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7月8日 Half FullWe just returned from the last great family adventure: a camping trip on the Maryland shore. Camping for our family means using a tent and cooking on a campstove or maybe even a campfire. No sissy pop up trailers or RVs for us. We were on Assateague Island; we pitched our tent maybe 200 yards from the surf. It was wonderful. We walked barefoot everywhere, we played in the waves, built a fire on the beach, got up early to watch the sun rise over the ocean. I realized as I sat on the beach with my kids that when I was younger the way I dealt with endings of pleasant things was by assuring myself that I'd do it again sometime. As a fourth grader the only thing that made leaving Disneyland bearable was the thought that I'd come back. As a young family we visited Pickett State Park in Tennessee, and I liked it so much we went back for three years in a row. One visit to Glacier Park wasn't enough, we had to go back again two years later. But on the beach I realized that I'll never be able to do this one again, not like this anyway. Grace is leaving home in six weeks. Oh, sure, I know she'll be back, but I also know it will never be the same. It was as though sitting on the beach I heard "time's up", and I knew it was true. I thought about how so many of my highest hopes and ideals have been set on earthly things, good things, but earthly, and how earthly things just don't last. Kids grow up. Parents eventually get too old to jump and play in the waves. I thought about how more and more of my heart is getting invested in heaven, where there is a better hope than even the best earth has to offer. I always thought that being on the beach in happiest harmony with just my husband and my two kids was the best-- but there must be something better up ahead.
In a camping supply store I found a tee shirt that is my souvenir of the vacation. It has a simple line drawing of a glass filled halfway, and it says "half full." My kids are growing up and willingly taking the gift of freedom we have granted them. My back is a little stiffer after a night of sleeping on the ground (but we still aren't stooping to RV camping!). My father in law (we saw him while en route) now walks with two canes. But the glass "ain't half empty." It's half full, and you know what? It's gradually getting fuller as we look forward to that something better.
Proverbs 31:25 6月6日 Kinda Corny, Maybe, But TrueMy children have been in Florida for the last week on a trip with the band and choir from our school. Yesterday I washed their sheets, and because it was a nice day and I had the leisure to do so, I put them on the line to dry. Seeing them waving on the line made me smile; nothing says "home" like clean, fresh sheets on your own bed after a long week of travel. Later in the afternoon I had the opportunity to go along with Fotomama to shoot engagement pictures. The bride and groom-to-be were a cute couple, obviously in love, and Cherie shot some incredible pictures. I stood there wishing that I was twenty-something again and newly in love. Then I sort of shook my head and thought, "No, I'd much rather be where I am now." The place I am now is the place where I'm happy putting laundry on the line because I know it will make my kids glad to be home, and I guess you call this place "family." That couple just starting out is getting married so they can get to this place that I have already found. 5月29日 Rite of PassageGraduation is over. Around here graduation really is celebrated as a rite of passage. We went to the party of our neighbor's grandson. He and Grace have known each other since they were in third grade. He used to mow our lawn for us when we were on vacation; we once brought back a shark's tooth for him as a souvenir. Grace used to ride to school with him and a couple of other guys (chivalry was completely dead-- they wouldn't even get out of the car but would make Grace clambour over them, French horn and all, into the back seat). He was in band with our kids. We used to sit near his parents at his basketball and football games. When we left his party, I observed that it is a wonderful thing to watch and be a part of someone else's growing up, and I feel so privileged to have lived here long enough that I can say I have done that.
Then as we hosted our own party for Grace I found myself feeling completely humbled by the presence of so many people who have shaped the person she has become. Yes, people congratulated us and told us what a great kid she is, but we couldn't have done it alone and though we beamed with pride through the whole week, we recognized that we just played the parents' role in her life and there have been so many other roles that have been played. There was the bumbling cross country coach who arrived at her party all excited about handing her an engraved plaque. He coached her for four years and though she didn't learn much about running under him, she did learn something about making someone besides her parents proud. Her track coach came to the party. There wasn't a lot left to be said between the two of them; Coach Dorhout had coached Grace to within two seconds of qualifying for state track, but it didn't matter that Grace hadn't qualified in the end because they had won each other's respect and there was mutual satisfaction in that. Her math teacher came. Gruff, with unreasonable rules in his classroom, he still really enjoys teaching seniors. He had ended out the semester by showing country music videos and drawing life lessons (something even more important than math!) from them. She won't forget him. People from her work came. People from TEC (Teens Encounter Christ) came. Her best friend's parents, who were also having a graduation party that night, did a quick clean up after their party and drove all the way into town just to see Grace. My parents came from Idaho. And our church family was all there. Grace didn't have her aunts and uncles and cousins there (they all live too far away), but our church family functions in the same way, because they have helped us raise this beautiful, gracious young woman. She finished high school well, academically, athletically, and most of all, with her integrity in tact. We are all proud of her.
