Summer Reset

God created our bodies and minds to need the Sabbath. As a teacher, summer is my Sabbath. A time to decompress, destress, rest, refill, recharge, and reset. Without it, I don't know how I could start each new year with a renewed enthusiasm and energy to teach a whole new group of kids. My personality desperately needs time away. ESPECIALLY after this year. But that's another whole post that we won't even get into here.

Summer is my time to spend as much time out in nature as is possible, yes, even in the heat of Texas. Early mornings and evenings still work for me, as long as I can get outside to breathe in God's creation. I'm enthralled with nature. I can sit outside on my porch and just listen to the birds sing for quite a long time. I am delighted each time one of them comes close so I can carefully study it's unique design and color pattern.

One of my favorite places to spend my mornings or evenings right now is on my bike down a nature trail. I stop quite often to snap a picture of a wildflower, a sunrise or sunset, a stream, a river, a pond, a duck, a squirrel, or even a fascinating insect. It amazes me how many different colors, shapes, sizes, patterns, and variety I find among the flowers. I have no green thumb (I think I have to claim a black thumb), so I have to admire everyone else's flowers or the ones that grow wildly in the field. 

The last few mornings, I've been mesmorized by a "simple" spider on my back porch and the intricate web he's been weaving each night. 

Nature points all fingers to a Creator. A designer. An artist. And to know that all creation groans for the return of Christ means that the beauty I see isn't even close to the beauty we will behold in eternity. I long for that day. 

This year took more out of me than normal, so I've resigned to completely remove myself from a school mindset for at least the entire month of June. I need a reset, a chance to focus on things that draw me closer to Christ and to others. A chance to write and reflect, to let all my thoughts have a space to congregate outside of my head, to make sense of what's happening in my world. A chance to reconnect with friends and family, to find cute coffee shops, to go thrift store treasure hunting, etc. You get my drift. A chance to break out of the mold and seek adventure, even if the adventure is just a lone ride on my bike. 

I have a shorter summer this year because our breaks are scheduled more deliberately within the school year, so I didn't even get to look into teaching a Bible study at church. But my heart beats for teaching other women how to study Scripture, so a few friends and I decided to congregate on my front porch to study Scripture together this summer. Last year we met via Zoom and wrote a lament psalm about missing community, so I can't begin to express my gratitude for the community we are able to build this summer in my favorite place. 

Our psalm of lament

7/16/2020

As a society and a family of believers, we are deeply grieving connection.

Please, Lord, redefine connection for us by bringing divine appointments into our life.

We trust that You’re not surprised that our personalities have this need for connection and that You are creating more opportunity to connect with You. 

We  praise You for the joy that is coming, for the glory that will be revealed after we have suffered and persevered through this trial, and for the deeper way we are going to know You through this season.

You are a jealous God and will fight for connection with us because You love us that much

Yes, sometime I'll have to get myself ready to enter the school mindset again, but not until I've had time to reset. I believe it's just as essential as any training or preparing we could possibly do with our time. 

The Garland flower, a firewheel.

Thrift store treasures

Cute coffee shops

Watching the sun continue to rise every morning, right on schedule

Watching the flowers stay on schedule each day, not pointing their petals outward or upward until it's time.

The spider that captivates me, so uniquely and intricately created with a purpose unlike any other creature.

In case you can't find me, you know where I'll be....

Facebook Memories

 One feature I absolutely love about Facebook is the way it preserves our memories. The great ones, the mundane ones, and even the hard ones. It's like a journal we can go back to, a reminder of events we want to cherish, goals we want to reach for, and a tracker for how far we've come. 

Today marks an important event for our family, the day Juan David's social worker finally handed him over to us to give us custody of him, a custody that led to his final adoption as our son. A long awaited, long hoped for, gruelly fought for custody that we'd once given up hope of ever having. 

I did not realize, however, that several other key events happened on this day in my personal history. 

Thirteen  years ago today, I started a family blog to document our adoption journey. We had just begun the process to adopt an older girl (not known to us) from El Salvador, but two small pictures of two Colombian children captured my heart and my prayers at the same time. A week after starting that blog, we met those two children and changed our entire plan. 

Twelve years ago, my new puppy, Sweetie, died. A foreshadowing of the grief and loss that lie ahead in our adoption story. I originally thought my blog headed toward a celebration coming, but it became an open, public space for me to grieve. A place for my heart to bleed. 

Ten years ago, my heart filled with hope as we finally met and nurtured a familial relationship with Julian, the "son" we almost missed. We spent the day shopping for nice, professional looking clothing for him to use for job interviews while buying a Colombian soccer outfit for David. We found purpose in our pain.

Nine years ago, we found ourselves in Colombia yet again, reconnecting with dear friends we made the year before.

