Jump

The children were meant to be in school this year. I was totally convinced of that. I cheerily gave away every last home school resource I had, convinced that the season of homeschooling was over. We had all done a year of 'normal schooling' and it seemed that that was going to be the way for the years to come.

Without going into all the heart rending, nail biting, stress inducing, confusing and seemingly chaotic events that led to us approaching the start of the first day of school, and it passing us by...

The end result is us at home again - unprepared, unequipped, unhappy at times, and less anxious as each day goes by.

Leap - and the net will appear...so said....

A friend of ours told a heart stopping tale the other day, about how, as he approached Port Elizabeth he spotted, out of the corner of his eye, as he sped over the Van Stadens Bridge, on the other side of the road, on the outside of the bridge, a woman, hardly hanging on, leaning out, over the terrifying abyss.

I remember the little details he related about the encounter. Her neatly placed size seven sandals, left side by side on the side of the road. Her bare feet on tip toe, balanced on a pipe on the outside of the bridge. Her hands, her mere fingertips, hardly holding on to the railing, supporting her body as she leaned out and away.

He tells how he ran to her, and while the police kept back the onlookers, the hooters, the jeering passing motorists, he spoke to her for two hours. Two hours of begging, pleading, weeping, whilst she, nonchalantly, adjusted her grip and looked out and over, as if already committed to the jump.

After two hours he, and two policemen hauled her over.To safety.

He had been the net for her that day, there being no physical one that could ever have saved her.

So, that story reminds me of how I felt at first, when the abyss of homeschooling opened again before me. Terrifying, and yet inevitable. It was calling me towards it, dangerously, destructively and unavoidably.

God does that sometimes. He closes every other door, so that the only open one has got to be Him. He is the open door. Even if it feels as wide and open as a gigantic chasm yawning around us as we hang on by our finger tips.

Jump.

Leap.

Fall.

And He will catch you, one way or the other.

Even if it is being caught up in the air before the hard rocks hit as they come rushing up to meet you.

It is extraordinary how things work out if you listen. If everyone around you is aware, catching that fatal glimpse out of the corner of their eye, and stopping, running over, to extend that helping hand.

People are on the look out for us, like a highway patrol, and as we await the arrival of our curriculums, we have in the meantime a standard of education that we have not had for years.

The net appeared, and we are safe.

Every day is that 'leap of faith' -which is of cause not one at all.

Carl Jung said - I no longer believe - I know.

So lets do it - JUMP