Just Us

Many times I write a quick blogpost and it stays in drafts. This morning I came across this one...one I wrote right before the start of the school year. Funny how it spoke to me today. Praying it encourages you as well. Perspective -A particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view. As I begin this new school year, I've decided my word for the year will be perspective .  Over the past few weeks, the theme of how my own personal perspective impacts my life has continually surfaced through books I'm reading and through my own personal devotion time.  Here are a few thoughts that have been challenging me as I go into another school year: Though I cannot control what will happen in my day, I can control the perspective that I use to determine my attitude when unfavored things occur. Perspective: When I wake, am I waking with a grateful heart toward God for giving me another day to simply be here and breathe?  Am I choosing to wake grateful t...

Pulling sticky tacked posters off the wall......putting away books full of curriculum back on the shelf...... hours of entering grades and filling out several spreadsheets and filing. The hustle and bustle of the end of the year has officially settled in. Within a few days, kids will skip out of the school building doors with huge smiles, summer plans and carefree fun on their minds.  And the teachers are often feeling the exact same way on that last day, if we are being completely honest. However, contrary to what many people may believe to be true of teachers at the end of the school year...there is always an element of sadness for me as I close the chapter on each class of kindergarteners. In the craziness of the end being in sight, it is so easy to let the busyness steal the true joy of this time with my students. My word for the school year has been “intentional.”  It’s written outside my classroom door as a reminder and it has caused me to reflect often on how to foc...

Growing up as a teacher's kid, you would think I would have wanted nothing more than to follow in my mother's footsteps.  I even remember people saying, "Aw, you could just be a teacher like your mom!" You may be surprised to know....I honestly did NOT want to be a teacher from the beginning.  Of course growing up with three sisters, we played school A LOT.  But as soon as I saw the day-to-day life of my mom, an elementary school teacher, I quickly learned that being a teacher wasn't exactly as glamorous as our young minds had imagined.  Being a teacher was much more than making red checkmarks on a page and giving directions to my willing, well-behaved sisters. I would frequent my mom's classroom after school. She was always working long after the last bell and always had a full bag flung over her shoulder as she left school each night.  She would travel to one of our many school events, then come home and open her school bag to begin her work again, even in...

You don't know me, but I am but one in the great army of teachers that wake up each morning ready to take on the challenges that face our public schools today. You don't see me, but I arrive at school early to make sure I have everything in place so that not a minute of precious learning time is wasted with these dear little ones. However, my morning of planning is often interrupted by an ever-swinging door. The door swings open several times every few minutes to former students stopping by to share their latest successes, to show me their new kicks, or to just grab a hug before the day begins. Every once in awhile the door swings opens to a parent wanting to discuss his/her child's progress or a concern that needs my attention. The door also swings open to my colleagues, just checking in to remind me of a deadline or to ask a question about our new curriculum or assessments.  And....then my teaching day officially begins. As I prop open that ever swinging door, the real ...

That which seems evil, is it a cloud to bring rain, to bring a greater good to the whole of the world?   Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perseverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?  I dare flip the cue card over and I make out the words on the backside, "See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life.  I have wounded and it is I who heal" Deuteronomy 32:39.  I nod.  I know. I know. And these truth words reconfigure the battlefield under my feet . ---From the Ann Voskamp's book, One Thousand Gifts I love this quote from Ann Voskamp.  She has a way with making sense of difficult circumstances and pointing us back to scripture to ground our thoughts and feelings.  Never in my life have I experienced so many hard goodbyes in just one year.  And never have I heard the words so often, "I'm so sorry for your loss."  Never have I ...

"God said, " It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant….Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life 'doing what dad does.'" So God made a farmer."---Paul Harvey William Dunn.   But better know as “Billy” or “Wild Bill”, husband, dad, or to several of us lucky ones…Grandpa Billy.  Grandparents are a special gift and the memories you make with your grandparents are memories that cannot easily be forgotten.   They are treasures that you hold on to. So….unforgettable memories with Grandpa Billy?  Those we’ve definitely got.   Some appropriate for sharing, some not   so much.   But many of my earliest memories are with Grandpa, sitting in a tractor.   During harvest, I’m pretty sure our mother was TH...

"Yellow!?!?"  One of my favorite greetings to hear at the end of the line coming from a sweet lady aged in her years.  It makes me laugh every time, but so thankful that some things never change.  "Well...Derrica-Do...how are you?"   The next thirty minutes we share recipes, talk about the kids, the weather and things to come.   I pray for the right words to say to bring comfort and encouragement for the storm she is facing...in reality the storms we are all facing.  I come up short, my words feeling inadequate.  And then she reminds me of a story and I am reminded.  "You remember how you told me that story about Reid...riding in the car with you when it was raining really hard?"  Her words bring back a simple, sweet little story I had shared with her awhile back.  I was driving with the twins through one of those fierce, pouring rain kind of storms.  Trying to hide my own fear, I became very quiet, gripped the wh...