From The Director, Kathy Irvin:
October 2008
The noise is back, and we are very joyful.The halls are overflowing with laughter and conversation. The Tots are learning that Mommy does come back, and our Preschool 3s have graduated to the second floor with book bags on their shoulders. On the first day, one of our Junior Kindergartners requested that we sing the "rejoice song" and so we did. "This is the day. This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice. I will rejoice and be glad in it..."
Rejoice! How can we not rejoice when surrounded by little people? An AJN Mom just stopped in to tell me that her son shared with her last night that he, "loves Star Wars, spiders, worms, and Regan (a girl in his J.K. class)." Every year I try to come up with a meaningful theme for our AJN teachers. While up at my parents' cottage in Michigan this summer I saw an old "Day by Day" page torn from its rings laying on a table. Four words grabbed me. "Earth's crammed with heaven." (Elizabeth Barrett Browning) I had my theme, Choose Joy. This is why we so enjoy our days at AJN. They overflow with enthusiasm, delight, joy. Our first days on the playground were filled with discoveries. We watched a cicada emerge from his shell-like skin, found a huge, green caterpillar and held long earth worms. The new sand in the sandbox feels like sugar, and the pedal tractors are really fast. Earth may be crammed with heaven but we often don't see it. Many days the earth feels and looks like it is crammed with a lot of other things. The outside world comes at us 24/7-often overwhelming, stressful, sad. And then on the home front we tackle overflowing responsibilities, sleepless nights and growing children. Don't we all crave a few moments of joy or at least peace?
But desires and actions are very different things. How do we move from wanting joy to choosing joy? For me it takes the conscious movement of handing over the worries, the spinning, the "what its". It really is a mental shift, taking it off of my plate and handing it All over to God, believing that I can tackle what I need to do when I need to do it with strength and patience that comes from--well, from trust that I am not in this alone. And hanging out with your children makes this movement, this way of seeing so much easier. They see God's creation everywhere. They remind us that God is present in our daily lives. He is in the muscles that run, the brain cells that divide and retain. He is in music and eye color. He is in our sorrows and in our joys. They trust. In My Grandfather's Blessings Rachel Remen writes some of my favorite lines. "We can bless others only when we feel blessed ourselves. Blessing life may be more about learning how to celebrate life than learning how to fix life. It may require an appreciation of life as it is and an acceptance of much in life that we cannot understand. It may mean developing an eye for joy." Children celebrate life loudly and usually in motion. They share your discoveries with enthusiasm. And if we are available, they pull us into their joy. We may even find ourselves feeling blessed and seeing joy where we never thought we'd find it. "Joy is every child's real name." (Rachel Remen's grandfather).