Seminars and Sobriety

I am choosing not to sink but swim!

Figuratively of course.

Let me explain...

My co-worker and I are here in Ottawa taking a couple of courses to help us diagnose and work with those who have dyslexia.

That just sounds so simple and straightforward in my mind.

Fly to Ottawa, obtain material, get some amazing teaching and go home to practice.

I am obviously very easily deluded.

The amount of material that has been presented to us in very few hours has been simply overwhelming. I am so new to this whole area and have taken in so much information that my brain is overloaded and short circuiting.

I have snapshots of test pages containing strange shapes floating through my brain, the sounds and names and shapes of letters repeating themselves and the newfound ability to teach "sky-writing" amongst a multitude of other new additions which are frantically looking for a resting place.

Once again, this trip has had it's ridiculously insane moments. When my co-worker and I travel together we are guaranteed an adventure and so many of good laughs.

Because we choose to laugh and not cry when things go sideways.

Last year we tried going to Sooke to learn some of the same material but our trip was riddled with challenges. The bathrooms were a whole sideshow of their own, which tends to be the case when I travel.

Anyways, I was overwhelmed by the material on that trip as well, due to very little teaching time.

This time? Well, bathrooms have been an ongoing issue causing us to move hotels and giving my co-worker the unusual opportunity to be involved in more intimate transfers than either of us would have envisioned when booking our flights.

Add to that challenge a very distracted instructor to whom we paid exorbitant amounts of money and we have embarked on another unbelievable journey together.

We started the day late, had numerous other delays while she disappeared to who knows where and ended the day exceedingly early. And supposedly we learned an important method of teaching which cost us a total of $1000 dollars. Here's Darla trying really hard to grasp this new method of teaching those with dyslexia...

Here's the view out of our classroom window... It made me incredibly grateful to live in BC.

In the two, not very full days of instruction, we still didn't cover half of what we had hoped to. In fact we barely touched the DDT which was what we had originally signed up for. She was constantly running to the photocopier to get material for us which should have been done before we arrived there. Another $1000 spent getting very little teaching but tons and tons of material. She is an amazing woman with an incredible amount of knowledge but she's a little hard to manage. These brilliant minds are sometimes very disorganized which makes for a difficult learning environment. Especially for someone like me. I just love my ducks in a row with sensible presentations that are orderly.

This day was everything but that.

Heavy Sigh. So we spent a couple of evenings at the restaurant hotel with out papers spread out all over the table trying to make sense of what we had "learned". Darla just drank lemon water because of the cleanse she's on while I ate real food. MmmmMmmm...

I came back to the hotel room with my aching back, threw myself onto the bed and read dear Oswald Chambers who told me:

"We have been talking quite a lot about sanctification, but what will be the result in our lives? It will be expressed in our lives as a peaceful resting in God, which means a total oneness with Him. And this oneness will make us not only blameless in His sight, but also a profound joy to Him."

So, I can cast my burdens upon Him, rest in the knowledge that He will help me to figure all of this out as I apply myself and rest in Him. No stress, no anxiety.

In good time I will figure this out.

I would dearly love to be a profound joy to Him.

And nothing is impossible with God!