I would like a gold star now, please

Wow. I blogged three days in a row. Haven't done that in a LONG time. Its not like I haven't had anything to say. On the contrary, so much has happened over the last few months I scarcely know where to begin. I will try to catch you all up. I may have to do it over a couple posts...and I can't promise it will be entirely coherent.

Our houseguest T is gone. We had to ask her to leave (I'd rather not say why, out of respect for her privacy). She had no where to go - no one else would take her in. So I took her to a shelter. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Like in the top three. Maybe two. That shelter...well, let's just say that while I'm glad that such facilities exist for those who need them, it's still not a very nice place and certainly not the kind of place you'd want to have to bring a pregnant teen to.

Its been about 3 months now since she left. I hear that she is still living there. She has changed her mind about placing her child for adoption though. I feared that would happen. It might have happened whether we allowed her to stay on with us - I was getting the feeling she was having second thoughts - but I can't help but feel some guilt over what happened. The baby is due in about 2 weeks. I pray for them both often.

Things don't always work out the way you hope they will. You do things, and you mean them for good, but they don't turn out that way. It has been a hard lesson for me to learn. The apostle Paul insists that God uses all that stuff anyways, for the good of those who love Him. He takes the stuff that blows up in our faces and redeems it. I long to know sometimes how it looks from that other perspective; from here it looks like just so much smoke and ashes. I am not good at being patient.