WE DID IT!! or rather GOD did it…we pulled off Safe Haven’s first formal fundraiser.  After ALOT of work and planning, and then 19 hours of decorating in order to transform the church into a beautiful atmosphere, we hosted our dessert reception and silent auction.  As I ran over to my house to quick get my kids to bed and change before 7:30, i was tempted to crawl into Daniel Josiah’s crib with him…just from sheer exhaustion….but the evening was just beginning. Everything went off beautifully, and we had a good turn out.  David Tyree, from the New York Giants, did a great job speaking, and watching our kids perform their dance was an absolute delight.  

 

But at the same time, i don’t ever remember being so exhausted and short of patience.  The kids that were suppose to only show up for the dance and then leave, were all over the place, and LOUD too.  An evening that i wanted to be so formal was getting invaded by the reality of the kind of behavior that we deal with on a regular basis.  At one point when a group of girls ran and locked themselves in the bathroom when they were about to get scolded by someone, I came up to the door and cried “so help me God if you don’t UNlock this bathroom RIGHT NOW you are going to be in SOO much trouble!!” After. I dealt with the situation I slipped back into the dining area where Danny was giving his speech….”And we are trying to reach and love each one of these absolutely precious kids….”  whelp, if anyone had just witnessed my less than gracious outburst they would have seriously doubted what Danny had just said: A) that we’re loving them and B) that they’re precious….  about 15 minutes later I had the last straw, because I could hear all of the kids yelling and screaming in the youth center which was directly under David Tyree who was speaking to the audience.  I promptly marched down and told them that they all had to leave immediately….then upon getting kicked out, three of the girls, ripped up and dumped out all the of the luminaries that lead up to the entrance….MIND YOU, these were the SAME girls that had so desperately wanted to help during the day and put the very luminaries in place for me. 

 

As the end of the evening was approaching, I was dreading the clean-up, which would be at least another 5 hours of work, but God sent me angels, in the form of random people who immediately started tearing down stuff, cleaning up the kitchen, putting items away…THANK YOU, Nelda, Sean and April, Eric, Cristiana, Adam, and Betsy…you were God-sends.

 

You might ask, where was Danny is his exhausted wife’s time of need?  Well, the reason Danny was not involved in the clean up, was because WHILE David Tyree so graciously came to speak for free, auctioned off his Giants paraphernalia, and then wrote a generous check to Safe Haven, his car was being broken into and his GPS was being stolen. So as David (who has a busted knee, mind you), his wife, his 6 and 3 year old sons, AND his 2 month old girl twins went out to their car, they were rewarded for all their efforts with a smashed in passenger window, and missing expensive items from the vehicle.   Fortunately, they viewed it with “kingdom eyes” and David declared “man, if thats all satan’s got, then we are BLESSED”

 

So our evening was good and bad, blessed and tainted by sin…blessed by the generosity of others, the group effort of putting on such a big event, the beauty of sharing a vision and calling, but tainted by the sin of my own anger and lack of patience, the craziness and disrespect of the kids, and the robbing of a man who came in order to bless and give to this community.