Sentiments

Happy Easter weekend.  I hope yours was special.  Mine was.  It was unexpected and good and not like other years, though the other years were good too. Instead of spending time in Iowa with family, we stayed home.  And my mom and grandma weren’t with us.  They were with my grandma’s twin brother.  He was 84, and he died today.  This has been both difficult and good all at once.

            I recently wrote about death on this blog.  What it does to me in a tidal wave, no matter what.  It was especially meaningful to think about this today, on Easter, when Christians celebrate who Jesus is, and what he has done.  Death is overcome.  There is no sting.  But today I talked with my dad about how grief and the shock of death, no matter what you expect in the end, is still hard to deal with.  And I just read this in 'The Screwtape Letters' yesterday…

            ‘The humans live in time, and experience reality successively.  To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change.’

            There we were, eating dinner, and the phone call came.  We heard all of the short details you hear when there is too much going on, but word has to get out.  We took turns shouting the news into Grandpa’s ear, and then, for the rest of the afternoon, we got updates. 

Cracked Apart

Good Friday. I woke up thinking of the song called 'Beautiful Scandalous Night'. About how it's hard to understand just fully what Jesus has done for the world. About how grace brings you to it anyway, and enlarges your little Grinch-like heart and makes you really alive with the fullness of it.


In the last week I have been reading The Screwtape Letters once again. I read them before and was shocked to my core. Last week I knew I needed it again. Talk about eye opening. And heavy. And real.  It has also reminded me of the brilliance or writers in the past, of God's character and how astonishing it is that He loves us, and of the indignation you feel when you see you're being tricked. And what it does to you when you see it and know it and change your life's thoughts because of it.


I've said it before, but I'll say it again. God is cracking me apart. It's bewildering, and surprising, and just like God and no one else to seep into the cracks of my life in this way.

Making It Funny

I just had a conversation with a very good friend on the phone.   A very unexpected, plucky discussion to end the weekend and begin the week.  Amy is always authentic and fresh and funny.  (So are the things Peter says in the background.)  She can say something to commiserate with a story that makes it hilarious instead.    


I am all about forward thinking and pressing on and choosing not to dwell.  However, in the past few days, a story from my life in college, one especially mortifying and filled with decision making I would never make anymore, has plagued me. 

Life and Rocks

When I was little, my brother got a rock tumbler.  Maybe for his birthday, maybe for Christmas....I don't remember.  What I do remember that the neighbors had it too, and for a season, there were days on end that my brother and the neighbor kids would tumble rocks.  In the garage.  It just sat there, wearing down a rock.  It made a terrible sound.  And then it would come out smooth and wonderful, and....? 

I remember wondering what the heck you would do with a smooth rock after you put it through the tumbler.  And why my parents were so ok to let that thing run.  And why I was missing the point.

I thought about this today because the best way to describe my life right now is that.  I'm the rock.  It feels like I'm in a rock tumbler and my prayer life is cracking me apart.  Instead of getting all Christian camp counselor with my vernacular here, I'm just going to say that.  I actually feel like a rock being worn down.  To a good thing.  In response to the things I've prayed about before. 

Why I Am Bad At Laryngitis

Day One: 
I have a really fun morning with my sister.  We sit around and talk and drink coffee.   I drive for 5 hours and enjoy the prairie and the silence and the sky.  I go to a really fun St. Patrick's Day party.  At said party, right around 11 pm, I lose my voice.  I still stay up until 2 am.

Day Two:
At church.  I still think I'm functioning like a normal human.  I totally deny this inside until I talk to my mother on the phone and she tells me not to talk to anyone for the rest of the day.   (I listen, but still don't get it.) 

Day Three: 
Back to school.  I change all my lesson plans to keep my voice silent.  I enjoy the silence in the morning.   All students are awesome about this.  By the afternoon, I'm getting antsy.  I want conversations to happen but my body won't cooperate.  I tell myself I'll be fine by tomorrow.

Day Four: 
I'm not fine by tomorrow.   Students check in before school to see if I'm ok.  I tell them I am and drink lots and lots of water and teach like everything is normal.  Every once in a while I catch weird looks from the students and I hear the strain in my voice.  And I think it must be sort of difficult to listen to me. 

Far Away and Dreamy

 

Two weeks ago, my friend Jamie told me that life is sometimes so strange to me because I am so distinctly logical and emotional inside.  At the same time.  When she said this, I blinked a few times, said ‘Yes’ to it, and some of the dissonance in my life immediately went away. 

After that, I also realized that I live simultaneously between two drastically differently views of time and place.  (Big week, people, lots of thoughts…)  It has a lot to do with what I say about the world and the stories in them.  And how this all gets refined and sorted and lived.  This is, in the end, really, what all of these posts are about. 

What Fills the Room

Well, everything has been moved. And I have a new classroom.

And I guess I just have to say that I forgot about ‘my people’ and how they fill the room. Earlier in the week, when I was sitting there by myself, lamenting about life (sans overhead), I did not remember that eventually the kids would come into the room and we would talk about history. That, despite the chaos, happened today. High schoolers took care of the things that needed change and repair in the old room, and I just walked down the hall with my students and kept them occupied in this new little wing. Which is actually already being referred to as the West Wing. I can handle that. We played trivia, and in one class, all 12 students huddled around my computer and finished a movie about John Wilkes Booth. It was kind of endearingly ‘old school St. Croix Prep’.

And then, at the proper time, the students moved into new lockers. And this was the missing piece. Classrooms feel blissfully empty for about two seconds without students in them. You breathe in and out and hear their voices far away in the lunch room or coming up the stairs, and it’s good to have that solitude before they show up again. But every time, every time, I am really happy that they come. And I left school today feeling really grateful to have a job where I really liked to be around these people.

Yes, it’s the rosy glow of the move, I am sure. But it’s also that I have a calling in life, and it works for me, and I work really hard at it, and it’s what I’ve always been meant to do. 

The Overhead

‘All the art of life lies in the fine art of holding on and letting go.’ – Havelock Ellis 

 That’s the quote that is basically the motto of this week.  We’re moving at school.  I realized this week just HOW nostalgic and old school I really am.  At least in regard to teaching.  One of my students from long ago said it just like that to me, at the end of a conversation in the hall.   ‘You’re kind of nostalgic, aren’t you?’  I guess it makes sense….I can remember lots of things and I AM charmed by history. 

But I can also see that something very good and very new is right in front of me.  New whiteboards, a view of trees and snow, sunlight (aka an outdoor window for the first time in 5 years), freshly painted walls.  The place is just waiting for new memories.  I understand just how huge this is….people don’t get new classrooms every day. 

Hope

"With every rising of the sun, think of your life as just begun."