Hello 2015

  You know that internal dialogue that you have with yourself in early December that goes something like this:

• "December is going to be really busy this year."
• "Yep. It sure is."
• "Mother-In-Law is visiting...staff are leaving town for christmas break...lots of extra events and parties on the schedule not to mention Christmas, New Years and preaching at church...the baby is going to choose not to sleep during normal human hours for the next few weeks...that seems exceptionally busy." 
• "Yep. It sure does."
• "I wonder if I should do a couple of things ahead of time...like write a few extra blog posts that I can just put up over the next couple of weeks?"
• "Are you kidding me?  You love writing.  You're a natural.  You'll have plenty of time to crank some of these out during this next month."
• "Oh, right...plenty of time...where exactly?"
• "If you don't get a chance to write the posts at work because you are covering other responsibilities, you can always just write them from home...when it is quiet...and there are no chores to be done...and the children are sleeping..."
• "......."
• "You know...from 2-3 in the morning.  You will be plenty motivated to write about Joel's Place instead of desperately falling into bed for a couple of blissful hours of slumber."
• "You're right.  Oh, how well you know me."

So as I look back on the past couple of weeks...I think that maybe that was not the best plan for updating the blog.  Not too big a deal, but I need to remember that my inner voice overestimates my motivation and underestimates the chaos of the holidays.

All that to say it has been a fabulous holiday season filled with laughter and family and tons of kids at Joel's Place.  And these were not calm children.  These were hyped-up-on-sugar-and-caffeine-out-of-school-bored-and-understimulated teens who ran around Joel's Place like Who's on Christmas morning.  In one evening I had more thefts, crashes/injuries, broken doors, vandalism and general wild-eyed chaos than I had seen in the past couple of months combined. 

But that is why we are here.  That is why Joel's Place is built to be kid-proof.  That's why we play loud music and sell candy and soda.  These youth spend most of their days being told to be still and quiet.  They come here to release the pressure so that they can excel back in the real world.  I know these things, but sometimes I forget.  Christmas Break and Spring Break tend to be excellent reminders.

I am really looking forward to 2015 and all the opportunities ahead of us.  I will get into those in a later post...probably next week...because I am doing those weekly again...and not listening to that little voice in my head that says 4am is prime blog writing time.