Childhood trauma, deflated.

One of my earliest memories is of my oldest brother getting bitten by a dog. I'm not sure how old I was, but we were living in College Park at the time, and we moved to Dr. Phillips when I was 6. So, I was pretty little. I vividly recall Chris walking into the house, saying he'd been bitten by the dog across the street, Mr. Bill. His entire calf was encircled in jaw marks. I never actually saw Mr. Bill in my few years of cognizance in College Park, but I have an extremely specific vision of him. The Mr. Bill of my memory, that bit my brother and made him go to the hospital for shots, was a huge, yellow, pit-bullish monster with giant teeth. I even wrote a poem in a college class about this memory (I got an A!) For most of my life, I have been scared of dogs because of this event. I was the kid that people had to put their dogs away for when I came over, even fluffy harmless Goldens. I was SERIOUSLY traumatized. (I still am kind of scared of big dogs, even though my own giant dog is a marshmallow.) 

I had my parents over for dinner this weekend and we got to talking about how big dogs are better than little dogs, and my mom said, "Yeah, little dogs always would bite Chris, like that beagle or whatever it was that lived across the street from us in College Park." 

Here is my inner monologue upon hearing that: "A BEAGLE? I was traumatized by a BEAGLE? I feel so cheated! Mr. Bill was a giant, menacing, venomous behemoth! NOT A BEAGLE!!!" 

It has been more than 20 years since that happened, and I am just now finding out that my fears were based on my imagination. I actually feel disappointed that Mr. Bill wasn't the evil giant I made him out to be in my head. Is that weird?

The ordinary, yet no less miraculous.

This has been a hard week. I feel like I am barely skating by in all aspects of my life, and I hate feeling like I am not doing my best. I can't keep my house clean. My lectures at school are nowhere near as thorough as they were last year. My grading turn-around is not as quick. (I did double my hours this year, but I can't convince myself that that is an excuse.) I feel like I'm on edge all the time, and this weekend, William's computer crashed, with all my lesson plans, handouts, worksheets, etc. from last year on it. We had to replace it, and we just had to get our AC fixed for a large amount of money, compared to our educator salary.  Me ---> thin thread, I'm telling you. 

Yesterday we got home from work and opened the door and my first thought was "What happened to all my stuff? Did someone rob... oh, it's just CLEAN!" 

My wonderful, amazing, superb gem of a sister in law had come over while I was at work and cleaned my house. Full-on scrubbed the bathroom, folded laundry, organized the clutter. I have space on my kitchen table. I don't have guilt about the grime in the sink. I feel like Christian in Pilgrim's Progress when his burden is cut of. 

My parent partner today told me, out of nowhere, that she was a certified teacher and if I ever got overloaded and wanted to send papers home to her, she would grade them for me and send them back. 

Today we got home from work and got the mail. I opened one envelope from some company I didn't recognize, and it was a check. I showed it to William and he realized it was from the AC company.  For whatever reason, they sent us some of that money back. 

All of these things have "ordinary", logical explanations. Yet to me, they are miracles. Each area of my life that I feel is beyond my control, God has shown me, really is beyond my control. God is bigger than my stress. God is bigger than my stubborn self-reliance. God has shown me systematically in just 24 hours that He will provide. 

"And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his lifespan?... Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." Matthew 6:27, 34

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." James 1:17

Challenge du jour.

We started reading Romeo and Juliet today in my 8th grade class. Explaining why, in Shakespeare's day, biting one's thumb at someone else was cause for offense is a little tricky. Getting them to understand without actually demonstrating the modern day equivalent is interesting, to say the least. Someone asked me how Sampson could bite his thumb without it being obvious to Abraham. The example I offered was someone rubbing their eye with their index finger, but not with their index finger. There was a lot of "ohhhhhh yeah!"s in the room. Then, I had to explain to both classes that in reading the text out loud, they were putting the wrong inflection on the line, "Bring me my sword, ho!" That does change the meaning a bit. I had the same problem last year. It's hard not to laugh while I'm reining them back in. This should be a fun few weeks. 

Heavy-handed metaphor alert!

This evening, after dinner and after a long day of work, I made myself go to the gym. I hadn't been all week, and I knew I needed to get some stress out. On a good day,  I'll go a couple miles on the treadmill and then several miles on the bike, with weights intermixed. I love working out. It's the only time I listen to certain songs, many from my younger years. Blink182, NSync, Bon Jovi... with some Relient K and other bands sprinkled in. I blast my ipod in my ears so loudly that it forces my brain to stop whirling and I can't think about anything. Usually. Today, I was on my last mile on the bike, adding up my total miles, when a thought struck me. I had "gone" about 8 miles, all told, without actually going anywhere. Now, I am not one of those ladies who gets a gentle sheen and a nicely pink face when they work out. My whole face and neck turns red and I sweat like a horse. That's a lot of effort and temporary discomfort to have not actually gone anywhere, visibly. Then I started thinking about why I work out. For those of you that haven't known me very long, here's something you may not know about me: about 3 years ago I was 8 sizes bigger than I am now. It was a combination of busy-ness, laziness, and depression that got me those extra pounds. Zoom forward to now, where I run on a treadmill going nowhere fast. Now that I've lost weight and am back in shape, my new goal is to start participating in 5ks, and then in a sprint triathlon that my dear friend and co-worker Joy did last year. When I get home from the gym, there are no noticeable differences in my exterior except that I'm smelly and red-faced. However, I am moving towards that goal. (Here comes the metaphor...)

Since school started, I have been overwhelmed with busy-ness. I do a lot of work, spend a lot of time exhausted, with nothing immediate to show for it. I'm sure a lot of you can relate. Life sneaks up on you and then next thing you know, you're drowning in a pile of papers, the dishes are dirty in the sink, the laundry is piling up,  you're running with nothing to show for it. You haven't gone anywhere noticeable. I was thinking about where I've been... directionless, then working, then laid off 4 months into being a newlywed (along with my husband, by the same employer, but that's another story...), then not knowing how we were going to get by, then having a job dropped into my lap, which I ended up hating but was grateful for employment. Zoom forward to now... I love the school I teach at now. All those steps along the way, some very difficult, just like getting back into exercising was, have brought me to this level of intensity. At the end of the school day today I felt red-faced and smelly on the inside. It's a hard job. I don't often get to see immediate results in my students. But I have a goal. I want for them to be able to navigate their future: high school, college, life... with a firm foundation. I got to see some of that when a student emailed me to thank me because when she arrived at her new high school and went through her first day, she felt prepared. 

It took me a few years to see results from getting back into physical fitness. It might take weeks, months... even years for things to really "click" in students.  But that doesn't mean I get to hop off the treadmill because after running for 30 minutes, I still have some flab. It just means I have to be ok with being faithful to do the steady work.