I saw an eagle on the lake today. It’s one of the perks of living Forty-Five minutes from Anywhere. We may not have a Starbucks, but sometimes we see eagles.

It had been a tough day around here. Our intentional community in the middle of a cornfield is all about helping troubled souls. They come from all over the place. I have no idea how so many of them hear about us. They come battered, broken, and abused by life without God. Our job is to point them toward reconciliation with Him through Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit does the rest. Leaving it up to Him, though, can be an emotional task.

Some people start getting healed within days. Lives are restored. Hope is renewed, and eventually the restored soul is leading a business or a choir or a family.

But, other days, three high-school seniors walk off down the road (literally) five weeks before graduation because the boarding school rules are too hard. We cry when they go. We plead. We promise, that if they’ll stick it out just a little longer, they will be so glad they did. But, they walk anyway. So fast that they don’t take their shoes.

That happened today. And we cried. I felt a special heart-tug for one of the girls. I’ll call her Julie. I always saw such promise in her eyes, and I couldn’t believe she had thrown away her future and gone off to inherit the wind.

I prayed for the girls, and I prayed for all of us, and then I took a deep breath and went back to work. It’s all I could do. Just before lunch,  I checked email and found this beautiful note : Julie came back.

It can be hard out here in the Middle of Nowhere with all these troubled souls. It can be completely heartbreaking on occasion and seem like we are miles away from hopeful. But, sometimes we see eagles.