Pictures are in the album to the right. 5月7日 GraduationI am on a leave of absence from blogging now because I am getting ready for graduation. Actually, I am not really getting ready yet; I am just in the thinking about getting ready stage and that is stressful enough. I can't really get ready yet because there is so much going on that gets in the way of getting ready, though we did this week go out and buy four tiki torches for the party (an oft quoted line in our house from Gilligan's Island:"better keep those tiki torches lit."). Last week we had three track meets and a band/choir contest. When we paid at the door of the band contest and they marked my hand I commented that the black mark fit nicely between the blue mark from Thursday's track meet and the red mark from Friday's meet both of which were still visible. Between going to all the events and doing the necessary laundry between the events (what I call "two sport laundry night-- a whole load of Grace and Jed's maroon uniforms and sweats and warm ups), there hasn't been too much time to actually work on the house. I did try to do a little around the kitchen last night after the band contest. I spent six hours "tidying up." It probably wouldn't have taken that long but I got distracted arranging pictures on our refridgerator-- that alone took an hour and a half. It looks really nice, though. I hope our guests can get past complimenting Grace on all her achievements and notice how nicely organized the outside of our refridgerator looks. So this is it, until after graduation. 4月15日 Let the Games of the 2006 Lawn Mowing Olmpiad BeginIt's finally spring. The trees are budding. Yards are green again. And, because the grass has grown all of 2mm since the snow melted, our next door neighbor is-- even as I type-- mowing her lawn for the first time in 2006. This is a red-letter day for those of us who live on either side of her, as it marks the official start of the yearly lawn mowing games. The woman is obsessed with having short grass ("short" meaning relative to the grass in the other yards on the block). She mows. That is our cue to mow, which we will get around to in a day or two. Then our grass will be shorter than her grass, so she will have to mow again. The game is to get her to mow as often as possible. It works best if we and the other neighbors stagger our mowing so she has to mow again to be shorter than ours and then yet again to be shorter than theirs. The real prize, though, is when she mows, say on Thursday, and then we and the neighbors on the other side mow as late as possible on a Saturday, which leaves her with long grass on Sunday which she can't fix until Monday because it would be unthinkable for her to mow her lawn (even on a riding mower) on the sabbath.
To quote my favorite picture book: "Let the wild rumpus begin!" (Okay, readers, where is that from?) 4月5日 On Jordan's Stormy BanksThese next two months represent a curious mixture of excitement, joy, and sorrow as we watch Grace finish up highschool. It is so much fun to watch her finish strong.I am looking forward to graduation because I know she is looking forward to it and because it will be such joy to celebrate with her. It is exciting to anticipate with her and for her all that awaits her in college. But there are moments when waves of sadness wash over me as I think about all the things that are ending. She went to her last horn lesson a couple of weeks ago. Going along with her to her lessons (an hour away) was always a bonding time for us. She performed in her last solo and ensemble competition last week. It was especially poignant because she and Jed performed together-- for the last time. Soon we'll be going to the last track meet, the last band concert, and sending her off to her last day of school. When she was a brand new baby I remember someone saying "they don't stay little for very long." It's so true. Where have the last eighteen years gone? But a friend said to me the other day, "I remember doing all the 'last things' my senior year too, but just think, soon there will be a whole bunch of 'first things.'"
