Back in the day when they still had elephants at the circus (imagine the horror) you could see a massive pachyderm tethered to a stake in the ground with a length of rope.
Stop and think about that. An animal weighing 6 tons with unparalleled strength stood passively, restrained only by a peg 6" in diameter pounded into the ground. How? Why?
They begin when that elephant is very young and relatively weak. The peg and rope are sufficient to hold him in place. He pulls, tugs, and strains against the restraint, but without success. Finally, he just gives up, deciding that he can't overpower that which holds him.
Done.
Five years later when he could rip that peg out of the ground without any problem he still thinks its strength is too much, and so he never tries. His past determines his present.
There's a sermon illustration in there.
Son Josh opens his new clinic TOMORROW! Hand Therapy Partners - West officially opens its doors in the west valley (Loop 101 and Glendale). It's a "soft opening" with things going fully online Monday. He's starting from scratch, a totally new endeavor in a new place. Just Josh and his work ethic.
Normally parents would be anxious about the future for their kids, but he's got this nailed. Nobody has any question that while this will start like any business it will quickly grow into THE place to get hand therapy in the west valley.
Marta came this afternoon to pick up Fabio, who has only been boarding here during the weaning period. He has also helped his sister Dolly to settle in. She'll stay here and be our third breeding doe in about a year. Now she's upset because her best bud is gone, but she'll get over that.
Back to learning at my churches.
Except if we're moving forward chronologically the next stop should be the decade I spent teaching. There my "congregation" was my students. And I felt every bit their pastor. Or sometimes a parent. And it would take a year's worth of posts to scratch the surface of what I learned from them - as a group in the classroom and individually as I interacted with them outside of class.
The gal who had been an alcoholic since she was 14.
The incredibly gifted music student who always got A's in my classes and struggled with bulimia.
The guy just arrived from Zaire who excelled through sheer determination despite very limited English skills.
The guy who plagiarized a paper and thought he could snow me with his denial.
The guy who plagiarized a sermon he preached in class from a book of sermons.
(I nailed them both. I will NOT be played the fool)
Mostly it was a rush for me to watch lights go on, to see young adults master a whole new (to them) field of knowledge, to read papers that were really well written (and laugh at the papers that were SO bad. Like the guy who, for five pages, spelled it Isreal.)
I've never felt so in my element as I did while teaching. Hated faculty meetings and the nonsense paperwork we had to do.
Don't get me started on the politics.
But I loved time with the students in the classroom and the cafeteria. And I loved them.
Except for the jerks. But there weren't many of them and they almost always served as their own solution, washing out by semester's end.
I know God does all things well, and he took good care of us since leaving the college. But in many ways those were golden days.
heavy sigh
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