November

“But You remain the same, and Your years will never end. The children of Your servants will live in Your presence; their descendants will be established before You.” Psalm 102:27-28 (NIV)

I laughed so hard I cried when I turned the page on my calendar this morning. I keep a wall calendar in my kitchen. In the last few years, the theme has been horses and this year is no different. I have a lovely calendar of horse pictures all in “dream” settings of clouds and moons and golden landscapes, but for the last couple of months, youngest son and his girlfriend have been “accessorizing” the horses. Last month, the stallion standing on his hind quarters got a unicorn horn, wings and a heart tattoo. This month the two stampeding horses are dressed as a pilgrim and an Indian. Somehow, though armless, they carry a turkey, already cooked and ready to eat. Despite my mirth, I wanted to keep crying when I saw the many entries underneath the picture. November is going to be a hectic month. Not only do I have two meetings or speaking engagements every week until Thanksgiving, but I have two weeks of History Fair. This year, our History Fair is going to be very different from the past. For more than ten years, we held our local History Fair at our community civic center. It is a huge arena big enough for a small circus or rock concert and that is almost what our History Fair has become. We hosted the largest local History Fair in the nation with as many as 1700 students grades 4-12 participating. For three days every year, their creations of exhibit boards, documentaries, performances, papers and now, websites filled the arena and the attached conference wing. Times have changed, however. We were able to use the civic center because as a government agency, we only had to pay for labor to set up the tables and chairs. That averaged about $700 per year. With budget cutbacks, the government discount was eliminated, and last spring, we were notified the cost would be $10,000. Though we tried to do some fund raising to cover those costs, there are a lot of empty pockets out there these days. We had to rethink our entire event as there is no other facility big enough to hold the type of History Fair we have had in the past. We cut out the elementary school grades since they are not eligible to go on to compete in higher level competitions, and split high school and middle school into two different dates. High School judging will be this week at our county fair grounds, while middle school will be at a local church’s activities center later in the month. It will either be easier or harder to spread the work out over the month. We won’t know until we go through it once and see. You may not be hearing from me much in November, but I leave you with this thought. God is great and God is good. Spend the month counting your blessings. I’ll be doing the same and will be back when I can.