Eight years ago, God gave Juan David back to us.

Five years ago, we celebrated our third Family Day in St. Louis with my parents.

Four years ago, Juan David became an official DBU Patriot, where he'd get a great foundation to guide him through such an important stage of life, and where he'd meet his best friend who's stayed close through lots of change over the last four years and helped him find a place to feel like he belongs.  He may not have been emotionally ready to continue as a full-time student, but he's still a proud Patriot, working at his own pace, figuring out who he is and what he's meant to contribute to the world. 

Today, I cherish this day for all of the memories it holds, the lessons it continues to teach me, and the redemption and restoration it signifies. And my feeble attempt at making arepas for him. "You tried, Mom. That's all that matters." 

The value of a dollar

 

As I sit here on the eve of the last two days of school, I find my heart heavy with many mixed emotions. This year proved to be the hardest, most challenging, most sacrificial year of my entire 18 years of teaching in Texas with the least amount of support and appreciation from the families I sacrificed it all for. Yet I don't say that negatively towards them, as it may sound. Their lack of support just evidenced the devastating effects that COVID had on their lives over the last year. They, too, spent this last year in survival mode, just trying to make it to Friday so they could catch their breath, trying to make ends meet, get the kids to school, keep the devices charged and in one piece, provide space and structure for either occasional or full-time online learning that they didn't have a clue how to do, find childcare at the last minute, keep their own jobs with so many mandatory quarantines, and to keep their families safe and healthy. 

I look back over the year with so much sadness, regret, and disappointment, seeing all the materials we never used, the book nooks and beanbag chairs they never sat in to read their favorite books, the science lessons we never go to do hands-on, the small groups we weren't able to meet with consistently, the rich discussions we never had while sitting together on the class rug, the field trips we didn't take, the insects we didn't observe in the classroom, the butterflies we didn't get to release, the class parties we never had, the food we never shared, the books we never touched, the organization we never learned, the hands-on centers we never experienced, the level of rigor we didn't reach, and for some, the closure we won't have yet again for the second year. It didn't take long to pack up my classroom this year because, well, I never had the chance to unpack it from last year. 

That's not to say learning didn't happen. We learned differently. These kids learned so much technology that they'd never used in my classroom before. We learned how to do things in a new way. Some of which may have pushed me into better ways of teaching and learning that match their current reality, some that may benefit them much more for the future they are walking into. Other parts will leave a huge gap in their learning because there are things you just can't learn as well virtually as you can hands on or working closely in a small group. There are discussions that could never take off past the surface while trying to manage students on both sides of a screen, deal with internet issues, students entering late from home, or students who would switch back and forth from school to home on a whim, leaving all sense of consistency, structure, and routine out the window.  By leaving that door open and asking teachers to teach to both groups simultaneously, I firmly believe that we created a bigger problem than we started with that we will be trying to recover for years to come. 

I can walk away feeling positive about two main things that did happen in my classroom this year: my kids found a safe community, and they found their voice as a writer. We literally wrote for 30 minutes every day, if not more, and they all enjoyed coming up to the camera to share how they felt each day and why. They wrote letters to each other at least two or three times throughout the year, we published a class book, we made another paper copy book of their life stories to remember each other, and they learned how to give constructive feedback and encouragement to each other on our class blog. If anything mattered in a year of chaos, their sense of community, belonging, and safety mattered the most. In that, I can say we succeeded. 

The end of the year leaves me reflecting on what I've learned about the value of a dollar. This particular class celebrated me as their Pre-K teacher like no other class had ever done, planning a surprise birthday party for me after showering me with enough flowers and treats to open up my own floral shop for teacher appreciation week. Three years later, teacher appreciation week came and went with three small gifts, and three roses and a single gift for my birthday. And a dollar. One little girl, upon hearing it was my birthday, handed me a dollar from her pocket. "My mom gave me two dollars to buy chips at lunch, but I decided to give one of my dollars to you." I appreciated the three roses and the gift from another student, but that one dollar really touched my heart.  I stuffed that dollar in my pocket, thinking that I wanted to use it for something special because to her, giving up those chips at lunch was a big deal. 

The next day, she spiked a fever and went home midday, only to test positive for COVID, the one thing I tried so hard to protect my kids from all year. The rest of the year kept her online, never to return to my classroom. Another year without a physical goodbye to a student, along with the one who had to leave the country, and the one who had emergency surgery on his stomach. When I really think about it, that dollar was like her goodbye gift, and now I can't seem to be able to spend it. Every time I look at it, I think of her and cherish all the positive things I can remember about her from this year. Because the last full day we spent together, on my birthday, she made that thoughtful sacrifice for me. To me, that physical dollar is worth so much more than it could ever buy.