Laurel came home yesterday and told me,

"Mom! I wasn't scared of the dog! I like cats. I'm not scared anymore, I feel much better."

Translation: I can't keep my thoughts in focus but I'm pretty sure I'm not scared of the dog at school anymore. Even if I am still scared, I'm trying reverse psychology to convince myself and the whole world around me.

We will see. We're going to a tailgate/Josh's work party tonight and they have a really big (although calm) dog.

But Mom, I don't want to go to school.

I've been talking with Laurel about what you do when you are scared. I've been telling her to pray when she is scared of something. So today she finishes her breakfast and tells me she wants to stay home with me today, not go to school.

"Why do you want to stay home?"
"I'm sick, I want to stay home with you."
"Where does it hurt?"
"My... arm."
"If your arm hurts I still have to send you to school."

We went around like this for a good five minutes and then told her that if I let her skip school that I would get into trouble with the law. So I got her out of her pj's and when she realized I was going to send her to school anyways, she's quickly says,

"Mom I don't want to go to school, there's a dog there and I'm scared."
"What do we do when we are scared?"

She fumbled around with this. So I took her into my room and we prayed about it, I cried through the entire thing. After we closed in prayer, she was more than ready and excited again to go to school.

With Laurel you never know what she's thinking, if perhaps she was imagining a dog or if she saw one while sitting on the school bus. So I called the teacher just so she was in the know that Laurel was deathly afraid of dogs. Her teacher knew that there was a dog across the street that usually it barks at the kids while they play, and sometimes it gets loose. If Laurel saw it barking or running around, she would have been definately afraid. She's the first to climb up the nearest adult whenever a dog is around.

It's much harder to be a parent than to be the kid who goes to school to deal with their fears.

Ungodliness

I woke up around 4 in the morning today just thinking about things. Actually, all night in my dreams I've been fighting with the thought of being able to prophesy. I know a woman who I held in high respect, that had this gift of prophesy. And I thought at first my struggle was that our prophesies coincided. But I think the real struggle was that they didn't coincide and I wanted to know who was actually Godly.

I think I know the answer, and I don't like it.

So it got me thinking of other things, which woke me up at 4 in the morning.

I've been running around with this verse swirling around my head:

For those who are according to the flesh and are controlled by its unholy desires set their minds on and [a]pursue those things which gratify the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit and are controlled by the desires of the Spirit set their minds on and [b]seek those things which gratify the [Holy] Spirit.

Romans 8:5 (AMP)

I've been reading this book called Under God, which is a collection of 1 to 2 page short stories about the American Forefathers. The amazing thing was that it happened to famous people who I never thought of as Godly people, just history. Makes it a little more real the people who lived before us.

The point is that these stories are about God and his amazingness to still work in the lives of men after the Bible era. We read about unreal stories in the Bible and never think it could happen after that. It's far and few in between. But He does work in the lives of ordinary men, knowing full well who they will become. Makes me want to have the faith like those men.

And thus the struggle with my ungodliness. I know my fight through the night wasn't about prophesy at all. It was gearing me up into the right direction, to think about God first and then think what I could be doing better. About the strong kind of faith I could have.

And deep down, somewhere I do have that kind of faith hiding inside of me.