A dear friend of ours, a woman in her eighties, is hovering close to death in a hospital even as I type. She told my husband last night that she is looking forward to seeing Jesus but she feels so bad about leaving her sweet husband. I knelt in prayer in the middle of the night last night and asked God to spare her because it makes us all so sad to think of her being gone. But then I think of all the eternal first things that await her and I feel that same curious mixture of excitement, joy, and sorrow for her and for us all.
On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand (traditional hymn, alt. by Christopher Miner)
On Jordan's stormy banks I stand
And cast a wishful eye
To Canaan's fair and happy land
Where my possessions lie.
All over those wide extended plains
Shines one eternal day
There God, the Son, forever reigns
And scatters night away.
Iam bound, I am bound
I am bound for the promised land.
I am bound, I am bound
I am bound for the promised land.
No chilling wind nor poisonous breath
Can reach that healthful shore
Where sickness, sorrow, pain and death
Are felt and feared no more.
I am bound, I am bound
I am bound for the promised land.
I am bound, I am bound
I am bound for the promised land.
When shall I see that happy place
And be forever blessed
When shall I see my father's face
And in his bosom rest
I am bound, I am bound
I am bound for the promised land
I am bound, I am bound
I am bound for the promised land.
3月31日 Inservice TodayToday was an inservice for teachers in our district. Inservice days are largely a waste of time, but this one, on the whole, was less so than most. We talked about cooperative learning (if you are an educator worth your salt, you should have felt a chill of excitement when you read those magic words). I liked most of what I heard today, although I responded with cynicism to the statement made by the presenter:"If teachers across America would commit to using these strategies in all classrooms k-12, I believe it would change the world. I believe that with all my heart." I wanted to tell her, "Lady,do not elevate a few good teaching techniques to life changing importance." (Besides, can a cooperative learning strategy really change the world when there are kids out there who want to bring boar semen to school?) Anyway, I can goof off on an inservice day with the best of the goof off teachers. We got to sit together as middle school teachers which was hugely enjoyable because middle school teachers are fun, being half whacked but mostly devoted as teachers (unlike high school teachers who are all whacked and elementary teachers who are so devoted they don't have time to be whacked). We did this one strategy where one person in the group was supposed to read a question to another member of the group who was supposed to answer it, after which the third person was supposed to paraphrase the answer. It was supposed to generate "rich conversation." The question posed to me was something like:"Were the major accomplishments in human history done by individuals acting alone or by individuals cooperating with others?" I wasn't trying to be a smart aleck or anything, but I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind:"well, except for the salvation of all mankind which was accomplished by just one individual with no help from anyone else, I guess all other events were accomplished by cooperation in some form." It was quite the conversation stopper. The other members of the group just sat there, not because they disagreed but because I had inadvertantly stumbled upon the one exception to the otherwise rhetorical question and there was nothing left to say. And, though the day was about education, there really was nothing left to say because apart from that single act done by that one individual (with no help from us-- no matter how committed we are as teachers) nothing has ever or will ever change the world. 3月28日 Teaching in Rural AmericaThis morning we had a late start due to weather. I had crawled back to bed after getting the good news and had just drifted back to sleep when I was awakened by a phone call from the parent of one of my farm kids. She wanted to know-- at 7:15 am-- if it was alright if her daughter brought boar semen to school. I heard once that words are merely vocalized symbols for mental images. Being still half asleep, my brain fumbled around the memory bank looking for the concrete reality on which to hang the vocalized symbols "boar semen." Once my brain had the image fully loaded-- "okay, she said boar semen"-- I had to decide how to respond. "Uhhh, we're not really talking about that in science right now." (We happen to be talking about erosion; if I had been more alert I probably could have come up with some witty way to relate the two topics.) The mom assured me that she hadn't thought it was appropriate either but she had just wanted to check. When I told my husband about it, he asked if I wasn't even just the least bit curious to see what it looked like. And I will admit that in my semi-conscious state it had almost seemed like it might be an educational opportunity for all the townies in my classroom (including me), but then I pictured this student-- who tends to giggle and mumble about everything-- standing in front of the room explaining it to the prepubescent boys in the audience, and better judgement prevailed.
