Be ready in season and out of season.

Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching...

Be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist,

fulfill your ministry.

2 Timothy 4:2,5

This past Friday can go down as one of the most frustrating teaching days I have ever experienced. The day started out with an upset parent and ended up with an 8 year old child throwing a tantrum in my classroom. In between, a whole lot of other things occured that were less than favourable, and all of a sudden I realized that I am in for a challenge this year.

Call it naivity and inexperience. Call it blind faith. Call it whatever you like. I still believe that there is good in each and every one of these children.

They have been trained and raised to fight at every offense taken against them. A misguided word, a crossing of the eyes, the gesture of a hand will send even the smallest one reeling against another.

"My momma said that if anybody gets in my face, I can hit 'em."

Yep, that is truly what their momma's say. And now I believe it. That is all they seem to know. I don't know if I will be able to change their way of thinking. But I sure hope to be planting some seeds of life into their little hearts. We had a long talk about what to do if someone was causing them trouble. Most chirped up with suggestions for beating the other person up. They didn't have any other solutions and I think it is because they've never really been given another solution. So instead of telling them what to think my challenge for them was to think for themselves. The question posed on my front board in the classroom is now, "Can you find a better way?" And that is what I now ask them constantly...whether it be math, or reading, or solving a social problem.

And so I am challenged too. B/c I was so frustrated this weekend that I did not want to go back to school. I wanted to go back to my middle class, suburban children. I had it easy. As I sat in the chair behind my desk, watching the rain fall, fighting back tears, I began to think about the challenge before me. My first thought was to call my professor whom I have always depended on for support and encouragement, and then realized that everything I needed to know she has taught me. And everything I don't know...God will show me along the way. There is more inside of me than I realize I suppose.

I began to think about God's call on my life.

What is call God's call on my life? What has He prepared me for? What is He preparing me for? I have no idea, but I do know that I am on my way somewhere. I know that there are others who need to know Him. So for now, this teaching job IS my ministry. And realizing this was a hard one to swallow. I do not feel like a missionary...I do not feel like a pastor...I do not feel like an intercessor or any of those other labeled ministry jobs. But yet God has placed me here and now I have to respond and do my best.

Fulfilling my ministry in this season is simply loving God and loving the people He has placed in my life. I expected that it would be hard, but I did not expect the emotion that comes with the hardness. I truly need His strength to make it through this year.

This past week, I came upon a surprising recognition. It was during a late night conversation with a fellow teacher (and new friend) over hot chocolate and a Krispy Kreme donut. We were talking about relationships and comparing where we are at in age to where we thought we'd actually be. And then she said (in paraphrase) that she really admired how content I seem to be in spite of the fact that I'm going on 26 and still not even close to being married.

It reminded me of a moment about 6 years ago when I was visiting my very single, yet very happy with her life, 27 year old friend. I remember praying, "God, pllleaasse don't let it take that long for me to meet Mr. Right." I never thought I'd be looking at 26 the way she had seen 27 and 28 and 29 before she finally met the man she would marry. I never wanted to think about being single for that long.

Yet, here I am and I am totally happy about it. I don't WANT to get married just to get married anymore. I don't want to be in a relationship just to have someone to talk about or just to have someone to talk to. I love having friends. I love traveling. I love reading a book for hours a day. I love being able to change my plans at any moment. I love having time to just sit and reflect and play music. I love being able to spend money on whatever I want to spend it on. I love having freedom to live my life.

I have been on the other side. The side where everything I loved and cherished was squelched and locked up in a place that I felt obligated to turn away from. All in the name of "love". I let another person decide for me what was important and put my own feelings, thoughts, and dreams in the background. I proclaimed to myself that what I wanted did not matter as much as making the relationship work. And all that time, I never realized, that I was not loving myself enough and, therefore, could not fully love that person either. No, I never want to go back to that place.

Do I want to get married? YES
Do I want to have my own family? YES

But not until it is right. Not until I know that we'll be the very best of friends and enjoy our lives together. Not until I see that he is the one God had in mind when He created me.

" Too many people are trying to meet the right person

Instead of trying to be the right person."
Russ Myers

My sentiments exactly...been pondering this same thing and ran across this quote tonight.

"Yes, it was good..."

Tonight I am sitting at Panera in Jacksonville, FL and I am missing the places and the people known to me in the most recent years of my life.

I miss my roomates. I miss chatting with Ria. I miss Jenny's smiles and hugs. I miss Jilli's everyday friendship. I miss Starbucks on Sundays. I miss the small elementary school I worked in. I miss the teachers there. I miss the kiddos and any confidence I had that I actually knew what I was doing. I miss my extended Tulsa family. I miss the few good friends I did have left after the college crowd scattered.

My sister is about to embark on the ORU experience. I find myself wishing that I could be there (in Tulsa) too. How odd...seeing as how I was so excited to get myself out of there. Don't get me wrong. I am doing just fine here. I love being near my parents and sister again. I love having new places to explore and meeting new people. Tonight, I am just missing some pieces that are close to my heart.

Slowly but surely my heart is being renewed in this place. I have been made aware of some things that are not right and at the same time I have felt the calling of a deeper sort, the right things rising to the surface. I think I did have to come here. I don't know how long I will be here. I don't know what God has for me to do. But I know that whatever it is, it will be good. I will look back and say..."yes, it was good."

