High school at The Cheesecake Factory

This weekend William and I went out to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. There were several teenagers in the lobby area, waiting for their table. All dressed up in their fancy dresses and suits, waiting, talking... after a few minutes of observing, they all began to fit into stereotypes. There was the thin, impatient girl who pulled her boyfriend's attention away any time he started to converse with his other friends. There was the jock who was kind of handsy with his date. There was one girl, who, along with her date, seemed like a nice person caught between being popular and being friendly. Most of the time, these 6 were standing in a circle talking. On the outside of the circle were 2 girls who obviously didn't fit the mold that the first 6 had conformed to. Neither were gussied up to the hilt. They were the ones that got the pity invite, only to be snubbed while there. The one nice girl and her date seemed genuinely torn for awhile, trying to include them in the conversation, but eventually almost all of the teens that were in couples sat on the available benches. The outsider girls were left standing. Not one of those guys offered their seat to those girls. I was whispering my observations to William, and he agreed with me. One of the outsider girls had a tattoo in Latin on her foot, which caught William's attention. I bet she is smart, witty, and interested in much more than wearing sparkly dresses and deserves better company than the people she was with. I don't know how those girls felt about being the 7th and 8th wheel in that group, but I know how I felt when that was me, all throughout high school. It's miserable. People tell you you are better than them, but you don't believe it at the time. You can put on a front and pretend you don't care, but you do. Everyone wants to be liked and accepted. What I wanted to tell the 6, and then the 2, is that this is all going to change when they become adults. The social game still exists in college, to some extent, but once you grow up... oh how those tables turn. You realize that you really wouldn't have wanted to be friends with those people. You realize your identity hinges on much more than what you wear, if you are in the "in" crowd, if you have a date to homecoming... but it takes time to realize that. It's easier to let go of those days, because you weren't caught up in it in the first place. It stinks, and you're glad to leave it behind. Those 6 are going to have to learn harder lessons because they've had it easy. As we walked away when our buzzer went off, my final thought was "Thank God those days are over!" I wouldn't go back for a million dollars, but I wouldn't trade what I learned for anything. 

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. 

I'm Jesus barJoseph, and I approve this message.

Political season is reaching its frenzied peak. I used to be super-into politics. I was a product of the environment in which I was raised, essentially equating the Republican Party with my faith. I have since come to see that you can be a registered Democrat and love Jesus. I guess I should explain my blog title before some of you dismiss me for being heretical. The intent of this post is to explore the audacity of trying to claim Jesus for political purposes.

Both parties know that Evangelical Christians, a broad category to be sure, play a large part in choosing the next president. 

Barack's followers in general follow him with cult-like devotion. His non-followers think he's acting like the next messiah and and that it will be the worst thing ever to happen in the history of the world if he is elected president. Now, where have I heard that before? The idea that a Democratic president will bring about the destruction of civilization as we know it? It's coming back to me..... OH! I know! It's when Clinton was running for his first term. He was elected... society did not come crashing down around us. And I heard it some other time.... that's right, when he was elected for his second term. And... again when Al Gore, and then John Kerry, was running, but those men didn't win and thus society was preserved in the person of George W. Bush! After all, we are a Christian nation. The next Israel. God loves America more than anybody. We have to have a CHRISTIAN PRESIDENT because otherwise God can't possibly accomplish what He has in store for the US. Ahem. Sorry, that was getting off topic.

So, not only are the Democrats trying to get in on the evangelical Christian action, evangelicals are trying to get in bed with whomever they think will have power next. I read an article in World magazine with a quote from the pastor of a large Orlando church will shall remain unnamed, saying that now Christians can feel unhindered to vote for a pro-abortion candidate (I refuse to use the word pro-choice. That terminology is, to wax eloquent and mildly profane, BS.) The reason is because Democrats have changed their wording to say that their stance is that women should feel freedom to have their babies. Really? What the ****? This same pastor is doing his darndest to get on board with the global warming movement. This pastor and others have had the audacity  (the bad kind, not the "hope" kind) to put recycling your plastic grocery bags on the same moral voter-decision-making level of importance with abortion. Gag me with a (expletive deleted) shovel. I'm all for doing what I can to recycle, conserve water, etc. (I'm very earth-crunchy, especially for a registered Republican, though I do feel rather ironic every time I pull up to Whole Foods in my SUV with a W sticker on it.) But it is not as important as stopping the daily murder of the unborn. 

Back to the Republican party. Every 4 years, the Christian members become Chicken Little clones, praying against the Democratic party. Not necessarily in a specific way, against the morally degraded parts of their party platform, but against the idea of having a Democratic president. Here's the thing. America is not God's special nation. The founding fathers were not miniature Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons. In fact, many were Deists. Yes, our moral foundation is based on Judeo-Christian ethics. But we are not, and were not meant to be, by the Founding Fathers OR God, to be the New Jerusalem. Putting our faith in earthly kings is a sure way to be disappointed. If Barack wins the presidency, does that mean God's favor is no longer with us? We might pay more taxes and not be able to purchase guns. It may be harder for Christians to speak out in public places. Does that mean we aren't God's favorite anymore? Speaking of audacity, how dare these types of Christian Republicans equate economic and political comfort with God's favor. Does God not love the persecuted Christians in China, who have to hide their worship and face torture, imprisonment, and death on a daily basis? Does God not love African Christians who face the same? What about Christians in Muslim countries? Are those places not God's favorite? Does He not love those followers as much, because, poor them, they aren't Americans?

Throughout the history of the world, God's people have faced public scorn, physical and spiritual warfare, torture, imprisonment, death. God's people have been ruled by insane tyrannical dictators who covered them in pitch and used them as torches to light a garden party. God's people have been mutilated  by the government. God's people have been thrown in dank prisons with no kind of amenities by the government. God is sovereign. God not only allowed those things to happen, He was ultimately glorified in that. God doesn't do anything that ultimately isn't good for His people and glorifying to Himself. We are called unequivocally in Scripture to submit to our government because God Himself puts those leaders into place. Any political party that starts to claim Jesus as being on their side might want to take a closer look at what happened. The Jews were expecting a political, earthly revolutionary to free them from their physical bondage to Rome, Instead, He paid his taxes and told His followers to do the same. He told Peter to put up his sword and then healed the damage done. He told His people to not only do what the Roman soldiers made them, but do it well and do it fully. (Go the extra mile, anyone?)

Whoever wins in November will not be supreme dictator for life. They will serve their 4 year term, with Congress and the Supreme Court presumably checking and balancing as is their job. I think it is important to vote and be informed. As long as God is allowing us to live in a free political country, we should gratefully take advantage. But no matter who wins, be it Obama or McCain, we should remember that neither one has Jesus in their pocket. No matter who wins, our future is not bound up with them. Our future, our faith, our hope, is secure in the blood of Christ. He is our King, and that should give us confidence no matter what. 

Fact:

Almost all the clothes I own are in a pile in the laundry room. I thought it was suspicious that I could actually open and close my drawers with ease... at least I'm almost caught up on entering grades. Sigh.