Starting in January, we will be using the Wise Guys program. It invites kids to learn principles and verses and apply them in their daily lives each week. Different activities let them earn Wise Guys currency with which they can purchase items from the Wise Guys store. Handy!

For now, though, I’m working with basic crafts, games, movies (Veggie Tales!), and memorization activities. That’ll get us through the holiday season while we translate Wise Guys into Spanish. Wednesday is mostly in English, because our crowd is a mixture of gringos and Spanish-speakers who want to learn/practice/improve their English. Still, I’m not about to bring a bunch of children in a room and jabber at them in an unknown language! By incorporating English elements we can supplement the English they learn in their schools and help them with their early language acquisition.

Tonight was a success; the kids had fun and the grownups liked seeing the kids have a good time.

We arrange the big room downstairs so that the chairs are in a half-circle shape through the middle. I took some videos this week from the hallway, looking right through the center. The space is starting to get a bit cramped, so the hallway was where I could camp out without distracting everyone with the camera!

Nicholas Leading Music at Wednesday Study from Lorien Johnson on Vimeo.

Dad on “Moral Truths” from Lorien Johnson on Vimeo.

I’ve decided that it’s time for me to join a church.

For as long as I can remember, I have had an absolute knowledge in the presence of God. I was much closer to God when I was little, and my sensitivity to the supernatural was more vivid – I could see and hear those extra shades of life around me. I knew what was there. I accepted that knowledge when I was a child. I accepted the inner peace and salvation that comes with God’s spirit when you invite Him into your life. I have never once doubted that presence.

Still, I have also always had surrender issues. When I was 12 I alerted my new babysitter that I had “problems with authority figures.” I was quite matter-of-fact about it, and simply wanted to let her know so that she didn’t feel as if I was persecuting her personally. Principles were involved. She was 17 and didn’t know how to handle this, but my parents got quite a kick out of the incident, and it’s become my family’s slogan for my personality. I actively oppose oppressive government, be it political, social or familial. I haven’t opposed spiritual government, but I haven’t worked with it, either.

There’s a difference between accepting God into your life, and giving your being over to God. I’ve done the former: I have God’s spirit in my life and I’ve accepted the spiritual forgiveness that’s part of that whole package. There’s an additional step towards maturity that I have rebelled against – that willingness to follow, to love and to study God. There’s so much of a surrender wrapped up in that process, and I’ve never known how to really and truly give it. It’s not… natural to me.

This has caused buckets of angst. I know who I can be, and I know that without that maturity I’ll never make it there. I need to take that peace that I already possess and start living within it. I’ve spent nine years opposing that peace, determined that I preferred the anxiety, the chaos and the anger. I’ve really just been scared to figure out how on earth I can move forward.

So, now I’m out on my own and I’ve been avoiding it as much as ever. Adulthood involves determining which forms of surrender are in fact liberating. This is one of them.