Imagine my excitement upon seeing 9 comments in my comment section...and then imagine my disappoinment after seeing that 3 of these comments were merely SPAM. Ughh...how in the world did they find me? And even more importantly, do they actually think that I'd believe their claim to liking my blog?

Dear Readers,
I know that it's been awhile...hope you're still checking every once in awhile. :)

As per Amy's request I will fill you in on the first week of school.

First off, I couldn't have asked for a better place. For being a city school...the campus is well taken care of, the people are friendly, and for the most part I have not seen any big student problems.

My classroom:
*is at least double the size of my classroom last year.
*contains a whole wall of windows and two doors.
*produces at least one large palmetto bug for me dispose every couple of days.
(now mind you that I cannot squish these bugs...they are large and full of squishy insides...I must first trap them and then manuever them through the outside door...where I am sure inevitably they only wait for the opportunity to return to my classroom again.)
*is filled with all the materials I could ever need
(thankfully this is a title I school which somehow has extra money to provide what teachers need.)

My students:
*continue to add in number every day. (seriously, I have gotten at least four more than I expected.)
*have been surprisingly well behaved...better than I expected anyways.
*7 girls/13 boys
*the majority eat breakfast in my classroom b/c they do not eat at home
*are very eager to learn
*are sweet
*have been taught at home that if someone gets in their face they are allowed to hit them (learned this lesson from two of my girls who were having a misunderstanding)

I:
*am the minority in my class.
*am overwhelmed with information, and standards, and requirements, and meetings, and lesson plans, and this new concept of grading papers (in kindergarten this did not happen), and portfolios, paperwork...did I leave anything out? :)
*am excited about this opportunity...I enjoy working with the older ones.
*have improved on my classroom management since last year (though I know I still have a lot to learn)
*have made some new friends among the teachers, there are a lot of younger teachers at the school, which is very nice.
*have already gotten my first paycheck!!! ..can we say no state tax and full medical coverage? (and I'm still looking to see if they are going to help me out with school loans...there's a good possibility.)

Student quotes:

*On the first day, "Are you going to be our teacher for the whole year?"

*After scribbling out only the words (and not the rest of the paper) on a discipline note home my student explained,

"yeah, my baby brother did that."

More to come...the year's still young. :)

Tomorrow is my first day of third grade. Nervous? Umm..yeah.

I just realized that I might be in over my head as most of my training has been at the kindergarten level. I do realize, however, that in order to learn and grow, I must be challenged. So, for this year, the challenge is to teach urban third graders in a Jacksonville public school.

I do admit to some excitement. Once I figure out what I am supposed to teach them...I should be okay. ;)

In other news....as I haven't been so faithful to my blogging...I am wondering how the heck I got here. I mean, I know how I got to Florida. I remember the sequence of events. But I really do wonder recently what I'm supposed to be doing here. It's only the beginning, these kinds of thoughts are probably normal and healthy. But I do miss the comforts of familiarity. I do miss my friends.

To all of you One Day people...I broke out the live cd and listened while I was out and about in Jacksonville. I seriously had tears in my eyes from beginning to end...mostly b/c the music added to the way that God was working on my heart throughout the day. The songs and prayers reminded me, though, that at another time and place, I sought out the heart of God with others around me. Oh, how I miss and long for that chance now. I long to have a heart to heart conversation about what God is doing me and to hear what God is doing in others. I long to share the love of Christ with someone over coffee and really walk away knowing that God was there. Where does that excitement go through the years? The excitement that causes you to stop in the middle of Waffle House and pray for a group of highschool graduates, the excitement that unconditionally brings thirty young adults together every week to share the love of God with one another, the excitement to talk about God and sing songs about Him and just LOVE Him? Where does it go? I still want to be excited.

Pip recently talked about the holy roar. In my own heart I know that it has been suppressed. Somehow, I know that I have allowed myself to be defined by the relationship I have held with the church only to find that it was a lie and a misjudgment. I became who they wanted me to be. I allowed their definitions to become my definitions, their labels to become my labels, their lifestyles to become my lifestyle. And I never questioned whether it was right or wrong. Until one day when I no longer fit into the mold that I had assumed had been created for me.

I want to know God more than I want to know anything in the whole world. I want to hear His heart and to see His face. But all of a sudden doing church as I have always done it no longer seems to coincide with knowing who He is. Do I want to ignore the people of God? No. Do I want to ignore what He is doing among His people on earth? Absolutely not. I hear the roar. I hear it at the depths of my heart. But how do I free it from the box that I have locked it away in? The box of uncertainty and apprehension.

Lots of questions on a night like tonight.

I've been reading the Chronicles of Narnia this week so I will end with this excerpt from chapter 8 of The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis. It is the chapter where the Lion begins to sing and as he sings Narnia comes into being.

"In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing. It was very far away and Digory found it hard to decide from what direction it was coming. Sometimes it seemed to come from all directions at once. Sometimes he almost thought it was coming out of the earth beneath them. Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it...

Then two wonders happened in the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by the other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it..The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn't come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leapt out...The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time. If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing."