Back to normal?!?

So after my long, morbid post written from Houston one would think that the ideal "recovery" week would be to have smooth sailing and kids behaving and plenty of early nights and so on.

Didn't happen!

I arrived back home around midnight Monday night. I decided I might as well jump right back in with both feet. I knew sleeping in could be slightly dangerous! So I told Mary, who had been substituting for me, to plan on me taking the class for Tuesday. Tuesday morning we headed out to school for a "catch-up" interview. Mostly about what the kids had gotten done and where they were ready to start from, but also any gossip that I may have missed out on in my week away! And that's when Mary told me that the opportunity for her to go to Mexico had opened up again and she had decided to take it. Long story short, last year Mary had been asked to teach at a school in Mexico and was planning to go, but was detained because of paperwork. The paperwork in question was a license for the school/orphanage in Mexico, something that they were warned could take years. Now a year later, the paperwork, hopefully, is fixed and so the school once again asked if she would be willing to come teach. I had known before I left that it was a possibility, but she hadn't made her decision yet. I'm super happy for her. This is something that she has wanted to do for a while, but with all the red tape involved she had given up any hope of going in the forseen future. Her acceptance and patience in waiting for God to manifest His plan for her has left me slack-jawed! But suddenly she's talking of leaving in two months! There is still a visa that needs to be obtained but this time around it should be fairly standard. I must say it's very tempting to pray for red tape to detain her till the end of the year! I've never known CICS without Mary. Even though she wasn't living on campus my first year here, she was still around a lot. And the last two years, to say the least, I'm not sure how I would have survived them without her! And very suddenly I realized that in all probability we will be finishing the year here without her. More changes! :)

And the kids, well, from the start of the week I was feeling a lot of tension from Silvia. I had kinda been expecting it. She deals with change about as well as I do, although hopefully I've learned to temper my reactions a bit more than she has! She wasn't very happy when I told my kids that I was going to be gone for a week, and when I came back she told me she had been worried about me not coming back. I reminded her that I had told her the dates that I would come back and I had made it back so she shouldn't be worried. That seemed to appease her for a little while but I still felt tension under the surface. Turns out Silvia has been having a lot of other things going on in her life, lots of changes and things that can confuse any child. Thursday the bomb exploded and Silvia was sent home.

It has happened before, 4 times to be exact. Every year that she has been here, except for the first. She has always come back after about a month or two, whatever Nata & Becky decide is long enough. This time, a return is being debated. For the moment we know it won't be before the middle of August, when Nata & Becky return from their trip to Mexico. In the meantime the committee that oversees matters of the school will decide if maybe we have helped Silvia to the best of our abilities, and whether there may be other options that are better for her. In other words, she may not come back to school for this year.

How to put into words the hope that one can have for a child? To spend hours, days, weeks, months with them, correcting them, teaching them, living with them, loving them. To have cried tears of frustration and pain over them, as well as tears of love and forgiveness. To have prayed in frustration and anger and sorrow, hopelessness. And to finally let yourself feel a sliver, the smallest glimmer of hope. That maybe it wasn't all in vain. That maybe there is a chance that she will be able to truly open her heart and allow herself to feel love. I don't think I would have understood if someone would have tried to explain it to me. Not before I met Silvia, or I should say, not before I spent 2 1/2 years with her. I'm not good enough with words to try. I guess you'll just have to pray that God sends a Silvia your way if you want to experience it!

I can't lie. The months of July and August look significantly easier now. Anyone who has worked with a child like Silvia will understand that! I don't know if I've ever had more mixed emotions about something before. The thought that I may not see Silvia again this year . . . . doesn't bear thinking about. I haven't given up hope though, that she will be able to come back. That we can give her another chance. But neither do I want to be so obnoxious as to say that I believe we here at CICS are the only people who can help her. Who is to know the plan of God? As Becky put it in one of the initial talks that her, Nata & I had regarding the situation, "Maybe God is trying to get us to let go of Silvia because He has someone else who can help her more." But that's hard to say after investing 5 years into the life of a child. (Becky has, not me) And a selfish, proud part of me wants to say that this cannot be how it ends.

I wanted a success story. "Yes, after 5 years of many tears and prayers and much hard work we broke through and Silvia became a sweet healthy child, who loves her teachers and the authorities in her life and has apologized for all the heartaches she put them through." Actually I would have settled for something a lot less dramatic, like one whole year without being expelled! I wanted to at least be able to finish the year and say we didn't give up. Because to be honest, that's what it feels like to me if we say we can't take her back. That we are saying there is no hope for Silvia. But who knows what small particle of what we have taught her here will stick with her.

I know for a fact that her time here was not in vain. Maybe God's plan for Silvia is not that she becomes a poster child for CICS, maybe God's plan for Silvia was to be here at CICS to teach me.

Maybe I was the student and not the teacher.

If that is the case I want to keep learning. Please pray for Silvia. Pray for the board, that they would make the decision that reflects what will best fulfill the plan God has for Silvia's life. And pray for me that I would be willing to wait to see what plan that is.

For those of you who have never met Silvia, to give you an idea who you are praying for!