The One About the Girl With the Sharp Tongue Who Sometimes Cuts Her Own Throat...

OK, so… Boy, I seem to start a lot of my writings that way :-) 

But anyway…

Yes, it’s been a long several months since I last published anything; no, I’m not going to go into a lengthy explanation of the whys and wherefores of where I’ve been.  I will say this, though: Several months back, I read a blog post that a friend of mine shared about being careful not to spend so much time blogging about our lives that we forget to live them, and it really hit home for me.  So, I’ve been taking some time off from blogging and just kind of focusing on simply living life each day with my family and friends.  And life has been exceptionally busy this year, so… Yep.  That’s where I’ve been :-)

So, tonight, I was sitting here on the couch in our new apartment (we moved over the summer… yeah, that was actually one of the more fun parts of the busyness :-D ), listening to iTunes and working on my mental list of people I now owe apologies to for running my mouth (What?  Don’t tell me I’m the ONLY person out there who does that every once in a while… ^_^ ), and this song came on:

I’m like a promise, I’m like a promise
I’m like a promise broken every time I open my mouth
Open my mouth, I open my mouth

OK, yeah… That’s me, right there, encapsulated in a single sentence.  It’s like I know I’ve got so much potential in me to do good, to do the right things, to love people and treat them like I want to be treated….

And then I open my mouth and all that promise just gets hurled to the ground and shattered into shards of glass that fly everywhere and cut the people who most need me to be gentle with them.  The Bible says in James 3 that the tongue steers our life like the rudder of a ship, that unlike any other wild animal, we cannot seem to tame it, no matter how hard we try.  The human tongue is like a flame that sets the forest ablaze; in my case, it seems more like a scalpel that strips the skin away and leaves the nerves frayed and loose and open to all the grit of daily life…

Under the surface, under the surface
Under the surface sometimes I wanna slip right out of my skin
Out of my, slip right out of my skin

Sometimes, when I hear the words that come out of my mouth, all I want to do is find a way to pretend that I’m really someone else, a good twin who can deny all knowledge of anything “that other person” has said.  I wish there was someone else that I could shrug my shoulders for and say, “No, that wasn’t me… Must have been that other chick who just happens to look like me and live around here.  I think I saw her go off in that direction…”  Maybe, just maybe, 38 years ago, my mom actually gave birth to identical twins in secret, and then the government wiped her memory and took one of the twins away to train her as a black-leather-and-spandex-clad secret assassin, and now there’s some kind of super-secret spy agent out there who looks exactly like me (only in leather and spandex... which I, for the record, would never wear together...) and is now running around all over the Chehalem Valley doing whatever she can with her words to mess up my life and my relationships and my reputation so she can murder me and bury me under the new patio in the backyard and then seamlessly take over my life…

No, wait… that’s a show on Netflix.  Never mind.

Well, until my clones start showing up on my doorstep, I guess I’m stuck with the knowledge that, nope, it’s just me using my own tongue as a weapon of mass destruction to take out half the population of Newberg.  Sigh…

And tell all my secrets
And open my scars
Break into pieces
Cause at the end of me, at the end of me
That’s where You start

Now there’s the hope in the situation…  God doesn’t expect me to be perfect all the time.  God doesn’t expect me to be perfect any of the time.  Which is really good, because I’ve always sucked at perfection (just ask my sister… the real one, not the long-hoped for evil twin one ^_^ )  But when I get to the point where I’ve completely FUBARed things, that’s where God can come in and make the biggest difference.  Not that I should go around trying to screw everything up… but since I seem to be so darned good at it sometimes, it helps to know that God can salvage anything and turn it into something beautiful in His way and time :-)

Do you remember, do you remember?
Do you remember when I was young and I knew everything?
I knew everything about everything

(Yes, before she even comments, my sister will definitely confirm that this was totally me when we were growing up... and that at least 2 of my 3 kids take after their mother in that regard... and that she was NEVER like that at ANY point in HER youth... ;-D )

Such a long time, such a long time
Such an uphill climb just to finally get over myself
Over my, I’m so over myself

So tell all my secrets
And open my scars
Break me to pieces
Cause at the end of me, at the end of me
That’s where You start

I don’t know where, I don’t know how
Maybe a prayer, maybe a cloud
I don’t know where, I don’t know how

So tell all my secrets
And open my scars
Gather the pieces
Cause at the end of me, at the end of me
That’s where You start
                     --Bebo Norman, "At the End of Me"

You see, that’s what I absolutely LOVE about God: He takes us right where we are, and then moves us forward from there.  His grace isn’t about making me feel really crappy about the stupid thing I’ve just said— I already feel crappy enough about that already, thank you very much :-P  God’s grace says to me, “OK, yes, you messed up here, I concur.  Now here’s what we’re going to do about it… You go and do what you can to apologize and make things right, and meanwhile, I’ll go and take care of the rest of it.  Then we can leave this in the past and move on to our next crazy adventure…  Hurry up, gotta dash. Things happening. Well, four things. Well, four things and a lizard...”

(OK, so I'm still waiting for one of God's plans for me to include a lizard... Darn you, Netflix...)

I find that, when I’m stressed, I tend to lose what little control I have over my mouth, and then out come all sorts of sharply sarcastic, mean-spirited, “I was just joking…” sort of comments, armed and loaded and just ready to take flight and stab people straight in the heart.  And yes, I’ve been stressed recently… There’s a lot of stuff going on and way more running around and trying to fit everything everyone wants to do into the schedule somehow than I ever expected going into this school year.

But…

If I know that being stressed makes me more of a sharp-tongued shrew, then I have an obligation to try harder to keep it under control when I am stressed.  Because honestly?  None of the seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time comments that come flying out of my mouth ever seem to make life easier or less stressful for anybody, myself included.

So this is why I’m writing this now…

First off, if you’re at all like me and you find yourself at times mistaking your tongue for a Ginsu...

... Don’t beat yourself up.  God loves you, He’ll forgive you if you ask Him to, and then He can help you get up and move on.  Apologize to the person you’ve hurt and ask for their forgiveness; they might forgive you, they might not, either way, you’ve done what you can to make peace (Romans 12:18, one of my favorite verses :-D ) and now all you can do is move forward anyway.  Maybe if I’m honest about the fact that I screw up waaaaaaaaay more often in this area than I’m proud of, it can help someone else too.

Second off (Second on?  Secondly?  Maybe it’s just Second…), I’m writing this to ask for people to help hold me accountable.  Sometimes (as God has been pointing out to me recently), I say things in the moment and then just kind of walk away thinking everyone’s laughing and every thing’s fine and everyone understands what I really meant… and I have absolutely no clue until days later that someone’s been lying on the ground behind me bleeding out from their soul because of something stupid that I said.  And let me tell you, that is one sickening realization to come to, especially when the person bleeding to death is someone I love almost more than life itself.

