Morning Manifesto

Sometimes in this world there are songs that go right to your heart. 

Straight to you, past everything....all sounds and voices and distractions, and right to the place you needed to be tended.  I think that God does that to remind you of Himself and that you are, as a beloved person that He has made, being seen and talked to in your day.

Year 8 Begins

 

It's the first day of school. 

(!!!!!)

I am 8 years into the life of this profession, and I am happy to say that while I still picked out very carefully what I will wear, there is no longer a pit inside my stomach on these days.  I feel happy to be Miss Christians again.  I feel excited to meet 186 people again and welcome them to my class.  

Juxtaposed

This is what God feels like today.

Last night I received the terrible news that someone I knew and loved had died.  For the sake of grief and time and a thousand private thoughts, I'm refraining from sharing overly much here.  But I will say that it is loss of family in the 'walking-around life' of a close friend. I am feeling this from all sides. 

More Themselves Than Ever

"When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.”

- C.S. Lewis

Messy

Summer for this teacher was wonderful. 
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. 

I found the magical things that refreshed me, and bound up the ways I had been unraveled in the spring.  And then, after all of the big and small things in that season, I found myself back at school. 

Life this week is everything I used to do in the spring, but it's fresh again.  Without fail this week is fresh bulletin boards and long meetings and pencils and copies and protocol.  And don't forget the crazy nightmares about losing control entirely.  (I hear you always have those, no matter how old you get.)  But in one said meeting today, our speaker said this.

'Teaching is messy.'

Breezy Trees, Summer Sky, and Jesus

There’s a certain amount of pressure for all of us, I think, to be endlessly productive, to create content around the clock, to say big things every day.....

Let’s resist that. It’s not how nature works. It’s not how seasons work. There’s planting and reaping and harvesting, and there’s the practice of letting a field lay fallow for a while, allowing it to prepare again to produce. For the first time in a long time, I’m practicing silence, laying fallow, trusting that the world will keep spinning quite happily without quite so many words from me.

I’m going to listen more than I speak, rest more than I produce, read more than I write, say“no, thank you” more than I say “yes, please, and quick, and more!”

I didn't write this.  Shauna Niequist did.   But I started there because until today, it's how I felt exactly.  

Switching

I'm done. 

With the D.C. trip.

With my long, winding habit of grading papers in the 13-14 school year. 

With doing things as I can in the moment, knowing I'll have to circle back later and actually do it well.

With crazy, cluttered thinking.