We all got a good laugh about it at school. I told the band director that while we weren't studying that particular topic in science I had told the mom that perhaps the band students would find a use for it, like maybe valve oil or something. 3月17日 The Other Side of HopeWhen you think about it, most of life is lived on the disappointment side of hope. Things just rarely turn out the way you hope they will. Last week I took a team of ten kids to a math competition; only one of the kids came home with a medal. I am told that today Iowa lost an upset game by a buzzer beater. I have been to plenty cross country and track meets where I have witnessed kids (sometimes my own) finish one place away from the medals. Grace has won exactly one race in her high school career, proving that sometimes everything goes right, but most of the time there is disappointment. (And those are just shallow things like competitons. Shall I list all the things in ministry that haven't gone the way we hoped?)
Yesterday I waited all day for a phone call to inform us that Grace had won a certain scholarship, but the phone was conspicuously silent. By evening my hope had faded. When something hoped for does not materialize it's hard not to feel mocked for even hoping at all. The rebel part of my heart wanted to pronounce a verdict:"see, God doesn't care." But from a place deeper than the rebel's foothold, my heart resonated to the words :" You give and take away. You give and take away. My heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be your name."
The phone rang a little after seven. Sighs of disappointment turned to laughter as we heard Grace say, "Guess what? I got the scholarship!" My heart still feels tender about the whole thing, as evidenced by the way tears come easily as I am processing it. For whatever reason, this time around the Lord is allowing me to feel the emphasis in the words "You give" and not the words "You take away," but either way, "my heart will choose to say: Lord, blessed be Your name."
Hab. 3:17-18
3月11日 JoyHere I sit, sipping a coffee slush concoction, leather-bound journal in hand. School work sits atop the desk behind me, awaiting my undivided attention, but there were these thoughts I set down in my journal this morning that are worth recording here because today I feel.... joy. Not exuberant, dancing in the street joy, but the deep sense that God is here and all is well and all will be well. I taste it in the coffee my friend made for me. I feel it in the quietness of my classroom as I sit here on a Saturday morning. It echoes from the conversation my husband and I had last night. I see it in the folded up notebook paper sticking out of my journal, just a sheet of notebook paper but it's a letter to me, words written to my heart. In all these things I feel God stirring my heart and I feel inclined to trust him. "Which is a big deal... (said like Marlin in Finding Nemo).... for me." This tenderness, this openness, in my heart to God feels good. It feels alive. There is an edge of longing to it, though. That sense of wanting more that will either drive me to him or drive me mad. Still, I keep feeling this irrepressible desire to fall on my knees, so I think the joy and its accompanying longing is ultimately safe to feel in its fullness because it draws me in to worship.
"Take my heart and hold it in thy hand; write upon it reverence to thyself with an inscription that time and eternity cannot erase." (Valley of Vision: "Covenant") 3月1日 The BlessingI was asked me over coffee the other morning if I have ever felt like quitting the ministry. The question caught me on a good day, on a day when life felt good, so I couldn't easily get in touch with my feelings of wanting to quit. But I will nevertheless be honest and say, that on reflection, yes, I feel like quitting all the time. But I can't because to quit the ministry would be to quit being who I am. This is who He called me to be and this is where He called me to live that out. Sometimes my life is very hard and I cry tears of frustration and despair because I wish I could get out from under this call on my life but I know I can't and deep down I always know that I don't really want to because this is the life I am meant to live. Ministry,then, is my life's blessing and my life's curse. My life often reminds me of a scene in Frederick Buechner's Son of Laughter, a novel about Jacob, where Jacob describes the terrible beauty of receiving his father Isaac's blessing:
"The blessing was more terrible still.
When the camel you're riding runs wild, nothing will stop it. You cling to its neck. You wrench at its beard and long lip. You cry into its soft ear for mercy. You threaten vengeance. Either you hurl yourself to death from its pitching back or you ride out its madness to the end.
It was not I who ran off with my father's blessing. It was my father's blessing that ran off with me. Often since then I have cried mercy with the sand in my teeth. I have cried ikh-kh-kh to make it fall with a sob to its ungainly knees to let me dismount at last. Its hind parts are crusted with urine as it races forward. Its long-legged, hump-swaying gait is clumsy and scattered like rags in the wind. I bury my face in its musky pelt. The blessing will take me where it will take me. It is beautiful and it is appalling. It races through the barren hills to an end of its own."