So, the next time I say something (or write something, or you’ve heard that I’ve said something) and it hurts, tell me.  I can’t do anything to make things right and try to bandage up the wounds I’ve caused unless I know about it.  And as a Christian, I want to make things right,  I want to heal wounds and make things better…  Just as I’m supposed to be an ambassador for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20) and help to bring peace and healing between God and people, I need to do everything I can to bring peace and healing between myself and those that I have hurt.  Even if it’s embarrassing, even if it’s awkward, even if people never forgive me and I end up alone in some cave somewhere waiting for my evil clone twin to show up and finish the job I’ve started… 

No, wait… Too much Netflix is apparently bad for my blogging life :-P

My most recent parenting fail... Sorry, but it's not a funny one this time :-/

I'm beginning to think that the hardest part of raising kids is letting them go.  Now, none of mine are quite old enough to leave the nest yet, so I'm not talking about the big, scary, drive them halfway across the country and then leave them there so they can attend the college of their dreams sort of letting go (though a dear friend of mine just got back home from doing that very thing with her oldest... you are one brave woman, Melinda :-D ).  No, I'm talking about the kind of letting go that comes from realizing that the time has come to step back as a parent and trust your kids to make their own decisions, even if and especially when you're not there to make sure that they do, in fact, make the RIGHT decision.

Today, one of my kids made the wrong decision, and I was at work in another town and completely unable to do anything about it.

Now, before any of you who know me start emailing me with questions of "OMG!!!!!  WHICH KID WAS IT AND WHAT DID THEY DO???  HOW MUCH BAIL MONEY DO YOU NEED AND HOW MANY MONTHS UNTIL YOU WANT TO HAVE THE BABY SHOWER AND WILL YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE COVER DETOX OR WON'T THEY???", let me just assure everyone that no, none of them are pregnant, all of them are home and not in jail, and they've all already finished their homework and are currently already in bed-- each one by themselves, too, just in case some of you (really, seriously?) were going to go there :-P  What happened this morning was in all actuality a very minor thing, with no foreseeable long-term damage done.  And I'm pretty certain that it's not an ominous harbinger of an oncoming storm of teenage rebellion either.  But it DID bring me to a place of questioning whether or not we've been making the right decisions all along the way and discovering that, honestly, I'm not as great a parent as I thought I was :-/

As parenting goes, I've always been a big fan of natural consequences-- sometimes parentally engineered "natural" consequences, but more-or-less natural, logical, reason-led ones all the same.  Toddler daughter refuses to pick up the pieces of her puzzle in a fit of "YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO I'M ALMOST FOUR AND SO I'M ALMOST ALL GROWN UP AND YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF MEEEEEE!"; toddler daughter watches as said puzzle pieces are thrown into the trash can along with the rest of the garbage on the floor.  Son #1 decides to throw wet paper towels all over the school bathroom to see how far up the wall he can get them to stick and whether or not he can actually get them to defy gravity and cling to the ceiling; son #1 gets to spend an afternoon helping the custodian clean up said bathroom.  Son #2 decides to ignore the warning about coming home before curfew from his friend's house (which, incidentally, is only 100 yards down the street, so he theoretically could have just hollered to say he'd be late); son #2 finds himself grounded and disallowed to go by himself to a friend's house on his own for the rest of the week.  Basically, you make your choice, you evaluate the consequences, and then you decide if it's really worth making that same choice the next time... pretty simple, no?

We Christian parents especially like to put a hedge of protection around our kids by making sure they only watch the right shows, listen to the right music, read the right books, hang out with the right friends, etc.  We figure that if we only give them good role models to follow and we shield them from negative examples, then they won't know to choose the wrong and will generally make the right decisions all throughout their lives.  We bet that if we raise smart, moral, good church-going kids, we can help them to avoid so many of the pitfalls of secular life... and it's actually not all that bad of a parenting plan, to be honest.

The downside is that we often end up sheltering our kids' decisions so that they only have good options to choose from and gentle consequences to remind them of the unconditional love of God.  And that, as I look back on things tonight, has been the parenting road we ended up on; I'm hearby pleading "GUILTY" to trying their whole lives to protect them from the consequences of their own native stupidity :-(  As kids get older, though, we as parents need to give them more responsibility for their own actions and more freedom in taking those actions.  And sometimes, this means letting them step out of our sight and hoping, with fingers crossed and eyes closed, that they'll have learned enough to not choose the door labeled (in big red, dripping, invisible letters) "This Is the STUPID Option... STAY AWAY!"

It was hard this morning to drive away, knowing that, though I had given my child specific directions and a definite answer to their question of "So, Mom, can we...?", I was leaving them in a position of temptation with no way to enforce my will and preferences in the matter.  And I knew that, theoretically, my child might choose to disobey and do what they wanted to do, hoping that I wouldn't find out.  But because love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things, I trusted that my child, whom I love with all my heart, would resist temptation and do the right thing simply because I had asked them to.  I honestly thought that, because I said "No, you can't... Sorry...", it would be enough to ensure that they actually did what I wanted them to do.

Not only did my child do what I had specifically forbidden them to do, but I had to find out about it from a sibling who couldn't keep their mouth shut.  (Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's going to be some holy Christian smackdown going on as soon as they all head out the door in the morning...)

But you know what?  This is a part of letting go.  At least it was a little mistake, and not one that's going to shape future generations of our family.  At some level, I needed to realize that my kids are not just extensions of my own self-worth, reflections of my ability to parent like a boss.  Each one of my kids is their own independent human being, with their very own imperfect nature and their very own will, with just as much of a right to be wrong as I have.  They're going to go off and make their own choices, and sometimes those choices are going to be "Screw that, Mom, I can make a better decision on my own, thank you very much."  And when those decisions have been ripped out of my grasping, clawing hands, then sometimes the consequences are out of my hands as well, and I won't always be there to catch them when they fall broken to the ground.

This time, though, my husband and I have to-- get to-- assign the consequences.  And we have to walk the fine line between realizing that no lasting harm has been done and not wanting that harm to come knocking at our kids' doors in the future.  How do we assign a consequence for disobedience that's fair and proportionate to a (really pretty minor) offense but still teaches them that, hey, Mom and Dad aren't idiots and you really should listen to them sometimes?  How do we make sure that we don't overreact and punish them too harshly simply because our feelings are hurt and our trust broken?  Or how do we make sure that this consequence gives them something positive that they can hold on to for the rest of their lives and pass on to their own kids someday (who probably won't listen to or obey them any better than they do us right now...)

