: )

These are interesting days in a middle school. Q couple of weeks to go. The kids are, squirrellyer than ever. Some a touch concerned about grades. It is a challenge to keep them 1. busy, 2. learning, and 3. getting the curriculum neatly ended . I need the timing of an orchestra conductor.

Aside from the usual challenges of culminating year end field trips, the kids seem to be gorging themselves on sugar and caffeine. Our middle schoolers vibrate in place.

The last few years, chronicled on these digital pages, were filled with melodrama... burning buildings, health issues, sleep deprivation, deceit and betrayals.

On the entropy side of those events life feels different.

Aside from the little dramas playing out in the classrooms and halls... students and parents, curriculum and equipment, small dramas still occur in my own life. Jeremiah’s group home called, they found a lighter in his laundry. Isaac’s anxious about the Summer without me.

Still... I’m smiling.

I'm being creative (gardening, new art underway [future post there], writing 2k words a day...)

Last night I surrounded myself with candles, soft music again. I cut back on the sleeping meds. and still slept.

I wrote the other day of how God’s faithfulness is patently obvious. Still, I understand our failure to feel His presence. But at this time, in this eternal moment, the now in which I write this post, I feel His breath in my life.

The small dramas, even the concern over a lighter in Jeremiah’s possession, seem to roll past, debris floating in a receding flood.

I’m not oblivious to the natural part of this healing. The ol’ “Time heals a broken heart” stuff. I see how steps I am taking in my life are tinting my glasses a touch rosy, but there is a faith aspect to my current happiness, just as there was to my unhappiness.

I’ve started dating.

Nothing serious. I am skittish over emotional entanglements, but the ladies I have taken out have been kind and understanding. The adult conversations, shared meals or movies, exchanged emails or IMs, make me feel like I am worth something after all. I am particularly fond of one, but... deep breath... there isn't any hurry.

I’m making good friends. I’m flattered to be taken seriously, even my strange ideas which are more fiction than science or theology.

My sleep, though not entirely deep, is consistent, and I don’t wake shouting.

These are large changes. The melodrama has given way to a mellow drama.

I don’t expect life to always feel good, be good.

But it is right now.