April 29, 2006

Amazing People

As I was reading my usual set of blogs this morning, I came across a quote about a women who is probably about my same age. It appears that she is retiring from her work to spend time with her grandchildren. Perhaps she is going to be their babysitter, the post doesn't say. But what it does say, speaks volumes for this woman, her character and the beauty her life shares with others. Here is the quote:

"This is one of the most amazing women I’ve met in my life: godly, positive, cheerful, helpful, wise, hospitable, compassionate. She consistently leaves people blessed and nurtured in her wake."

That quote written by the senior minister of her church, is one of the sweetest compliments to a woman that in all likelihood didn't do anything for the glory. Works of the heart are not done for accolades like the one written by her minister. There are people that do everything with no forethought of what others may or may not say about them.

I'm awed by women who seem to float through a day with a smile on her face even on the most stressful of days. Some days I find myself looking at women of pleasant attitude, working hard to get jobs completed and making everyone feel so special and I think to myself, "How on earth do they do that? How can they be so happy all of the time and accomplish so much?"

I want to be that kind of woman. I want to be a worker for my Lord. I want to lead a better life doing for others. But I procrastinate, put off what I SHOULD do now and in general, I don't get my act together.

Right now, I may only be remembered for being a teacher and for who my children are, and who my husband is. My husband is wonderful. He volunteers in community and church activities. He wants to help people and will usually say yes to requests even though he really doesn't have the time. He seems to try to fill his time with useful, meaningful works for others.

God bless all the people that are racing through life, doing for others with a happy heart.

April 27, 2006

It's Not Friday Yet??

Here it is 6:55 a.m. and I SHOULD be in the shower. Instead I have just finished breakfast and I'm obviously sitting here at my computer. I don't want to move this morning. I'm tired and placing myself in a room full of noisy, complaining 9 and 10 year olds is not on the top of my list of "things I want to do" today.

I recently found out that my job description will change for next school year. Its a good thing...for me anyway. My present job is teaching 3rd grade reading. This is the first of many more TAKS test years for our 9 and 10 year olds in Texas. In the past I have avoided having to teach a "state testing" year. So two years ago when my present school asked me to teach third grade on their campus I was not ready to jump at the opportunity even though the school is only 3 blocks away from my house. Then I was informed that at this school the Language and writing composition is separate from reading and that the children do not take the TAKS for Language and writing composition until fourth grade. "Interesting!" I said. I interviewed with the principal who asked me more than once if I wanted to teach 3rd grade reading instead of writing, to which I replied each time, "No, thank you."

So the big move from my former school to my present school was made two years ago and I thought I was making my last move until I retired. I anticipated my new position all summer long. I went to my new building when summer school had ended and began to unpack boxes and put my things in the cabinets. I attended a writing workshop with other district teachers and I was feeling pretty pumped about the start of a new school year in this new position.

Then, as the introduction week of inservice meetings progressed, I learned that the new 3rd grade reading teacher hired to be one of my two partners, was moving to another school. Now a new reading teacher would have to be hired in just a few days to start off the year. I wasn't worried until the principals came to me and asked me teach Reading. READING?! A TAKS SUBJECT?! They couldn't possibly be doing this to me. I have managed to avoid this all my days of teaching at my former school, when one of my principals asked me yearly to move to 3rd grade reading. Oh, no, I DON'T want to teach 3rd grade reading and be responsible for the passing of all of those kids on the TAKS tests. If they fail the TAKS, they can fail 3rd grade. What pressure! No, I don't want to do that. I came to this school to teach writing, a fun course, that I know how to teach and I believe I do it pretty well....no, I do not want to teach reading!

The school year started with me teaching 3rd grade reading. I didn't win that battle but, I was assured that it would only be for this first year and then I could have the writing back. So, I reluctantly and tearfully taught 3rd grade Reading TAKS. In the meantime, a permanent substitute teacher was hired to begin the year in my coveted Language Arts position until a certified teacher could be hired. The substitute was a nice woman and would go on to do a fair job of teaching the course. So the year began and we all became comfortable in our positions. But I noticed that no one was interviewing for the reading teacher job and I was being tutored on reading techniques for 3rd grade reading TAKS. By mid-term, the substitute teacher in language had decided to finish her teaching certification and become a permanent teacher. She was hired permanently and my chances of getting my language arts job back were looking slim. However, my principal had told me that teaching reading would only have to be for one year and then I could have the language arts class back for the following year.

