Lessons from Home!

As everyone knew, the anticipation of arrival at home was worse than the actual reliving. :P

Here, I'm back home with the people I am deeply and intricately connected to with ties deeper than normal love, and God has enabled me to keep my eyes on one thing at a time.


However, I wasn't expecting the fear to start again...or the Rebelution to cure it.


My brother, Joseph (more commonly Jose) asked me to do a hundred and one things for him...as usual. Most I passed off as impractical. Which is, thankfully, true. Then he asked me to help him build five model battleships which he'd been saving until I came home, and he wants them built by the weekend.

You've seen the models, right? Those plastic, fiddly, bitty thingies with glue and paint and stuff galore? I could probably cope with the glue and the paint. But not the tiny fiddly bits you breathe on, and they fly away. Especially with Jose.
Besides, this would interfere with my nice little laid out schedule.

My instant response? "I'm sorry! I'm really not a model person!" A flash back of the Rebelution "I'm just not a shower person!" came in, along with the knowledge that I probably could do this, and it was more realistically the fact that I wanted to put my comfort above helping my brother.

I even tried to ease my conscience with telling HIM to do hard things and go ahead with it, but that wasn't very helpful.

I carried on with my unpacking, getting more and more afraid as Joseph started to drop small bits of the model (he IS quite good at this, don't get me wrong!) and use several bad words (which he did NOT pick up from my family. Unfortunately, the streets and cadets taught him a few). His temper was rising rapidly and I could see a fight coming.

I was hugging Rob's licence plate, Jess's pillowcase, Caty's bag and something else by the end of it, near tears and wishing I hadn't had to come home.

I'd put my CD of Chris Tomlin (thank you, Mother Gatley!) on as soon as I got in, and Jose decided he was going to throw his paper bombs at it and "start a fight" because it was too rocky.

I said something to the point of, "Do you know how hurt you're making me feel? I can't even listen to something I like cause you don't like it!"

Even as we stood there, I knew that as a Rebelutionary and as the mature adult I want to be, I had to make a decision.

He went back to his models; I followed, awkwardly patted his back.

"Is that the mast? Where does it need to go?"

He shoved the instructions at me. My response?

"You'd better show me, cause I'm just not an instruction person." Then I really did start to laugh. I'll show him this post later and I think that will explain it.

I sat down next to him, and applied the glue to two skinny pieces of plastic, attaching the base to his model ship.

What happened next shocked the daylights out of me.

He hugged me, apologised for cursing and asked me to pray with him for forgiveness - right then and there. I prayed with him, and then he finished off with, "And Lord, please pave the way for us to go and live in the States, since that seems to be where everything's heading."

My mouth literally dropped open for about two minutes.

See, I'd discussed this with Mom when we walked the dog about five minutes ago (briefly and disconnectedly) but Jose had stayed home and didn't have a clue.

And next? He went and pressed rewind on the CD player to the Chris Tomlin song he'd been bombing. And he did that twice.


Jose never responds like that normally. God gave me a clear choice whether to behave like a selfish child or take a step towards responsible adult, and in return, He gave a small hint of approval towards the step I'd like us to take, and gave me my music back.

Isn't that totally awesome? God, You are higher than ANY other!