The blessing of ministry ran off with me and it will take me where it takes me. I have cried out in sobs begging for it to stop, but I will ride out its madness to the end because I trust that, regardless of how it seems now, in the end it will be revealed that it was never madness. 2月17日 FlashbacksOur family has gotten hooked on LOST, which is significant because I don't think we have ever all four gotten totally hooked on a television show. Anyway, I like the way the writers of LOST use flashbacks to reveal, well, the character of the characters. I think God is a writer like that, or at least that has been the device he is using to tell me my story as of late. My birthday is in two days. It's got me thinking about all the years' worth of memories stored up in my brain, and how from time to time it's like God brings to the surface some random thing that was relatively insignificant at the time but seems vital for me now. One such memory: When I was eighteen my sister and brother-in-law took me along on their family vacation to southern California to visit our grandparents. The trip included a visit to Disneyland. We were there probably fourteen hours, most of it in blazing sunlight, and I developed abrasions on my eyes from my hard contacts. By the time we got to our motel my eyes were swollen shut and I couldn't hold my head up because of the throbbing in my eyeballs. I tried to sleep but my eyes hurt so much that I ended up begging Paul, my brother-in-law to take me to an emergency room. There wasn't a hospital near where we were staying and the closest one meant driving a fair distance, in the middle of the night, through a bad neighborhood in LA. And then once we got there we had to wait a long time because it was in a bad neighborhood and they were dealing with things like stabbings. We were both very tired. I don't know what time it was (my eyes being swollen shut), maybe two in the morning, and I began to feel guilty that Paul wasn't going to get enough sleep and he would have to drive all the next day (he never allowed my sister to drive and for good reason). I told him how sorry I was about it all, but he responded so graciously:"Don't worry about it, Carolyn; you know I have found when I am in a situation like this God always gives me what I need. It'll be okay." I guess that story has come back to me lately because we are being affected directly and totally without our control by something that someone else did. Sometimes I wonder if everything's going to be okay when this all shakes out. It is not fair, that's for sure, and unfairness can make a person angry, like you want someone else to pay. But that's why I guess I keep flashing back to Paul's words that night: "God always gives me what I need. It'll be okay." 2月14日 Chet the Traveling BulldogAt our school when a teacher does a stupid thing he or she gets honored for the deed by receiving Chet the traveling bulldog (Chet is a stuffed toy). Chet has been earned by a coach for forgetting that he has practice or by a teacher for coming late to a meeting because she misplaced her car. For the record, I haven't yet earned Chet. I think I used up my quota of stupidity when I was a fifth grade teacher because since moving to sixth grade nothing funny happens to me anymore. Recently Chet has made the rounds to teachers whose students do stupid things, like the fifth grade teacher whose students put up the February calendar, complete with thirty-one days. Today Chet went to our seventh grade science teacher. Her kids were in the computer lab working on individual reports on diseases. One student blurted during an uncharacteristically quiet moment during class: "Mrs. So-and-So, Kevin told me he got genital warts during study hall. If that's true, it's not fair because his class got all the best ones." 2月8日 IF I STANDIf I Stand-- by Rich Mullins
There's more that rises in the morning than the sun
And more that shines in the night than just the moon There's more than just this fire here that keeps me warm In a shelter that is larger than this room And there's a loyalty that's deeper than mere sentiments And a music higher than the songs that I can sing Stuff of Earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the Giver of all good things So if I stand let me stand on the promise that you will pull me through And if I can't, let me fall on the grace that first brought me to you So if I sing let me sing for the joy that has born in me these songs And if I weep let it be as a man who is longing for his home And there's more that dances on the prairies than the wind And more that pulses in the ocean than the tide There's a love that's fiercer than the love between friends More gentle than a mother's when her baby's at her side And there's a loyalty that's deeper than mere sentiments And a music higher than the songs that I can sing The stuff of Earth competes for the allegence I owe only to the Giver of all good things So if I stand let me stand on the promise that You will pull me through And if I can't let me fall on the grace that first brought me to You And if I sing let me sing for the joy that has born in me these songs And if I weep let it be as a man who is longing for his home So if I stand let me stand on the promise You will pull me through And if I can't let me fall on the grace that first brought me to You And if I sing let me sing for the joy that has born in me these songs And if I weep let it be as a man who is longing for his home And if I weep let it be as a man who is longing for home I became a Rich Mullins fan the summer I had baby Grace. I heard this song on the radio, connected deeply with the line "more gentle than a mother when the baby's at her side," and I was hooked. That was eighteen years ago but I feel like I am still just beginning to understand this song-- to understand the idea that there is something deeper than everything we see.
