tonight was crazy.

Tonight has been rather interesting...We had our girls group...and now I feel like Ive been run over by train..or 7 trains..each with a girls name on that came tonight!! Oh my word..and we had a guy from a supermarket (some bigwig I think) who had given our drop ins quite a large sum of money to fund them and our work..and he was bringing a photographer to come and take pictures of our kids and us and where we work for the newspaper they bring out to show what a good investment it was..I feel we should have warned them both..and maybe paid our kids to be on their best behaviour.
Let me just paint a scene for you, theres this guy (who you can tell has no affiliation with teenagers as he expects them to sit down when he tells them to and be very quiet) and then theres about 15 crazy teenagers running around outside of drop in, one standing on the windowsill and a few refusing to be photographed..whilst the photographer is trying to get a decent photo out of it all...In the midst of this I'm trying to figure out why a girl is crying whilst she has a shouting and swearing match across the street with another girl who is threatening to smack her head in whilst another of the girls tries to mediate..The photographer is desperately trying to pull this shambles into a picture of the kids..The leaders then have to have a photo whilst the kids are running riot behind them..all of us hoping the photo is quick so that we can go and sort out whatever could be happening..This should have been an indication of the rest of the night for us.

This was pretty much the tone of the rest of the night. The girls made a few phone calls to a girl who none of the other girls like at the moment to tell her to come down to youth club where there was going to be a fight apparently, hints of going outside to take drugs, girls trying to meet the boys by going outside every 2 seconds for a cigarette break and just running upstairs to hassle the boys group, then throwing glitter everywhere..and although we tried to discourage all this it didnt seem to work..sheesh it was quite a night...

and for the past hour Ive been thinking that this was such a task and how bad for me to have to put up with this..But Ive been mulling over it..and even though they were being a pain..I really should have acted differently..and loved them..not huffed around and felt sorry for myself having to put up with it..But seriously asking God to be in the situation and shared the journey with them of talking through what was the matter...These are the kids, these are their lives..and just because they werent amazing tonight and I didnt have a fantastic time with them, doesnt mean that I can feel okay about complaining..I cant choose to love them when theyre cool and then totally have enough of them when theyre harder to deal with..It should be a 24 hour 7 days a week love and tolerance for them..

I dont think There's any pointONLY loving people and being nice to people that just do the same for you coz it doesnt put you out at all ..There's a huge point and amount of character in loving the kids that dont always treat you amazingly and can stretch you to your limits..forgeting what theyve done and get on with it..even though this is harder..because this is what Jesus did..Jesus loves these kids..He thinks theyre amazing..and I should too...and if Im going to work with them..I need to understand this and make it part of who I am...not just on the good nights.
but boy can it be hard sometimes..a journey I am on that is forever up and down.
x