This was a hard day today. I should have recognized that it would be… but I didn’t. One of the hard parts of ministry is that the day after the big sermon or the big meetings is often very hard. The more you feel you are moved by the Spirit at an event or speaking opportunity and have felt the exhilaration of being used as a vessel by God, the harder it is to return to the mundane of the daily grace filled life.

Today was such a day. We had a wonderful staff retreat on Monday and Tuesday. God was there in many ways and I could see Him speaking to each of us as we crafted plans for the coming years to touch EVERY international student in the Dallas/Fort Worth Area with the love of Christ. (See coming post) It was awesome. But then… today came. The day started late and I was tired. I had a hard time connecting with the kids again… A boy from next door dropped by just as I woke. He reminds me to Eddie Haskell from “Leave it to Beaver.” I didn’t feel like Ward… that is for sure. I checked the e-mails that piled up from the 2 days off and then tried to get some work done. I was really dragging. I had so many distractions from the kids, it hardly felt worth my time to try to do “anything of value.”  Don’t they understand that “God was using me” to reach the world.

In the evening, I decided to play a video game with T-8. This was a game his brother, J-12, out of the goodness of his heart bought for him today because he knew he would like it and T-8 was obviously enjoying it with his usual enthusiasm and joy. He wanted to share it with me so I decided to play with him for a while… It was a racing game and he was killing me every time we raced… for some reason, I was feeling very… irritated by his whoops and shouts of excitement over how well he was doing. So… I just quit. I started driving backwards, dying on purpose, etc. doing anything to not finish the game so he could not enjoy the fruits of his victory. Throughout this “tantrum” on my part, T-8 persisted in trying to encourage me… “You can do it dad” “Don’t give up.” Eventually, it became apparent to him that I quit on him in the worst possible way… I recall now the horror on his face…  One of the major “rules” in our family is that “Yabuki’s never give up” and he was having a hard time processing the fact that Dad was breaking that most sacred of rules… I really don’t know why I did it but I was just tired… and spent… The rest of the evening followed course as I was just feeling bad. I think I didn’t want to let him have such a great time when I felt so awful…

As I tried to sleep tonight, I was reminded of what just happened… I felt terrible… What a hypocrite! I couldn’t believe that I, of all people, could be so mean to my own son. Here we talked at our retreat about the importance of living the love of Christ at all times with our students because it was our greatest witness… How we were examples of grace and love with those around us. Then I did this. I am so glad that God is a god of grace and love and most likely he allowed this to happen to teach me… and my son. I hope T-8 also is able to show the same grace and love as I ask for his forgiveness tomorrow and post process what happened and hopefully there isn’t a huge scar in his heart and self-understanding. It is so hard sometimes to live like Christ even in our own family even in the power of the Spirit.