Take last night for instance. Our allies, our Bible study friends (but they are oh, so much more...), surprised Patty and me with a birthday party. We thought we were showing up for Bible study (and I was planning to play this song for them) but it turned out last night was more than it seemed. I wanted to play the song because I was thinking about a newspaper article my mom sent me about an inspirational highschool teacher of mine and how from my point of view the inspirational things she did were little things that were not done intentionally to inspire, but since they ended up making a huge impression on me they were so much more than mere "little things." I was thinking about how I want to be like her. Then I walked into a party that was so much more than a party. It was people I love and who love me telling me with and without words that I do make a difference in their lives. We got to talking about where we were fourteen years ago. None of us knew each other and most of us weren't even living in Iowa, yet here we are and our lives feel interdependent in a good and holy way. But it's about more than just friendship because like the song says, "there's a loyalty that's deeper than mere sentiments" and "there's a love that is fiercer than the love between friends."
"How much time are we (the people I love) going to have together?" That's a question I ask the Lord frequently. The answer is always indefinite except for the promise of now. All we have is NOW, but there is so much more to now than meets the eye... 2月4日 Alarm Clock IssuesOkay: the promised alarm clock story.
A year ago I worked my first TEC weekend. TECs are held at area churches and workers arrive on Thursday night in order to set up and be ready for the teen candidates to arrive on Friday morning. Last year we women workers set up our sleeping quarters in the church nursery. There were about thirteen of us spread out in two rooms joined by a walk-through. We had teen guy workers in the room next door. When I finally got to bed that first night at midnight those guys were just hitting their stride, which meant they had their stereo cranked playing Christian rap, and the bass part was pulsating through the wall into my brain. I read once that when the Marines cornered Manuel Noriega in the high-rise hotel where he had taken refuge they simply surrounded the building, played loud music, and waited him out. Odd form of torture I always thought. But that first night at TEC I realized how tortuous constant loud music can be. Note to self: Next TEC do not sleep any place with any wall adjoining a room housing teenage boys. I finally got to sleep at about 3 in the morning. Two hours later thirteen alarm clocks began going off at five minute intervals. Then each of the women hit her respective snooze button and the sequence started all over again. This went on for about 45 minutes. One lady then committed the unpardonable sin of hitting snooze then leaving the room, so when her alarm came back on there was no one to turn it off; that is so not fair. Later that morning I muttered to my friend Judy that there really should be rules for using alarm clocks when sleeping with groups of people.
We were unfortunately set up for another alarm clock disaster that night. One of the workers suffered under the delusion that since candidates are encouraged to leave their watches at home, one of them might stumble into our room and wonder what time it was . The odds of this happening were something like 129,986 to 1 because teens generally don't think it's cool to hang out where adult women sleep, but just in case, this lady was prepared. She set her clock an hour ahead thinking that in the unlikely event a candidate did stray into our room she (or he) would see twelve alarm clocks all reading roughly the same time, but because this candidate would apparently be a moron, she (or he) would conclude that the one dissenting alarm clock was the correct one, and thus be fooled into thinking it was really an hour later than it was. Her little ruse did actually work on someone (namely, herself), because when she set her alarm for what she thought was 5:00 in the morning she ended up waking us all at 4:00. Sensing mutinous intent of her roommates, she wisely left the room even though it was only 4:00 while the rest of us tried to get back to sleep. At breakfast I just shook my head at Judy:" we've got one more night together, do you think these ladies can finally get it right?"
