My Longing

Hello! My roommate Jill helped me set this up (take a guess as to who came up with the website title??) I decided a lot of my friends were getting these and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted one too, so here it goes :)

At school, every education major has to take a special education class. Part of the class is being assigned to a special education classroom at local schools. You go for 3 hours and then write a reflective paper on it. Dr. Phillips is the lady that places us in different schools. She told us in class, that there was one teacher in a school nearby that wanted to have someone come on a weekly basis from 8-11. SO ... guess who got that spot? :)

Yesterday was my first week - and it took me approximately 3 seconds to fall in love with these children. All of them are mild to moderately mentally handicapped and there are 9 kids total. I absolutely loved my time there and was not wanting to leave when 11:00 came around. These special kids grabbed hold of my heart so quickly. One boy came up to me and gave me a picture that he colored for me. Another girl was having the HARDEST time writing the letter "y" and I got to help her - and she did it! Another girl has the brightest smile I've ever seen.

It is amazing to see how God directs and guides us in our lives. If I had never moved to Jersey, I never would have met Chris, the first special needs boy I've worked with... my church in GA didn't have a special needs ministry like my church at home does. The move that I thought was some sort of horrible punishment turned into the most wonderful blessing. God is so faithful.

My longing in life is to bring glory to Jesus... and my biggest passion is to do that partly by working with special needs children. There is just something about helping a child read for the first time, helping a girl write a letter that she's been struggling with, and watching her eyes get large in excitement over what she has just accomplished, seeing a little girl finally take her first steps at age 5... that just melts my heart, and lets me know that this is exactly what the Lord has called me to do.