In regards to the last little while... Most of all, sweeping.

I do realize it's been a long time since I last posted, but every time I thought I had something to say I didn't think it was overly worth typing out for the masses (okay, the possibly ten people who read this) to hear about... However, plenty has happened, so a brief update would be in order.
I now, somehow, have a job... Much searching since I moved back down from Kamloops finally resulted in something I'm happy to work at. But getting there sure wasn't what I would've expected. I've been interviewing counselling-type persons for the last little while, making sure it's a field I should get into and finding the best way for me to get into it. This most recently led me to a lovely lady who had previously been an SFU undergrad, went to UBC, and is now doing counselling (i.e. pretty much the exact path I'm wanting to take). Well, she also works for a company called Connexus. So the meeting happens on a cloudy but eventful Wednesday; not a whole lot happened during the day (as was typical to my unemployed lifestyle). I had a Bible study in the evening, studying James with a few people in the residences up here. Interestingly, each week after this Bible study I typically had the most productive times getting further in my search for employment: I would arrive home to phone calls or e-mail from employers, discover another job postings website, even somehow expand my network of contacts once in awhile. Being no different, I was doing a usual scan of the job postings and suddenly stumbled across a posting from Connexus Family and Children's Services, the same place I had been only that afternoon for an informational interview. The job required a myriad of qualifications, a number of which I didn't have, and was heavily into working with adolescents/children, which I cannot say entered the positives column of my pro-con list (if I were actually to have done one). But it was firmly in the realm of my experience and something told me that God was in the details of this one. So despite being apprehensive and figuring I wouldn't possibly get an interview I decided I might as well send off my resume and cover letter once again into what so many job-seekers experience as a sea of lifelessness. This being akin to having been stranded on an island full of bottles and paper where you just keep throwin em out to sea and they keep on getting washed back onto shore. I guess I threw this one at the right time. An interview happened shortly thereafter. Me being the mouse-like confidence person I am in interviews, I figured there was absolutely no way I'm getting a job out of this, so I decided to go in there and answer honestly but let God guide me if He so chooses. Three questions into the interview and one of the interviewers says "this is going better than I expected, I need to go get someone else to sit in on this"... Now there were three. I have enough trouble speaking to one, and now there were three question-asking answer-writing people who each may or may not be liking any and all of my responses. Fun people but you have to realize how incredibly panicked I wanted to get in this situation. I was almost afraid of drinking the water cause my hand might shake too much. Interview over, I thought that there might be some possibility of them getting back to me. SOME possibility. More along the lines of a 30-40% chance... I wasn't holding out hope. As it so happens, God works often enough whether we think He will or not. Hence, I now work in a group home with very unique adolescents. It is probably the most challenging job I have ever encountered; the most potential for things to go wrong, perhaps less potential for things to get better for these kids. But when things go right, they can really impact strongly the progress they are making. I've only been there for a few weeks now and it's still frightening for me, but more in the let's-see-how-God-works-today kinda way and less of the oh-$@#@-what-am-I-doing kinda way, which is just about as good as I would ever want it to be.
Which brings me to the second most terrifying thing that's been happening: grad applications. The UBC grad application, though I knew about it well in advance, was not complete until the very last day it could be. Which is the exact SAME day the online portion of the application stopped working. Oh yeah, and I was in Kamloops helping my dad install hard wood flooring, though at that point I was preparing to go back to Vancouver on Greyhound... The deepest levels of my anxiety-controlling neurons were put to the test, those involved with controlling my Tourette's Syndrome just figuring it's time to pack up and leave town for a bit (which made my eyes blink profusely, my head shake near-violently, and my arm convulse like one of those weird frog experiments with electrodes...). I e-mailed and called people at the UBC program hoping they'd be sympathetic even to the procrastinators (or as I like to hear it, "true utilizers of deadlines"). In the few remaining moments I got through and learned that they had extended the online deadline until 9am the next morning because of the software glitch; shortly after I heard that, the website actually started working and it all got in on time. Whew. Realizing afterwards that it definitely is not my strongest application, I'm not thinking UBC's gonna be my next school... at least not this coming fall. However, God works in many ways. The SFU application is due on Jan. 15th... While I ought not to jinx myself too early beforehand, I cannot imagine that being any more hectic and stressful than the epinephrine-pumping sweatfest that I endured for UBC. I better get a really nice rejection letter.

Now, about sweeping (if this is what you were waiting to read, and got through the top bit, thank you for the patience):
While I've had an enjoyment of sweeping and vacuuming for a long time, I've only just come to realize how much I really like it. There's a real zen quality to it, I believe. Repetitive motions, care for your place of residence (aka. "home"), even the satisfactory lump of stuff I have when I'm finished instill a sense of peace and tranquility in the heart of one who does it right (on the occasions when I do it right). Yet there's more to it than that. It's like people's hearts, almost... Like a hard, distraught heart, a dirty floor isn't always something you are consciously repulsed at, it's just one of those things that bring down the general look of a room. And sweeping certainly doesn't seem like it'll help all that much, especially when the immensity of the floor is considered. Once it's begun, however, I start to see what's under the dirt, the floor as it is without the passage of time and negligent individuals/events. After it's done I start to wonder how I couldn't see the beauty in it beforehand. In fact, I'm usually spurred on by what I see happening that I start to mop the floor as well, just to get it as good as I can.
That's what it's like when I encounter a heart and mind which are so obviously weighed down by the dust and hardship accumulated over years of neglect. Not to say that my job is to actively open people's heads and clean out the cobwebs... It has more to do with showing the person what they have underneath all the pain and sorrow, the wonder which God has placed in their life. Obviously, sometimes there are scratches which can't be fixed by regular means. To me, these can be seen as either scars on an otherwise perfect scene or as distinctions which remind me of what has happened and how this person has persevered through such permanent injury.