deeper.

I've been building some good relationships with these girls.  Some of them are easier than other, some you have to really dig in to get to the issues - those are hard.

But I came to realize today why it's so hard to speak into the lives of some the girls:  So many of them reject God.  If they reject God, then they reject the one thing I have to offer them, so I feel as if they reject me.  In reality, this little setback is only a reason to love on them more, pray for them more, talk about my own experiences with God without placing it on them.

Oh, to love them more.

I think about these girls as whole people, as teens with a context.  They've had so much life before this, and they have brilliant lives to live after they leave here.  Shelterwood may be a beautiful place of restoration, but it's for a purpose.  We may be isolated out here in the woods, but it does not mean there is not a bustling world around us.  God comes in a redeems us as whole people.

In the words of Lady Gaga "I want your ugly, I want your disease, I want your everything... I want your psycho..." and the song continues.  God wants all of us.  I know Lady Gaga wrote no spiritual tie into her song, but it makes itself evident when we think about God restoring all of our being.  Our whole heart, our whole mind, our whole soul.

What a beautiful picture..

Let us embrace that redemption.  Let us not lose sight of it when people reject God or when things seem too broken to fix.  Jesus can redeem even the hardest of the hard.