To make the situation even stickier, tonight I had to admit to myself and to my husband that I've been making parenting decisions all along that have helped to create the situation that tripped my child up this morning... How do I go now to my child and apologize for my own parenting fail and still expect them to respect my wisdom and authority as their mom?  I'm really, really hoping for and counting on the fact that the Bible says that God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5), because I'm really going to need His grace tomorrow as I share a big ol' slice of humble pie with my child :-/

Actually, strike what I said in my first sentence... maybe the hardest part of raising kids is the not knowing how badly you're screwing them up until it's too late to do anything about it :-/

(I seriously need to start cruising Facebook or hanging out with my daughter's genius friends again... This blog and my sanity are both looooong overdue for a funny post for a change... o.O  But for now, I think I'll just head to bed with this song running through my head; I'll probably end up playing it tomorrow for my kid and pretty much every time I screw up again from now until forever...)

Is there anybody listening?

OK, so I know it's been a while since I last posted (or at least it feels like a long while, anyway...), and it was a while before that post as well...  Life has been busy and I've been subbing a lot, but honestly, that's not reason enough to go so long between posts and it's not the main reason that I have :-/

Truth is, I'm not struggling much with finding something to say, but with believing that anything I have to say is worth listening to.  Sure, I've got ideas and find myself thinking "OMG... I SOOOOO need to blog about THIS!  It's gonna be EPIC!!   Best blog post EVER!!!"  And then I start writing the post...

...And then I stop, because something in me starts to wonder, "Why do I bother with this?  Is this really worth writing about?  Is this really worth READING about?  C'mon... you know no one's going to read this crap, and even if they do, they're just going to click away and go find something worthwhile and meaningful to read to cleanse their minds of this nonsense that I've been spouting."  And so I stop, save the draft (I have 6 drafts currently on my Blogger homepage... 7 if you count this one...), and go back to cruising my Facebook feed, hoping for some sort of connection with somebody.  I feel like I'm actually living this old Queensryche song from my middle school years...

(Wow... Geoff Tate in a tank top... That's kind of an "Ewwww... What were we all THINKING back then???" sort of a moment... o.O  But anyway...)

Why do I bother speaking if no one is paying any attention?  It's like living with my kids... I've lost count of the number of times where I've made some sort of announcement or asked a question ("Dinner's ready...", "Time for bed...", "Why are you all singing 'The Star Spangled Banner' to the tune of 'The Narwhal Song'?"), only to be completely ignored or else stared at like I've just sprouted a third nose in the middle of my forehead.  I know, I know, this is normal... the kids-not-listening part, not the third nose part... but as any parent can attest, it's really, REALLY frustrating :-/

I think each of us has a very human need to be heard and to be noticed...  We want people to listen to us and to tell us we're worth listening to; without that, our souls starve and wither a little each day.  We are the only creatures on earth with a voice, a language, and an innate drive to communicate, and I don't believe that's an accident or a side effect of evolution... When God sent Jesus to earth, He was called the Word made flesh (John chapter 1, specifically verse 14) for a reason; when God wanted to get our attention and be noticed, He did what we would do and used not a gesture, not a glare, not an interpretive dance or a game of charades, but a Word.

People need to speak, to listen, and to be heard... And we never realize how much we need all of those until the silence overwhelms us.

Supposedly, I've had 672 visitors to my blog since I started writing in 2011... And from all those, only 2 people (other than me) have made any sort of comment or left a footprint to let me know they were here.  It's kind of discouraging, because I start to wonder...

Is it that I'm not saying anything worth commenting on?
Is it that I'm saying something so distasteful that no one wants anyone else to know they were here?
Is it that no one likes me, everybody hates me, and I guess I should go eat worms?  (As long as they're sour gummy worms, I might actually be OK with that... ^_^ )

Maybe no one's actually reading my words at all, and all 672 of those hits were just Googlebots after all...

But... If you ARE actually reading my words, thrown out into the cyber-void for who-knows-what purpose, could you do my poor battered self-esteem a favor and leave a comment to let me know you're there?  Who you are, where you're from, how on earth you stumbled across my odd little internet soapbox here... and whether you agree with me that sour gummy worms are way better than the rainbow gummy ones :-)

If something I've said in a post has struck a chord or a nerve with you, tell me so and why.  If you've got a question for me or a counter-argument to something I've said, let me know.  If you're thinking I'm a self-absorbed idiot who really should go back to answering the phones at Wal-Mart... well, try and break that to me gently and with nice words, please ^_^

To sum it all up: Talk to me, because the little voices get really strange notions when I start talking to myself... :-D

(OK, hopefully that was the end of my itty bitty pity party...  And then this song came on my iTunes and suddenly I felt much better...)

...Whether we want it to be or not...

I guess this is kind of a Part 2 to my last post ("For some of us, every day is April 2nd..."), which was basically all about being autistic and learning to embrace it.  And about 95% of the time, I do embrace it and I'm proud to be me, for better, for worse, and for crazy-weird fun :-)  But then again, there are those days like today that make up that other 5%...

Is it OK to admit that I'm struggling?

As Christians, it seems we're always told to glorify God with our words and with our testimony, and that if we sometimes question why He made us this way or is letting us go through something, we're just walking in doubt instead of in faith.  And somehow, even without saying it explicitly, the message is communicated that this is sinful and disobedient to the God who fearfully and wonderfully made us.  But at the same time, I know that as Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12:10, the times when I am weak as a person are the times when I am strongest as a Christian, because then God can work most visibly in and through me.  So...

Is it OK to admit that I'm struggling?

The past month or so has been crazy busy, what with my husband and 2 of my 3 kids having birthdays, a couple rounds of the Creeping Lung Crud, several subbing jobs, a 1980s-themed Sadie Hawkins dance at the high school (funny how I don't remember the 80s looking quite that bad... then again, I grew up in the 90s, so... o.O), car troubles, job changes, a heart attack scare, and about half a dozen other minor disasters thrown in for comedic effect... oh, and Spring Break too, for that matter.  And this past Saturday, we wrapped up our annual Month of Chaos with my daughter's 15th birthday party, where about a dozen of her best friends crammed into our little apartment to watch Literal Trailers videos and Princess Bride, play Apples to Apples, and take crazy pictures of themselves to post on Instagram.  It was actually a lot of fun, and nothing got broken or thrown this time, so I'd call it an unqualified success :-D

When I made it through Saturday night and all day Sunday without a meltdown, I figured everything was fine, great, dandy... Hey, maybe I've finally developed enough coping skills to actually manage my autism and screen out all of the excess stimuli created by 6 straight hours of 12 hollering teenagers... Maybe I'm finally cured of my autism and my world will actually turn into something normal and I can go on and give my kids the normal life I've always wanted for them...  Maybe this is the start of a new and glorious chapter in my personal history; the Fourth Great and Bountiful Beautiful-Letdownian Empire!  (See... anything can be turned into a Doctor Who reference if you try hard enough... ^_^)

And then... today hit. And the firecrackers started going off in my brain and haven't yet stopped.  And every little tick of the clock and whirr of the fan and beeeeep of the washer makes me want to scream and throw them out the window, the window, the second story window (and I'm betting that you were just there singing along with me, weren't you? ^_^)  And the only way to cope with my daughter's missing cell phone and my son's field trip permission slip and my husband wanting to spend some quality time with me was to go completely numb and just keep repeating the same semi-helpful statements of fact ("No I don't know where it is the last time I saw it you were turning it off at church...  I'm going with your brother on his field trip that day go ask your father if he can chaperone for you... I guess I'm still just really tired from the party and cleaning up afterwards...") over and over again until whatever the issue was resolved itself.  And my 10 year old fell down while selling candy bars for Cub Scouts and scraped up his knee and elbow, and a 14 year old girl disappeared on her way to school in Utah, and someone set off bombs at the Boston Marathon, and so help me, I just didn't care.  And I sat in my car while waiting for my 13 year old to come out of his Boy Scout meeting and just cried and begged God to help me get it together so that I wouldn't scare the living bejeebers out of my kids by having a nervous breakdown in front of them or running my car into a tree for no reason other than to end the madness.