So the end of that first hard year ended and I had my summative conference with my principal. She asked if I wanted to move back to Lanugage for the next year. Well, by now the hired teacher was working on her certification and besides, we had become friends. I told my principal that I'd teach reading another year so the other teacher could continue in her present position while working to be certified.

That brings us up to now. Two year later, I've taught the reading, my students have done pretty decently on the TAKS, but I still want to teach language and writing before my career ends. After hearing my partner on many days exclaim how she might like to move down to primary grades, I decided to approach my principal and remind her that I still wanted to teach language and writing. However, I made it clear that I didn't want the position at the risk of harming my new friendship with my partner. If a position didn't open up for her, I'd stay where I was. I even told her that I'd be willing to teach 2nd or 1st grade for which I'm highly qualified.

So last Monday our principal called several of us into the conference room. I couldn't imagine what this was all about. Next, she began to read a letter she was mailing that very day to administration. I was to be assigned to teach language and writing to 3rd grade. Yea! I was so happy, but wait there is more. My partner, who had been teaching language, was being moved to teach kindergarten. Apparently, a job opened up in kindergarten and this started the domino effect of the moving teachers. This was her second year to teach. Next year will be year with her new certification. She was obviously surprised. Then the principal announced to our little gathering that the second grade teacher present was to be moved to my old position, 3rd grade reading. She was most surprised and upset.

The other two teachers are not happy with their move. However, to say that I'm happy comes with a "but". But...I'm sorry that they are not happy with their move, I am the only one that is happy and I am feeling very, very guilty.

Was I wrong to want that position? I didn't tell my principal to move my partner out of that job. In fact I told her not to move her just so I could fill the position. So I don't know why she made that move. Have I been selfish to want my original promised job position back? After all, if I had known that I was going to teach 3rd grade reading and give the TAKS test to my students, I would have turned the job down. I would have stayed teaching second grade at my former school. Should I be feeling guilty? I don't know.

April 24, 2006

Dreams

I hope that I dream when I'm dead. Not to sound morbid, but when I am sleeping really hard and dreaming, that is the best sleep. An intense dream can be as good as a great novel if it isn't too scary. So when I die, I hope that God will allow me to have dreams.

One time I had a dream that I was dead and in heaven. It looked like a fifties kitchen right out of "Happy Days". The floor was that black and white checked tile on which stood four silver chrome and red vinyl chairs with matching table. Kim and I were sitting at the table having coffee with our friends the Griffins. We were all happily talking and laughing with each other. No one had anywhere to go and there was obviously no stress. That was heaven in my dream. I awoke the next morning with a happy, content feeling about death. It was comfortable, homey and a place where I would be with my friends for eternity.
So I'm thinking that dreams will make my "sleep" a peaceful, tranquil place to spend my eternity. Could that be God's heavenly kingdom? I hope death isn't a big nothing. I pray that I remember people and enjoy eternal happiness.

April 18, 2006

Peeps, Marshmallow, & Chocolate

Okay, enough of that seriousness. On to more joyful, silly topics like "Chocolate Covered Peeps". Ha! I like the sound of that, "Chocolate Covered Peeps". Doesn't that just sound adorable??? Anyway, my friend, Deana, has a blog and she mentioned how it would be awesome to have those little pink Easter Peeps chocolate covered. I think that would be marvelous.

Then I started to think about all of the other marshmallowy centered sweet stuff I've tried. One that came to mind were Pinwheels. They are really big cookies that are mostly chocolate covered marshmallow sitting on a cookie bottom. My mother used to buy them sometimes. They were a real treat and because of their size, one was all that I could eat. Let's see, what are some more? Oh, yes, another marshmallow treat are Snowballs. They are pink coconut covered balls of marshmallow wrapped around a chocolate cake middle. There are two in a package like it was originally one round snowball cut in half. Man! I used to love those things.

Now this next one is a camping treat that, if you don't camp, you just must try sometime. Smores! Who could ever turn down a smore? I love those things. Roast a big marshmallow over an open flame. When I was a little girl, my mom would thread a couple of marshmallows on the tines of a long-handled meat fork. We had a gas stove and we'd roast them over the flame of the gas burner. I just thought that was the way to do it forever. Okay, well, after browning it sufficiently, (a flame or two on the marshmallow is a good thing), take a square of plain Hershey chocolate, lay it on a square of graham cracker, then squoosh the marshmallow on top of the chocolate sandwiching it between two graham crackers. The marshmallow oozes out the edges and melts the chocolate making this one of the best marshmallow treats ever.

