Lesson: Learned

It was painful. My sunburn had been so angry that I'd been wearing my swim suit so that the straps didn't lie across my shoulders. I prayed that God would take away the sting, especially before kid's club. I stated that I wanted to be able to love on the kids without thinking about myself. But you know? Once again, God had a far more beautiful plan, especially because it was not my pain-free one.

Work that Monday was doing media for a group putting up a kitchen pavilion tent at Peter's Pasture. It's a camp ground that has been used as long as anyone  an remember and longer...long before all us white people showed up on the continent. It's the traditional stopping point for going up to pick roots and berries. It's where families saw who was still alive, where everyone was going, and who was going to marry who. Connections. All the current elders and their grandparents grew up going there. Strategic placement by our contact there in Warm Springs. Anyone who sees the new structure (aka nearly everyone) will wonder where it came from and how the money was got to build it. "Church people." And so the thinking begins.

It was raining most of the day and the water soaked into mt sleeves and shoulders, blissfully cool against the parched skin. However, when it stopped raining, the shirt became heavy, hot, and uncomfortable. The material rubbed against the burn whenever I moved with a damp crispness. I began to brace myself for facing a lot of pain at kid's club.

I have never had so many kids hang on my shoulders and want to be picked up. One after another after another. Their little hands squabbling on my burn. And yet, though I felt all the pain, it didn't matter. God took the associations of pain and completely flipped them upside down! It meant that they felt save enough to trust. They wanted to be held.

The peace and strength to ignore the pain and love on the children anyway could have only come from a perfect protector and savior and that is the Lord.

"Let the one who boasts, boast in the LORD"

(1 Corinthians 1:31b)