Some days, I hate being this way.  

And on days like this, with the knowledge that April is Autism Awareness Month... all month long... what I wish for most is an Autism Unawareness Day.

One day where, for once, I feel like I'm completely normal and acceptable just as I am.

One day where I don't have to struggle to find the right word and people know what I mean from the words that actually come out of my mouth; a day where, when I'm trying to identify that long thin thing in the conductor's hand as he waves it over the band and I call it first a "stick", and then a "wand," nobody leans over with a snicker and says "Mom, it's Harry Potter that has a wand... That's called a baton."  I know it's a baton, dear... I just misplaced the word for a moment :-/

One day where nobody gives me the Icy Stare of Death because I've described something exactly as I see it and thrown all tact to the wind without even realizing it.

One day where I don't have to wonder what I'm supposed to feel or what I'm supposed to do when something horrific happens in a faraway place like Boston or Manhattan or Newtown, where I can understand why everyone around me is freaking out and holding candlelight vigils from 2000 miles away.

One day where I can feel like I'm fully a part of the world around me, fully engaged and fully equipped to cope with whatever happens... without having to pay the inevitable price of a day like today.

One day where I can be myself, without a mask or a persona, and know that  I won't be shattered beyond repair by the words, the gaze, or the touch of others.

What I want is one day, even if it's just one day, where I can forget completely that I'm autistic and just feel normal for a change, where I and everyone else around me can be totally unaware of my autism and not think instead that I'm just another freak.

Sigh... Yes, I know I'm whining.  I know I'm venting, and I'm using my blog as a place to do it so that maybe someone else out there who struggles with this stuff will realize they're not alone.  I'm venting here so that people will know that, maybe, sometimes, it's OK to admit that we're struggling with the role God has given us to play in this life, because when we admit how weak we are and how dark our world may seem at times, we can see more clearly what a strength and a light our God is.

Even when I'm thrashing about in the midst of a verbal temper tantrum, kicking and screaming at God and asking Him "WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GO AND MAKE ME THIS WAY????  DON'T YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I *%#*@&* HATE THIS????  DON'T YOU CARE???", I know that He made me this way for a reason because He doesn't screw up.  And I know that when I'm all cried out and ready to listen, He'll show me something to make me realize that He's got something bigger in the works than just making me feel "normal"... which is another word for average, which is another word for mediocre, which is just not acceptable for a hyperactive overachiever like me anyway ^_^

So... Is it OK to admit that I'm struggling today?  Yes, I think so.

Am I ever going to get my Autism Unawareness Day?  No, probably not.

Am I ever going to be "normal" or even feel "normal"?  Nope.  Normal is highly overrated anyway.

But hey... At least I don't have to worry about anyone impersonating me or replacing me in God's crazy plan.  Supernatural job security... I guess I can live with that ^_^

And now for today's video...  This has been one of my all-time favorite songs for about 17 years now, one of those songs that just makes me stop whatever I'm doing and just shut up and listen (thankfully, it doesn't often come on my iPod while I'm driving...)  It just seemed like a good note to leave this post on, so...

If high schoolers REALLY got to pick the music at high school dances...

Last night was the big Winter Formal dance at my daughter's school, and being the good and overprotective mother that I am, naturally, I had to help chaperone it :-)  As my daughter and her boyfriend (yes, we have now officially moved into the next stage in the Handy Dandy Guide to Teenaged Relationships... kind of scary, but there it is o.O) were off trying to dance for the first time, I had an interesting conversation with another of her friends about (in no particular order) brick walls, dynamite, and popular music.  His musings on the third of those subjects were two-fold.

First: What would happen if someone were to randomly sneak in and insert some Christian songs into the music mix?  Would all fun and merriment immediately screech to a bone-jarring, flesh-tearing, ear-piercing stop?  Would the universe implode?  Would nobody even notice?  Personally, as much as I'd love to see the second option happen, considering the sheer volume of the music they were playing, I think the third is far more likely :-/  Which, of course, means that it might actually be possible to get away with such a thing... In other words, I think he and I now have a new plot to take over the world one high-school event at a time ^_^  Too bad the next dance for these guys isn't until next October... Ah, well, more time for plotting and conniving... :-D

His second musing was more of a challenge:  Once my daughter and her boyfriend returned from mangling one another's toes, he dared any of us to name a song that met all 5 of the following requirements:

1. A non-Christian (i.e. "secular") song, with
2. Good moral content, and
3. No bad language, that's
4. NOT about a girl (I'm assuming that he meant relationships, not just random underaged female members of the human race... ), and
5. NOT by One Direction or Justin Bieber.

Challenge accepted :-)

After some pretty intense argument between the friend and the boyfriend over whether One Direction and One Republic were the same thing (apparently, they're not... and I'm sure all the fans out there are relieved to have THAT settled...), everyone kind of wandered off to other things.  I also ended up apologizing to my daughter and her friends... I remember it going something along the lines of, "I'm really, really sorry that your generation's music sucks so badly..."  At least three of them were amused... ^_^

And so, in the interests of proving a 14 year old boy wrong (this seems to be turning into one of my favorite hobbies of recent days...), here are my two nominees for Songs That Meet My Daughter's Friend's Criteria For Not-Entirely-Evil Pop Music:

1. The Fray, "How To Save a Life"
(Yes, I know that the members of The Fray identify themselves as Christians, BUT they're not marketing themselves as a "Christian band", so I say it qualifies.  Nyah :-P)

2. Jesus Jones, "Right Here, Right Now"
(OK, I'm reaching back to my own high school days here, but hey, just because it's old doesn't mean it's not still good...  Or so I try to tell my kids, anyway :-/ )

I already had my daughter email her friend with my 2 nominations, but I'm figuring that somewhere out there in the blogosphere, there must be other songs that would fit as well.  So, how about it?  What are YOUR nominees for this little challenge?