That night I stumbled into bed at about 1:30. I had showered before bed so I figured I could sleep right up until breakfast, getting maybe five hours of sleep. I fell asleep instantly. It seemed I had only been asleep for a few minutes when someone's alarm went off. I roused into semi-wakefulness and waited for this person to turn the thing off. But it kept going-- not a pleasant little beep-beeping either, it was a a pulsating tornado siren kind of sound-- and it kept going, and going. Though still not fully awake and coherent, all I could think was that it was really only 4:00 in the morning, the freakish lady had left the room already,and the alarm was going to keep sounding for an hour or more unless someone did something. I sat up in bed. I tried to focus in on where the sound was coming from. It seemed to be coming from the walk-through that connected our two rooms. I didn't dare try to walk across the room because it was dark and I was afraid of tripping over people sleeping. So I crawled out of bed and across the floor-- on my elbows, commando style. I made my way to where the noise was coming from. It was like a war movie and I was the hero crawling across the battlefield to take out a machine gunner's nest. As I made my way toward the clock I noted that it's owner had put it there, across the room from where she herself was sleeping, so that she would have to actually get up to turn it off, which obviously wasn't going to happen because she was sound asleep in her bed as I crawled past her. I was good and angry when I finally reached the clock which had been going off for a full ten minutes so I turned it off and crawled back to bed. Actually that's not at all how it happened. I was so mad, that when I found the clock I ripped that baby out of the wall. Violently. The others told me that they could tell I was venting our collective fury on it. (I saw the plug later and the prongs were bent at right angles.) This clock would never toture anyone again. I crawled back to bed and started thinking.That lady was going to oversleep (she was afterall extra tired because she had gotten up at 4:00 that morning). When she got up she was going to wonder why her alarm didn't go off. Then she would wonder who beat the crap out of it. Then she might be mad. So I crawled out of bed again and left the room because I didn't want to be implicated. Judy followed me several minutes later."That lady's alarm only went off 80,000 times!" she said. We shared a covert laugh and then agreed that next year we would make everyone sign an alarm clock covenant stating rules for responsible alarm clock usage.
Note: This year I scoped out a quiet out of the way room for Grace to sleep in and she invited me to sleep there too. She was a wonderful roommate and used her alarm clock responsibly and with restraint.
1月31日 Jumping In The House Of GodTEC (Teens Encounter Christ) #50 was a 72 hour experience of living inside the lyrics of the song "Jumping in the House of God." It was totally exhilirating. Plain and simple, it was a blast. For those of you who don't know what TEC is, don't think "youth retreat." A youth retreat is something where there is an inspirational adult speaker who gives maybe three or four talks to an audience of kids who sit listening passively and then go outside afterwards to play extreme sports. TEC, on the other hand, is total immersion in Christian community. It's teens who have been through TEC serving the teens going through the weekend. The kids serve all the meals and clean up all (okay, most of) the messes. Kids give the talks during the weekend. Kids take the leadership in the chapel praying for the speakers and for the whole weekend basically. We adults are just along to give the whole thing an air of respectability. God does not need us, that's for sure, He could easily do it all through the kids, but we get to come along for the ride.
One of the spiritual directors on the weekend summarized it this way: there is nothing mysterious about TEC, nothing cult-like (though it gets a bad rap); it is simply a place where people can come into the light, take off masks, and be met with grace. I was thinking about that description and I realized that was indeed one of the things I personally enjoyed about the weekend. I didn't feel I had a mask to take off necessarily, but I did feel totally free to be myself and the kids just liked me and laughed when I said funny things (and I can be pretty darn funny when the mood strikes me). It is a blessing, even as an adult, to feel accepted by a group of teenagers. The other thing I loved about the weekend is realizing that in a place of grace it really is okay that some of the kids will leave the weekend and still mess up. But mess-ups can be forgiven, because that's what grace does. These kids have good hearts. I saw it first hand; I saw kids (some of whom have OWIs on their records) celebrate when a friend committed her life to Christ. These kids get excited about the right things. You can't beat that.
So: Who's in the house? GOD'S IN THE HOUSE! And we were jumping in the house with Him all weekend. 1月24日 Smells Like SalsaI know I said I was taking a break, and really,truly, I am. I have been having problems with my neck and shoulder and have been suffering from a deplorable lack of enthusiasm for a lot of things. But today at school a couple of staff members and I were exchanging "remember when" stories and then I read Cherie's work out story and this seemed as good a time as any to tell this one.
