children are important (part one)

Like everyone we love our children and think they are wonderful ... although they no longer qualify as children in any other sense, by any stretch of the imagination, they are still our children.

I'll tell you about Charis (right at right) in this post ... more about the others another time.

Charis still lives at home with us, which is very nice for us, and mostly quite nice for her.  She is nineteen and her main activity at present is frantic study for self-taught/correspondence AS levels.  This has meant studying even on holiday ... and also always being tired!

  
However Charis is a passionate actor, and can't survive without being involved in the dramatic arts (though she also provides us with more than her share of drama).  She has a job as a drama teaching assistant, is helping a friend with a production of poetry for high schools, and is preparing for Trinity Guildhall associate diploma.

This means she is extremely busy ... we are very glad that she is old enough to have her own drivers' license! 

The big question is not what she eventually wants to do.  The answer to that one is "act, help people, live a life that reflects Jesus" (please note, these are my words, but checked with her).  The big question is what next piece of education/training does God have in mind for her. 

Charis is an awesome young woman with fierce opinions, especially about justice and kindness.   She has a deep spiritual walk with Jesus, and is often a good reminder to us of how to live well.  We try to be helpful parents-of-an-adult for her, especially given the challenges she faces of living with a lot of pain (fibromyalgia).  How amazing to be parents!

Charis still participates in some of the things we do in serving strangers; she is an essential part of who we are, as well as giving us good advice (how else would we understand the latest dialect, or know some of the strange sounds of current music?), and her creativity (painting, flute, flowers, singing, wrting a novel ...) is a crucial part of home.