). Ever since that day, I've been struggling to overcome my sin nature. Ever since that day, I've been frustrated that it still rears its ugly head (and much more often than I think it should!). And ever since that day, I've been SLOWLY learning about God's grace and love in the midst of it all.
It's now been 5 years and hundreds of students and many good days and bad days since Jonatan. But the battle is still there. There have been days when I think I'm maybe finally starting to get it and there have been days when I think I'm hopeless.
Thursday was one of the latter.
This time it was Flor. She admitted to me that she didn't pay attention in math class because she wanted me to help her after school. And that did not sit well with me....to say the least! I'll spare you all the details, but suffice it to say I may have had a right to be angry, but I certainly didn't have a right to react the way I did.
I walked home after school feeling downtrodden, feeling that old familiar voice of condemnation rising up.
And the next morning, in my journey through Romans, I hit 8:1 - "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus". And those old, familiar questions arose. God, how? I don't understand.
And God answered and for the first time I started to see. There is no condemnation because Jesus took it all on Himself when He was on the cross and then He took it away and rose again without it.
And then there came Christian Education class and the accusation: "Kusi said..."
I stopped taking down prayer requests and took up my Bible.
Proverbs 18:21 - "The tongue has the power of life and death."
What does it mean to speak life and what does it mean to speak death? Yesterday, I spoke life and I spoke death. I looked into Flor's eyes. Jose Ricardo nodded. He was there. He heard it. He knew.
The surprise was audible. You spoke death? They didn't need to know details. Just the fact.
Yes, I did. You know, I'm really trying, but sometimes it just comes out. It's like El Chavo del 8, an old TV program where El Chavo says to his teacher "¡Se me chispoteó!", which roughly translates to "It just popped out!"
I flipped over to Romans 7, which happens to be one of my favorite Bible passages, simply because I can relate so well. They looked at me as if I'd just grown an extra head as I read "What I do is not the good I want to do; rather, the evil I do not want to do, I do."
20 little faces said "THAT is in the BIBLE???!!"
Hands pierced the air when I asked who has ever felt like that. You know, sometimes "It just pops out!" You try and you try to do what you know is right, but it. just. happens.
I looked at the ceiling and raised my hand dramatically as I wailed "What a wretched man I am!" (Which, in Spanish says "Soy un pobre miserable! I am a poor, miserable man!" They liked that.) "Who can rescue me from this body of death?"
They were still awed by the fact that this was coming from the BIBLE, of all places!
They raised their hands. They identified. We pray every morning for good behavior. It was their idea.
But.
And here it was that I began to realize something. I'm so far from perfect. I grope for life's nonexistent undo button. I wish I could be more patient. But that very weakness, that very imperfection, the very fact that the undo button is nonexistent, also allows me to share the little I understand of the gospel with my kids.
And so I shared.
And we remembered our smashed bread from Easter (see my last blog post) and how Jesus took all our sins on Himself and they crushed Him and smashed Him and pierced Him. "That bread was FLAT!" they all remembered.
And now, when I mess up, when "it just pops out", God doesn't look at me with His angry face and say "You deserve to DIE!!" Because Jesus has already taken all God's anger away. So now I don't get God's anger. I don't get condemnation. I don't get death. I get God's love and His sorrow at my sin. But the condemnation is gone because it's buried in death with Jesus.
I'm not giving up the battle, but maybe I'm starting to give up hating the fact that it exists and wishing that God would hurry up with that sanctification thing because I'm about to drive myself nuts.
Because without the battle there would be no grace, without grace there would be no good news of Jesus, without the good news, what hope would I have to share with a bunch of imperfect kids who live with me and have to grow up in this sin-stained world just as I do?
What if my battles can give me what I need to help my kids with theirs?