We had this teacher in our building a while back. Great guy. He came to us right out of college. He was enthusiastic about teaching, was a fine role model for the boys, and was an excellent track coach. He had a couple of quirks though. One was that he had a thing for plastic page protectors. When he left our district two years ago I inherited his classroom when I moved up a grade level. There I found complete disorganization-- papers misfiled or not filed at all and just stuffed in the desk drawers or jumbled together in random stacks throughout the room, but many (not all) were carefully encased in page protectors. It was like he wanted to be sure and keep them safe, he just had no idea where safe was. I pulled papers out of page protectors right and left and ended up with about three boxes' worth of them (no wonder we could never find page protectors in the workroom...). His other thing was that he took being a role model VERY seriously and he would lecture kids about their character all the time. You could walk down the hall and see kids cowering against their lockers as he stood with his hands on his hips lecturing about how this or that infraction would be a blight on their character if it continued. He launched into one of his signature lectures one day when a kid, shall we say, "broke wind" right there in the classroom. The lecture covered the subjects of how rude that was and how no one wants to smell that and how a person should excuse themselves and use the restroom if they wish to be considered a gentleman. Right at that moment another teacher be-bopped (and I mean it; that is how she walks) into his room, unaware of the lecture in progress, and commented loudly about Mexican-style treats someone had placed in the lounge just across the hall. "What is that smell," she gushed, "it smells like salsa!." 1月22日 Silence-- For NowI am taking a break for awhile. Don't read too much cause and effect into it. I expect I will be back before too long. Maybe after working TEC (Teens Encounter Christ) next weekend I will have a good story or two to tell. ( last year I destroyed another worker's alarm clock because she clearly didn't know how to use one responsibly. But that's a story for another time.) 1月15日 InvitationI dearly love the book Up A Road Slowly by Irene Hunt for many reasons, not the least of which is Uncle Haskell's advice to Julie:" Write of things you know about, Julie, familiar simple things that you have experienced; things that have touched you deeply. If you haven't lived long enough to have felt anything deeply... then you have nothing to say." I have always known that I feel things deeply. A friend once shook her head at me and said, "you drip feeling!" Ironically, within a few days of that comment someone else scrutinized me carefully and concluded "you are a very tight thinker." I do both feeling and thinking to the extreme; I feel the littlest things deeply and at the same time feel compelled to analyze them to death, usually with pen in hand because for me writing is thinking. I write to process how I feel. If you want to know how I feel and how I think-- not just what I feel and think-- read what I write. It's an invitation to sort of read over my shoulder and watch an idea as I process it. It's an invitation to know something of my heart. It's for the people I love that I do this, offering my heart "vulnerable as all Hell and graceful as the sun on skates" (Rich Mullins).
1月13日 TendernessOur sixth graders have assigned seats in the cafeteria. On Fridays, though, they can sit with their friends. Fridays are Hell for some sixth graders, because there is no one special to save them a seat. We've all been there; we all know what it feels like to be lonely in a crowd. In the book Abba's Child, Brennan Manning says that tenderness is the way we feel in a crowded room when we are aware of the presence of someone who knows us and thoroughly likes us. I would further describe it as the feeling I have when I walk into that crowded room, catch the eye of someone I love and realize they have been saving a place for me. The name of that feeling (for both of us) is tenderness.
I like my job and the people I work with. We have great conversations about education. We impersonate kids who irritate us and make each other laugh. But these people don't know my heart, so in school I often feel lonely and isolated like I don't have anyone to sit by, even though I am sitting by people. Yesterday I was busy teaching and I looked up from my overhead projector and there, unexpectedly, was Cherie-- someone I love, someone who knows my heart, there, in this crowd of relative strangers. The answer to my question "what are you doing here?" was a gift, a CD she had made for me that morning which she entitled "Encouragement for the Journey." No one at school ever talks about "the journey", but like I said, she knows my heart. There was such tenderness in that, the kind that Brennan Manning says "brings an inward sigh of relief and a strong sense of feeling safe." |
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