" Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." Ps. 51:5

This is my first blog to be sharing with you, so to give you more information about myself and what a normal day looks like for me, I am going to share with you what I see every day at my job. I work at Mesilla Valley Christian School where I am the Kindergarten assistant. I get the joy of being around these 18 precious 5 year olds who truly light up my life and reveal a lot of my own self to me. Of course when I say that they reveal my own self to me, many of you who know me probably think I mean my child like personality or my sporadic hyper out bursts; although you are completely right to think such things because I do have the joy of the Lord, this is far from the meaning of how those children resemble my own self. In fact, what I mean is far from funny and cute behavior. You see as I sit everyday outside during recess I see children who do not know the meaning of sharing. These kinders only want things for themselves and if they don't get it, they are mad. They love to go around looking for things to take or pick up off the ground that does not belong to them, and keep it for themselves. I've also seen how many of them find enjoyment out of another children's pain. If a kinder runs up to me crying and tells me what the other kid has done to him or her, I see a smirk on the kinders face who did in fact hurt that child. If I don't see enjoyment from their face, I see anger in trying to defend themselves because of course, they did nothing wrong. I also see how when they do something wrong and I punish them or get on to them for their wrong behavior, they test me. They wait till I am not looking at them and they continue in their bad behavior and if I do see them they wait until I say something to stop, even though they know it’s wrong. Now all these things I have observed are just at recess, I continue to see myself inside the building. We line the kinders up to go to chapel where they will hear the word of God and sing songs to Him, and their main concern is "I want to be first in line!" They start pushing and screaming and throwing a fit because they so badly want to be first. After all this is said in done I hear a sigh behind me and I turn around to hear another kinder say "I don't want to go to chapel, I hate it." I asked her "now why would you hate it, we are going to hear about Jesus and what God has told us in His word?" she then responds with "Well it’s so boring because we just sit there and listen FOREVER!"...I had no words. Well yesterday we had our Valentine’s day party and one of my kinders gave another kinder a teddy bear for Valentines day and at lunch I noticed the little girl who gave the gift crying. I walked up to her and asked what was up, she told me while crying, “Everyone has teddy bears and I don’t. I gave my friend a teddy bear for Valentines day and she didn’t give me anything!” and I of course responded with “Well sweetie if you’re upset because you didn’t get anything back from the person you gave a gift to, you are missing the whole point of gift giving.” I went on to tell her about the little kids in Haiti who have lost their parents, house, and brothers and sisters and yet she is crying over a teddy bear. After I told her all this it didn’t seem to faze her, she continued to sulk but I saw how ungrateful we all can be. With all this said I am only left with one word in my mind…DEPRAVITY.
As I said earlier, these 5 year olds teach me a lot about my own self. I see who I am apart from Christ and who I am from birth as I watch these kids act the way they do. I woke this morning and spent time with the Lord like I haven’t done in a while and I realized when we neglect the fellowship of the Lord, sitting at His feet, or diving into His word, we begin to walk in the flesh and tend to act just as these kinders can act. As believers we can only thrive, walk in the Spirit, and seek holiness by daily denying, humbling, and drawing ourselves closer to our Savior. To walk in the spirit is to cling to Christ and preach the gospel to yourself every day you wake up. For some odd reason when I find myself not getting in the word or neglecting prayer, the Lord brings up “I say to the LORD, You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you." Ps. 16:2. :) I need the Lord every second of the day because on my own I can do no good. I may be nice and do nice things but certainly not for the glory of the Lord. I hope you did not get the idea that I don’t like my job, because I couldn’t have been blessed with a more amazing job! These kids love on me when it seems I need it the most. I get to see these kids learn about the Lord for the first time and hear them recite scripture daily. They are so full of life and to see their imaginations and the true child like faith they have always encourages me. But better than that, it humbles me to know the Lord has saved me from my sin and in my depravity and wickedness, he died for me. I couldn’t have done it on my own and I still cannot even love Him on my own. Just as these kids want nothing to do with hearing the word because they are too consumed with themselves, I can be just like them apart from Him; It was all I knew before Christ took out my heart of stone and gave me a heart to love Him and hate this body of death. Praise God for being the author and finisher of Salvation! I’ll end with some Trip Lee song lyrics from Eyes Open…

“Yeah I was blinded in the past, like my mind was in the trash Incapable of doing good or even finding him the task Was beyond what I could grasp, my righteousness is rags So He had to do all the work, by His design you do the math The math, who get's the glory, hey who get's the praise? Predestined, I was elected, resurrected from the grave Plus His loved was never based on my past or present state On anything that I obtained I was a mess but blessed with grace By grace, I'm in love with Him He gave me something within He doesn't love me cause of me nope He loves me because of Him No He didn't have to save and raise me when I was dead But He dragged me out the morgue, now the praise of His name is spread He died for all He would save, it's crazy the Savior bled Erasing taking my dread, and gave me some grace instead The kind I wouldn't resist, I came praise be to Him And I'm confident if I'm in Him Ima make it to the end with eyes open”