Okay, any more out there?

April 14, 2006

"...To Continue"

Yesterday I wrote on this blog about how I tend to have an image of myself in my mind. That is to say, I have this ideal woman pictured in my brain. I have internalized her so much that I feel hard pressed to measure up to "her" expectations of the sort of person I should be.

In my blog, I briefly described that ideal woman. However, in that little description I left out some important qualities of "Superwoman". Above all, she is a woman seeking the heart of God. She reads her Bible daily, speaks of Jesus Christ in her daily conversations and attends church with regularity. I wish that were my claim to how I live, but sadly it isn't. Except that I do truly love God. I believe He is real and that He listens to me. He hears my prayers and talks to me in ways I'd have a difficult time explaining here. Although, I must confess that I'm not always obedient to what I hear Him telling me to do.

In church we are told to live the way we know that God would want us to. We are urged to follow after Jesus and live for Him, showing honor to His ultimate sacrifice for our sins. Do only those things in life that we know will be to the glory of God.

That is no small order to live up to. I've worked on my spiritual life all of my days on this earth. When I was a child of elementary school age, my parents were faithful in taking my brothers and I to church "every time the doors were opened." I can say with all truth that I was not allowed to miss services at my church unless I was sick with a fever. I even remember once breaking out in an allergic rash all over my body in the middle of a Southeast Texas summer and wearing long sleeves and Mother's face powder to church to cover up the rash. I wasn't allowed to miss church for something like a rash. Although, I write that I wasn't "allowed", I don't remember resenting my parents' insistence of my attending.

My "Superwoman" image in my head goes to church regularly, teaches a class, represents a Christian example to the people of the world and is willing to do anything needed in the service of the Lord. My image also studies her Bible daily, prays without ceasing and loves the unlovely. I must say that I do pray a lot. If it were not for my prayers, I'm afraid that I'd be in a lot worse shape than I am. One thing I have come to realize is that even though people come and go from my life, God has never left me. Even times when I quit talking to Him, He was there just waiting to pick up where we had left off in our conversations. He is dependable when no one else is.

This morning I was reading online in the Alcoholics Anonymous publication they call the "Big Book". In it I found a suggested prayer for the person wanting to overcome his/her addiction. It goes like this:
"God, I offer myself to Thee--to build with me and to do with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!"
BB--Chpt5, p. 63

That whole chapter has to do with denying self and handing our lives over to a "higher power". Boy! That would relieve a lot of pressure now wouldn't it? I mean just think of it, to explode my "Superwoman" image and let God take over. The idea is to get to the point of doing more for others than for self. Now that seems to be a no-brainer, but not for a person obsessed with an addiction and how to satisfy that inner craving.

My head image of who I should be and who I am needs a make over. However, some of that old image isn't all bad. As much as "The Wife of Noble Character" in Proverbs 31 makes most of us want to hurl stones, she should be my head image. I am a selfish person seeking to satisfy my inner cravings and that needs to change. Thank the Lord that with my God all things are possible.

April 13, 2006

"Drop and Tuck"

“I had this person I knew I was made to be, yet it was mixed in with all of these other . . . people. As the lights were turned on, I saw I had all of this guilt and shame because I wasn’t measuring up to the image of the perfect person I had in my head. I had this idea of a superpastor — all of these messages I had been sent over the years that I had received and internalized.
…a passage from Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis

Isn’t that a great quote? I borrowed it from Mike Cope's blog, http://www.preachermike.com/. We don’t have to be a pastor to understand the “we have all fallen short” idea in that quote. What really hits me between the eyes is the part about having the idea of a super “somebody” in my head and not measuring up. Yep, that’s me. I have an image in my head of how I should be and I gave up on that person long ago. But the guilt didn’t stop there. Not only do I know that I don’t measure up, now I’ve given up trying. All that it would take to be “superwoman” is too overwhelming and I have lost the energy to try to keep up.