Broken Stained Glass Candles... Like Me

So... The holiday season is now over and things are about to go back to "normal"... well, at least as normal as it gets around these parts o.O

For Christmas this year, my youngest gave me this stained glass candleholder made of grout and bits of broken blue glass...

He didn't make it himself (I know this because I was with him at Goodwill when I picked it up and commented on how cool it was... which was about 3 aisles before he told me "Mom, DON'T LOOK... I'll be right back!" and then took off running ^_^), but all the same, I love it just as if he did because of what it says about life and about me.

Allow me to explain.

Once upon a time, I was created as a beautiful, unblemished piece of art, without understanding of life or sin or failure.  Granted, I had some structural flaws-- mainly health issues and a family background that would make life difficult for anyone-- but as far as I could see with my newborn eyes, I was perfect, lovely, and loveable.

http://supercleanpr.com

But then, life happened.  Over time, I was bumped, dropped, knocked around, fractured, and crushed by circumstances.  In response, I lashed out, cutting myself and others with the sharpened edges of my shattered innocence.  My flawless surface began to show cracks where I had been hurt, dribbles of glue where people who loved me had tried to fix me, and scraps of cellophane tape where I had tried to heal myself.  Bits and pieces of me were broken off and embedded in the hearts of those who tried in vain to understand me, just as pieces of them were left buried in me.

http://tektites.co.uk

As I began to see the power that I could have by hurting people, I became not a piece of art but a weapon, wielding my damaged pride like a knife and using my bloodied edges to slash at others before they could pierce me with their own.  Yet the blood was not just theirs, but mine; for every wound I inflicted on them, I took two of my own.  While the damage I did to those around me was spread out among dozens, the damage I did to myself landed only on me.  Every cruel word I spoke, every bruise I left, every vicious tirade I inflicted echoed in my mind, and each word came back to haunt me as I realized that everything I said had been true... about me.  I cut others so that I could forget that I had been cut myself.

Once I was an innocent; now I was a monster.

Once I was whole; now I was deformed.

Once I was beautiful; now I was broken.

My original form was lost, my once-shiny colors and designs covered by dirt and shattered by situations and choices.  Like broken glass littering the midnight street, I had become ugly and useless, a cruel glittering of danger waiting only for the distracted feet of my next victim to tread upon me.

http://westoftheimagination.wordpress.com

But then...

God steps in.

And bit by bit, He begins to gather up the broken pieces of me.  He cleans them off and sets them aside, separating them by color, shape, and size.

http://earofthewind.com/about

Some pieces He refines, rubbing off the sharp edges and rendering them harmless; others He leaves sharp to be used as tools for His work.

http://boehmstainedglass.blogspot.com/2011/07/octagonal-window-glass-cut.html

Slowly, one by one, He takes each of the broken pieces and places them into a mold.  At first, the design makes absolutely no sense to anyone but Him; in time, however, glimpses of the bigger picture become visible.

http://mosaicartsource.wordpress.com

I write these paragraphs in the present tense because I am still a work in progress; God isn't finished putting me together yet.  I still have some sharp edges and many missing pieces; I still have great big gaping holes where the pieces of my soul aren't quite ready to be put back in yet.  I still feel lost and broken sometimes, and every so often, I accidentally slice open the hands of those who reach out to touch me.  I am flawed and I am broken, and I know that, until the day God puts the final piece of me together and I see Christ face to face, I will always be flawed and broken.

But...

If by my brokenness, other people will see that there is a God and that He is the one who saves me from myself, then it is worth the pain.  If by my flaws, other people can see that God is real and that if He can love a person as messed up as I am, He can love them too, then it is worth it.  If my struggles and my shortcomings and my failures-- and the hope I still have in spite of them-- can show people that no situation is hopeless, then they are all worthwhile.  If my weakness shows God's strength to carry me, then by all means... bring it :-)

Day by day, piece by piece, reminder by reminder, God takes the broken pieces of my life and puts them together into something beautiful again.  Not the same as I was before... that design has been crushed and obliterated beyond recognition, and will never, ever be made whole again.  But all the same, the end result will be breathtakingly beautiful... and like my broken stained glass candleholder, I think I will love it all the more for the work that He has put into it :-D

And now, for the musical interlude part of the blog...  Here is someone else's video for a song that perfectly captures what I'm trying to say here, only in a more poetical form :-)  Lyrics are below for anyone who needs them...

"Art in Me" by Jars of Clay

Images on the sidewalk
Speak of dreams' descent
Washed away by storms to graves
Of cynical lament
Dirty canvases
To call my own
Protest limericks carved
By the old pay phone

And in Your picture book I'm
Trying hard to see
Turning endless pages
Of this tragedy
Sculpting every move
You compose a symphony
And You plead to everyone
See the art in Me
See the art in Me
See the art in Me.

Broken stained glass windows
The fragments ramble on
Tales of broken souls
An eternity's been won
As critics scorn the thoughts and works
Of mortal man
My eyes are drawn to You
In awe once again

And in Your picture book I'm
Trying hard to see
Turning endless pages
Of this tragedy
Sculpting every move
You compose a symphony
And You plead to everyone
See the art in Me
See the art in Me
See the art in Me.

And in Your picture book I'm
Trying hard to see
Turning endless pages
Of this tragedy
Sculpting every move
You compose a symphony
And You plead to everyone
See the art in Me
(See the art in me...)
See the art in Me
(See the art in me...)
See the art in Me
(See the art in me...)
 

The Awesome Awesomeness that is Rennie... :-)

Today I got to sub again at the school I did my final round of student teaching at last year.  I got to see several of my students from last year, which was awesome; I also had a couple of the little siblings of some of my last year's students in the class I was actually teaching, which was cool but a little weird because apparently, if your older sibling had your teacher in previous years-- whether the teacher's a student teacher or a sub-- that automatically makes you a Second-Grade Rock Star, with all the rights and privileges accorded therein.  ("Yeah… my sister Jennifer had her last year.  Oh yeah, that's right… YAH BOI WORD UP YO-YOs!")

