An Update to the Unknown Audience

Life has been busy and I find it hard to share what's been going on. There hasn't been much. I have thought a lot, but thinking can only bring you so far. I have made plans for the summer... But nothing extraordinary, and nothing that really excites me. I'm hesitant and sort of uncertain about the trip to New York. I'll be with the youth in my youth group, and I'm uncertain as to weather I'll enjoy it and really learn at all from it. I wish we could all put aside our differences and stop enforcing our standards on eachother, and work together against Satan as a team. Yet instead, Christians are divided and judgemental towards everyone different. Perhaps I should not say that all are. But I certainly know many people have a problem with being that way, and that actually even includes myself, believe it or not. I struggle with being haughty towards those different than me, and sometimes I'm so prideful.... At times I have to stop and wonder. What exactly makes me better than everyone else? And the answer is: nothing. Nothing makes me better than anyone else. The blood of Jesus Christ is the only thing that makes me anything more than a heap of filthy rags, and yet here I am elevating myself and looking down on those who aren't just like me, and who don't think and believe just like me. It's pitiful. I feel like a Pharisee.... So unGodly.







I am lonely for my family. I remember darling faces... I miss each and every one of the children. And my mummy... One always misses her mummy when she leaves... Now choir practice is over, we had our performance last night (and a good one it was!), and now I won't see the children who were in choir every week... Ah well. Such is life. That just makes our together times more sweet. This summer dad is going to Africa, and so I hope to perhaps do a lot with my siblings then. Still, I make no plans, cause everything may change in a blink of an eye. I want to buy myself a good fishing rod, and take them fishing... I want to take some of them up to go riding... I want to go on picnics, some with everyone, and some special ones with just the small ones... I want to do spur of the moment adventures and hikes and picnics and shopping trips... I want to do surprises and laughs and treats and ice cream parlours... I want to watch movies late into the night, to do sleepovers, campouts, bonfires, games... I want to play football, Street, Lane and Lamppost... I want to have the children go to camp... I want them to visit the relatives... I want to be alive and free... And I want to make memories, most of all... Because the memories are what warms my soul, and I want their soul to be warmed as well to think of days gone past.





My journal lays open on the concrete step above me. I'm sitting in the shade, and Lou is a bit aways, playing and looking for bugs. Amazingly, I've never met a child so interested and unafraid of bugs. She picks up the rollypolly bugs quite freely; they are her favorites. Beatles, milipedes, grubs, ants... All go into a communal 'bug box'. Conrad sits playing in front of me.





It seems that every time I feel strong and close to God and mature and wise, I find out how much I'm not those things, and how much I lack. I feel less and less sure of myself as time goes by, and more and more desirous of a God who is near... Sometimes I am desperate, because I feel as if God is not near like he seems to be to some people. Yet I do not fear... I will trust. I remember reading something a wise person wrote once. He said that the older he got and the more time he spent as a Christian, the less he felt God's presence. That scared me, early on. I didn't like the sound of that, and I was afraid that if I hardly felt Gods presence now, then what about when I'm old? How lonely that would be. I remember praying, and asking God to please never leave me and to always make himself known in my life. Now, I see a little of what it means to feel God less and less. I seem to have more and more tests of faith once I make a right choice. And once I make that right choice, I am tested on it, and it gets harder. It always gets harder. It doesn't get easier, and that's what scares me. I trust, almost hesitantly, that just as God is faithful in love and protection, He will be faithful in teaching me slowly and surely until I can handle the harder and harder trials and tests of faith. I do believe that everything I go through now and in the past is only to prepare me for harder things. It's a scary thought, and an irking one too. I do not want the difficult things to be only hints of what is to come. I almost wish to rebel against the thought. I don't necessarily want ease and dreams the rest of my life, but I don't want it to be all thorns and hard rocks either. And yet, I know it won't be.

Have faith, Joelle... Have faith.

Friends.....

We had such a fun time at my first real mudsale. :)

My dearest and onliest big sister....

Spring means farming!!! This is my dear brother, with the baby brother strapped to his chest.