As a young child, my older brother would often resort to playing football with me, his little sister, when none of the usual guys were around. I rather enjoyed those football games even though I almost never won. Just a two-“guy” game of tackle football in our front yard on a late summer evening with the cool St. Augustine grass under our bare feet brings to mind a sweet memory. Richard wasn’t known for playing gently and on more than one occasion I found myself face down as I was pushed to the ground while attempting to make a touchdown. That part of the game I didn’t like. So, as soon as the ball snapped I tucked it under my arm and ran as fast as my short chubby legs would take me. However, I was never a match for my big brother and I soon learned to “drop and tuck”. As he would get closer and closer to me, I avoided the tackle by simply squatting to the ground, hovering over the football and covering my head. Most of the time my brother would stop and yell, “Don’t stop!” I remember how frustrated Richard would get when I simply gave up.

As a grown up, I still give up on things that seem overwhelming. If a task appears too daunting I have to step back and take long breaks to get a proper perspective of what has to be done. Too many voices, too much noise, too many decisions will bog my brain and I either give up and gladly quit, or I stress over the job until it is finished. On the other hand, there are the times that I have fallen back on the ‘ole “drop and tuck” method, letting whatever would happen, happen.

I have an image of the person that I should be. In my head, I can keep the house all cleaned up, while cooking a roast beef in the oven. My husband is very happy to see me every day and greets me with a kiss because he can’t wait to taste the sweetness of my lips. Ha, yeah, that brought a smile to my face too. ;-) My school papers are always graded and the lesson plans are done weekly by Thursday afternoon. Ha, ha, ha, ha…that is so funny, it’s hilarious! Anyway, we can dream can’t we? If you ever see me drop and tuck though, have a heart and pick me up. It just means that life has overwhelmed me and I’m letting what will happen, happen.

Here is another good quote we all can learn from.
Luke 12:25-28
25 Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? Of course not! 26 And if worry can't do little things like that, what's the use of worrying over bigger things? 27 "Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don't work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. 28 And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won't he more surely care for you?

April 4, 2006

No Rest for the Weary

I have Spring Fever something fierce. Getting motivated to grade a bunch of 3rd grade reading worksheets is daunting and I'm just not interested. The kids are beginning to be more interested in sleeping in class than anything else. Frankly I don't blame them either. They still have the Math TAKS to take in a couple of weeks so everyone on the 3rd grade team is holding math tutorials for an hour in the middle of the day. At the same time there are several Reading remediation classes taking place to help the 9 little kids that did not pass the Reading TAKS. They will have two days of tests back to back. Poor guys.

Last night my loving husband invited me along to Minute Maid Park to watch the Astros Opening Day Game with the Marlins. It was a good game and the Astros won, but I was so tired from being at school all day. I was worried about going out instead of staying home to grade papers. But I decided the papers would be there when I got around to them and a night out with my husband was really what I needed. However, I was longing for a morning to sleep in today, but wouldn't you know I pulled morning duty this week. I have to be on duty in the gym by 7:20 a.m. Not too early for some people, but I would much rather wake up slowly sipping my coffee and lounging around in my houserobe until 1:00.

I am getting to have a weekend with the girls though. I'm looking forward to taking off this Friday to attend the Woman's Conference in Houston on Friday and Saturday. Some of my friends are even coming back here to spend the night with me like we are young girls again. Should be fun. That's only the beginning of the weekend.

Saturday night the cast of "Sordid Lives" the play at our community theater, will have their party here at my house after the show. Its a late night party, but I look forward to that too because those theater people are just plain fun. Especially since half of them are related to me.

Sunday we are going on a picnic with our church group after morning services. Then Kim will have to go to the theater for the matinee. My grades are due for the term on Monday morning so the rest of Sunday will be spent preparing them to be downloaded. By the time Monday night rolls around, I'm going to crash.

I should be used to this job and the way the end of the year starts moving as fast as a ball rolling down a mountain. My students and I still have a field trip to the Houston Planetarium and Butterfly Exhibit coming up right after those TAKS tests are over. I can't let up my momentum yet even though I wish I could.

Just 35 days until our Summer break. The countdown begins. Oh and just in case any of you 12 month working types are getting ready to tell me I'm lucky to get the summer off...believe me, I've put in the summer hours after my workday has officially ended. I'm just as much a 12 month worker as anyone. I just have to stay late and work almost every night to make it up. Trust me, it's time for the break to get here.

All teachers are ready to rest and relax on the beaches, lakes and in condos. Its time to stay up late watching old movies and sleeping in the next morning. My days of teaching are numbered and I won't be sad to see this year end. So turn up the CD player so I can listen to the music of lazy days. I'm ready.
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