But anyway…

One of my regrets from blogging last year was that by the time I had time to blog more often, I had already finished my student teaching and I kind of thought it would be weird to spend time writing about the things a former student had said… even if they were absolutely hilarious at the time.  However, every time I've subbed at this school, this one particular student has made a point of tracking me down wherever I've been just to talk to me… Which wouldn't make talking about the things he said last year any less weird EXCEPT THAT today, he came up with another brilliant declaration that reminded me just how much I loved having him in my classroom :-)  And so today, I finally get to tell y'all about Rennie…

First of all, one of Rennie's parents works at the school.  Which always made for really interesting threats on my part whenever Rennie decided that he didn't really feel like doing his work (which was pretty much daily for a significant portion of my student teaching assignment :-/)  "Rennie… We're all going to lunch in about 45 minutes.  Do you REALLY want me to walk into the staff room with big bald patches in my hair, an uncontrollable flailing of limbs, and my left eye twitching the Macarena while your dad is trying to eat his lunch?  And when he asks me how my morning is going… WHAT DO YOU THINK I'M GOING TO TELL HIM?????"  Coincidentally, by the end of the semester, Rennie's work habits and stick-to-it-ness had improved tremendously ^_^

Second, Rennie is probably off-the-charts gifted.  He was one of the two kids in the class who had already tested into the TAG program, and the word around the school was (probably still is) that someday, he will do amazing things and we will all be staring in wonder at him on our TV screens, going "I was in his 2nd grade/4th grade/middle school PE/high school underwater basket weaving class…  I have been in the presence of AWESOME."  The only problem with this is that Rennie's also one of the younger students in his cohort, and when you combine that with the fact that he's a boy, what you get is awe-inspiring flashes of brilliance coupled with kicking/screaming/sitting-under-his-desk-and-banging-his-head-against-the-metal-legs temper tantrums.  Apparently, it's incredibly frustrating to be a misunderstood genius trapped in a nine-year-old's body :-/

But of course, this odd combination of Steve Jobs and Honey-Boo-Boo does make for some… memorable conversations.  Because you see, Rennie also has probably the most extensive vocabulary of any elementary schooler I've ever known, with the possible exception of his classmate Jason and my own youngest child.  My favorite memory of Rennie from last year goes as follows:

Visualize, if you will, my classroom.  I have a lectern at the front, with an overhead projector next to it.  Directly in front of the lectern sits Jason (whom I've mentioned with much fondness before); next to him sits Brian, another of the class smarty-pantses.  Across from Brian sits Lisa, who is probably the quietest, most polite, mildest-mannered 10 year old I've ever met in my life.  To Lisa's right sits R.C., which stands in my book for "Random Child", who I may or may not get around to telling about in a future post.  And at Lisa's left hand, directly in front of the overhead projector, is Rennie.  On the classroom map, this group was called the Red Group; my personal pet name for them was the Brain Trust.  Or, on my less generous days, Pinky and the Brains o_O

It's another typical day with another typical student-teachery type of lesson…

"OK, so who can tell me… Rennie, I'm using that part of the overhead right now; please turn it back.  So, who can tell me which part of this sentence… Jason, did I not just ask Rennie to stop messing with my overhead?"

"Yes, but you never specifically asked me not to touch it.  So technically, I'm not disobeying you."

"Fine.  Jason, stop touching my overhead.  Now, which part…"

"So can I touch it again now?"

"No.  Rennie AND Jason, stop touching the overhead.  Now, which part of the sentence is the subject?"  Rennie's hand moves from the overhead reel and starts waving in the air like a demon-possessed jellyfish.  "Let's see… Jennifer, which part is the subject?  Who is this sentence about?"

"Um… Joe?"  Now both of Rennie's hands are in motion.  As one hand waves frantically, the other creeps back to the reel of the overhead projector.  Joe (who is, as Jennifer has correctly discerned, the subject of the sentence "Joe walks his dog down the street.") slowly begins to slide, along with his dog, slowly down the overhead screen.

"Yes, Jennifer… Good job!"  As I enter the battle for Joe's right to walk his dog at the top of the projector screen, Joe jerkily moves back to his original position.  I fix Rennie with a Death Glare and move on to the next question.  "So, if Joe is our subject, what is the predicate?  What is Joe doing in this sentence?"

Once again, Rennie's hands and arms begin to flail.  Only they're now joined by semi-constipated grunting noises.  Now, as we all know, a good teacher always tries to ignore behaviors that are purely attention seeking in nature, while seeking out model behaviors and praising those students who exhibit such behaviors.  And since flailing, grunting, and overhead-projector tampering are not usually found on the Picture Charts of Model Behaviors in college-level educational theory textbooks, I do what any well-intentioned neophyte teacher wannabe would do: I choose to ignore Rennie and call on other students.

"Adam, I see you're sitting quietly with your hand up.  Can you tell us what the predicate of the sentence is?"

At this point, Rennie has had enough.

"OH.  MY.  GOD.  I'm sitting right here!"

"Yes, Rennie.  I know you're there.  It would be extremely difficult NOT to know you're there, as a matter of fact."

"But YOU DIDN'T CALL ON ME!"

"You're right, I didn't.  So, Adam… what's our predicate?"

"BUT I KNOW THE ANSWER!!!"

"I'm sorry, Adam… I had a little trouble hearing you.  Could you say that again?"

"OMG!!!"  Yes, he actually said it just like that… "oh-em-geeeee!"  "I can't BELIEVE this!  I'm sitting right HERE, and I KNOW you can see me and I KNOW you can HEAR me… but you STILL won't CALL ON ME???  What do I have to DO to get your ATTENTION???"

I glance over at my supervising teacher, who is sitting at her desk trying her best to hold in the laughter.  I'm now quite certain this was how Chamberlain felt at Little Round Top when his men were out of bullets, the Confederate soldiers were preparing another attack, and all they had were some lousy bayonets and no help in sight.

Maybe student teachers should be given a spare bayonet for days like these…

"So, Adam…  What's that?  You don't want to share your answer after all?  OK, then… Who else thinks they might know what the predicate is?"

"HEY GUYS!"  Rennie is smart enough to know he needs backup here.  And who better to support him than his trusty Brain Trust.  "Do you SEE this?  She's PURPOSELY DISCRIMINATING against us!  She hasn't called on ANYONE from the Red Group YET today!!!"

A quick glimpse at Pinky and the Brains gives great insight into his chances of success.  Jason (who hates loud noises and disruptions to the daily routine) is laying with his hood up, his head on the desk, and his hands covering his ears.  Brian is glaring at Rennie and mouthing what looks suspiciously like "Shut UP you moron!" while making chopping motions across his throat.  R.C. is leaning back in his chair with an ear-to-ear grin watching the show and probably wishing he had some popcorn.  And mild-mannered Lisa is staring at Rennie with her eyes about to pop out and roll across the floor and her face a shade of magenta only found on dinosaurs on PBS.

"Don't you see?  This is the absolute WORST place to sit in the ENTIRE classroom!"  Rennie turns his appeal to the rest of his fellow Americans.  "None of you should EVER choose to sit here, EVER!  Do you want to know WHY???"  He stops to take a dramatic breath.

"Because there is a LIABILITY at this table!!!"

The whole room goes silent.  And now I, along with my supervising teacher, am trying desperately to contain the bouts of maniacal laughter.  Jason looks up, his eyes meet mine, and we have one of those beautifully random moments of perfect mutual understanding.

Yes, Rennie… there certainly is.  ^_^

--------------------------------------------

By the end of the year, Rennie and I had (finally) come to a sense of mutual understanding and respect, and we were both able to laugh at the "Liability" incident-- eventually :-)  Rennie even learned how to stop and actually listen to the words that come out of his mouth every once in a while; we call it the "5-Second Delay", and it's been a HUGE help to him in understanding why Lisa has always been so leery of sitting within earshot of him. 

Fast forward to today.  Rennie is now a 5th grader, and he has learned a lot more self-control than he had last year.  He's still the same smart, funny, perceptive (though at times totally clueless) guy I remembered, and still one of my all-time favorite students.  So, when he hollered at me from across the blacktop this afternoon, I was more than happy to stop and talk to him.

"Hey, Rennie… What's up?"

"Nothin' much.  Hey, guess what?"

"What?"

"Did you know that I can make noise with my mouth?"

I stop.  Pause.  And just look at him as I silently count to 5.

"OK, that's NOT what I MEANT!  You KNOW what I meant…"

"Well, Rennie, I MIGHT have been thinking SOMETHING along the lines of 'Of COURSE you can make noise with your mouth… That's NEVER been one of your areas of struggle…'  But of course I would NEVER say such a thing to a student out loud…"

Rennie smirks at me.  "Yeah, of course you wouldn't."  And then he grins.  "What I MEANT was that I can make weird mouth noises like this…"  And then he proceeds to make several different creepy/weird/funny noises that were actually pretty impressive for a 10 year old.

"Now that's just awesome!"  And I smile back at him.  "But you do know that there's something that every 5th grader has to learn before they'll let him into middle school, right?"

"Really?  What?"

I fix him with my most serious real-life teacher face.  "Burping the entire alphabet from A to Z.  All 26 letters.  In order."

"Sweet!"  And then he starts to burp.  And they almost sound like letters.  Or weird letter-like mouth noises, anyway.  "See?  I got up to F that time!"  And as he turns to head into Music, he starts to shout.  "HEY!  I'VE GOT AN F!!!"

OMG, I cannot WAIT to sub in 5th grade this year… :-D





(Oh, and for those of you who are still wondering about the subject and the predicate... )

What To Expect When You're High-Schoolering...

Yesterday, my daughter and most of her friends graduated from the 8th grade; as she keeps reminding me, she's "officially" a high schooler now, and "not some little seventh grader anymore, Mooooommmm... " <insert dramatic eye-rolls here>  I'm kind of hard-pressed to find the words to say how proud I am of her and all of her friends, and how hope-filled, excited, and nervous I am for all of them as they start the final leg of their journey to adulthood: high school.

With that in mind, here is what I'd like to say to them-- the little bits and pieces of advice that I'd like to give them as one who went through high school and survived.  Not that they would listen at the moment, since they're too busy reveling in the fact that it's finally SUMMER (Yay! Yah! WooHOOOOOOOOO!!! and all that jazz) to actually listen to anyone, but hey... that's what my blog is for, right? ^_^

So, without further ado (sounds so much more dramatic than it really is, huh? ^_^), here is my Top 8 list of Things Every New High Schooler Should Know:

1.     Everything counts. 
If you have a goal of succeeding in high school, going to college, and getting a job where you get paid a lot of money for not working very hard (as one of my daughter's friends was quoted as saying in their graduation ceremony), you have to start now, with that first Freshman Study Skills class.  In high school, there are no MDFs to turn in when you were too busy to finish your homework and need an extra day or two (or 17, as the case may be) to get it in... Either you turn it in on time or the teacher docks you by half, no ifs ands or buts.  It's not that there are no second chances in high school... it's just that second chances in high school are called "Credit Recovery" and you have to take them during your summer vacation :-(  Which just plain sucks.  Big time.


2.     Don't underestimate the little things. 
You never know what someone else is going through, and your one insignificant little action could be the thing that either makes their day bearable or destroys their will to go on.  A whole school year of little things can make the difference between giving up and pushing through... especially since you have no idea of all the other "little things" that someone is thinking about in any given moment. 

3.     Kindness.
No matter what, you will never go wrong with kindness.  Don't do to others just because they did it to you... an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind and all that.  It doesn't matter who started it... You can be the one to finish it :-) 

4.     You don't know the future.
You may get the chance tomorrow to make amends for the stupidities of today.  Then again, you may not.  You have no way of knowing what is going to happen next to yourself or to that person walking away from you...  As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone, and don't wait to make the wrong things right. 

5.     You can't change the past.
When all else fails, today is a new day, and you can always choose to keep walking forward.  It really doesn't matter what everyone says you are or what everyone is predicting based on yesterday and all that came before... You are who you are because God has formed you and shaped you to be in this place, and where you go from here is between you and Him.  Don't let the haters tell you who you have to be. 

6.     YOLO.
When Nickelback says to live like today was your last day, it doesn't necessarily mean that you should go out and give everything away and refuse to plan for the future.  Rather, live each day so that when you lay down at night, you don't have any regrets to keep you awake.  If you have to think about how you're going to hide what you're about to do, chances are good you probably shouldn't be doing it.  If you've screwed up and need to make things right, do it today, ASAP.  Very few people will be ticked off at you for calling or texting them at 10:45 PM to say you're sorry :-) 

7.     YODO.  You only die once too.  Don't be excessively stupid :-)  (And, since I forgot to include a video in the last post, I'll throw in a bonus video here...

And finally, with all that being said...

8.     Enjoy high school.
This is your last chance to be a kid, before you have to worry about a job, a place to live, insurance, settling down and raising kids, etcetera.  Think about it... If you're 14 now, you could have at least 60 years ahead of you to do all those things.  You don't have to choose a husband or wife, a career path, or a house right now (although the choices you make now could end up having a huge effect on those choices down the road...)  Enjoy being young and having your whole life ahead of you... Don't be in such a hurry to weigh yourself down with the worries of being an adult just yet, because in 20 years, you'll be looking back and going, "Y'know, I really, really wish I hadn't done that...", and you'll end up sitting at your kitchen table writing all of these things down in a blog instead of actually telling your kids and their friends what they need to know to survive high school ^_^

I think this song pretty much sums up everything I want to say here... and knowing my daughter, chances are good that she'd rather hear it from somebody yelling into a microphone than from me, anyway ^_^ 


Today really is the first day of the rest of your life... and not just because that's what the vice-principal said in his official 8th grade graduation speech that he's probably been giving from memory since Vanilla Ice was still cool o_O   No, today is the first day of the rest of your life because, as long as you still have life in you, you can choose to make it the first day.  This is your life, no one else's... and no one can take that away from you :-)

My Top 5 list of phrases that will heretofore be forever banned from my classroom...

As I draw near to the end of my full-time student teaching experience (Graduation in t-minus 11 days... Squeeeeee! :-D), I've come to the conclusion that there are certain phrases that should be banned from any classroom anywhere at any time...

5.  "But you never TAUGHT us THIS...!"
In some cases, this is OK.  Just not when we're talking about nouns after I've spent a week and a half covering them.  In detail.  With all sorts of color-coded whiteboard games and Mad Libs.  And Schoolhouse Rock videos.  Did I mention that I'm teaching fourth grade?  Yeah.  You see how it is...

4.  (Careful... this one is a two-parter)
Student: "I don't GET it..."
Me: "OK... what part don't you get?"
Student:  "... AAAALLLLL of it!"
Me:  Sigh.  Consider banging head against wall.  Decide against the wall plan and take a peek at Student's paper.  Point.  "First, put your name on the paper."  Walk away and repeat with the student three desks over.  If you make it through 5 students before your head explodes, you win.  Go directly to the teacher's lounge and scarf down any form of unguarded chocolate you find.

3.  "But this is HAAAAAAARRRRRD..."
My response to this varies with the student.  Sometimes it's, "Well, let's take it one step at a time... First, put your name on the paper..."  Sometimes it's "Yes... Welcome to fourth grade.  Your point is?"  And sometimes (if it happens to be Rennie or Jason saying it) it's "Noooo, this isn't hard, it's complex... Which are two related but linguistically separate things."  Which means I now have to tell y'all about Rennie, but that's a whole other post entirely...

2.  "But I don't WANT to..."
Of course you don't want to... If you DID, you would have already come up with this idea on your own and finished it.  Probably while I was explaining something else, to which your response was...

1.  "Do we HAAAAAAAVVVVVE to do this???"
No, no, of course not... I just spent the past 5 minutes explaining the directions for this art project/math game/vocabulary worksheet because I enjoy talking to myself in front of a room full of 10-year-olds, all of whom are now wondering if it would be better to notify their parents of their teacher's insanity or just sit back and enjoy the ride... ^_^

When I (someday) have my own classroom, one of the first things I'm going to do is create one of these bad boys... Many thanks to Ms. Teach for the idea :-D

As soon as any one of those phrases passes the lips of one of my students, they will earn a pick from the Fortune Teller of Doom... I swear on the soul of my father... Domingo Montoya...

Well, maybe not, but still... you see how utterly serious I am about this subject.  ^_^

And now, for those of you who know exactly what Schoolhouse Rock song I was referring to (and who now have it running around in your head like a caffeinated hamster...)

Better Late Than Never, Right...? (aka "I'm Thankful that There's No Such Thing as a Deadline for a Personal Blog...")

OK, so I guess I should post this while it's still relatively close to Thanksgiving... My original plan was to post after we got home from visiting my family, but we all know how planning goes... :-)

But anyway, here is my list of things I'm thankful for:

I'm thankful for the opportunity to finish school and get my teaching degree in a matter of months from now... even though I'm not always thrilled with the irritations (aka those really boring textbook note-taking assignments) and the minor potholes (aka "What do you mean I have to take Freshman Intro to Literature after all?  The advising department told me that that was covered by my AA degree...") along the way.

In that vein, right now I'm thankful for my Science Methods textbook, which has provided me with almost immeasurable inspiration tonight... inspiration to clean the kitchen, inspiration to write in my blog, inspiration to hunt down and kill all of the new black mold colonies in all of the windows of the entire apartment, inspiration to do anything but read the 4 chapters that are due this week ^_^

I'm also thankful that MacBooks are actually pretty durable little guys... and that I realized that the back of the screen was a little too close to the cinnamon spice scented candles before it melted all the way through the shell o_O

I'm thankful for all of the friends I've made in my cohort at school over the past year and a half, and for the close-knit family that we've become.  For the first time I can remember, I've finally found a school where I actually belong, and where I feel at home and wanted.

I'm thankful for Facebook, because it actually does help me to stay connected with people (something I'm really, really not good at in real-life)... and it helps me to keep on top of my hectic assignment calendar (read as "Hey, BTW, does anyone know which chapters we were supposed to read for class tomorrow?")

I'm thankful for my husband and my 3 kids, who keep me on my toes and remind me that I really don't have it all figured out yet :-)  Humility is a wonderful thing... or so they keep telling me  ^_^

I'm also thankful for my extended family, because they've taught me everything I know about being me.  I'm convinced that family is God's way of teaching us to love like He does... You see, with friends, if they tick you off or let you down, you always have the choice of just walking away.  With family, though, you're kind of stuck with them... no matter how screwed up they are or how badly they've blown it, they're still your family, and like them or not, you still love them.  Of course, that whole part about being screwed up and blowing it applies just as much to you as to them... no matter what we've done or how much they might complain about us on Facebook, they still love us and welcome us back home each holiday.

Our family sees us at our most unlovely... when we're babies who've just pooped all over our best holiday dress, when we're five years old and throwing a tantrum because somebody had the audacity to put both green beans AND sweet potatoes on our plate-- and they're TOUCHING!!!!!--, when we're thirteen and refusing to come out of our rooms because we have to sit at the kids' table AGAIN... and on and on into the totally separate issues of adulthood.  Yet in spite of all our issues, our family is still our family, and they still love us-- even when they may not like us very much at the moment.  (Remind me to talk about the ginormous difference between "like" and "love" some other time... ^_^)

OK, so you may be saying, "Well, maybe in YOUR family... mine hasn't spoken to each other in years, and not just because of all the restraining orders and conditions of parole..."  Still, hear me out...  Even if your family says they hate you, or you hate them, or your parents do all their communicating through you, or if your family has disowned people, guess what?  You still think about those people and have never forgotten them.  Why?  Because they're family, and somewhere, buried underneath all the drama and scar tissue, there will always be love there.

See, this is why I say that family is how God teaches us what His love is really like... We came from Him, because He made us.  He loves us when we're at our crappiest, and when we've done everything possible-- whether we meant to or not-- to make Him give up on us.  Even if we deny our relationship to Him and deny that He even exists, He still shows His love for us by giving us what we need to live and by putting a desire in our hearts to be loved by somebody.  When we realize this and love Him back, things are wonderful... maybe not in the circumstances, but in our ability to deal with those circumstances.  When we turn our backs on Him, things get messy... and then a lot of the time we go crying out to Him like teenagers calling their parents to bail them out of jail at 3AM ^_^  And then, even if He doesn't come and bail us out right away, we know He's there working on it and that He cares about us.  So, it really isn't that big of a stretch to say that family is a lot like God after all :-)

Which leads to the biggest thing that I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving... I'm thankful to God for loving me and saving me when I was at my worst, for knowing how little I deserved His love and for still sending Jesus to die for me so that I could actually know Him as His Child and not just as a pawn in this world of His.  I'm thankful for the life that He has given me... I only hope I can remember to be thankful more often than just once a year :-/

So, anyway, true to form, here's a musical interlude that kind of fits the theme and my mood... The song is "Faith My Eyes" from Caedmon's Call's album 40 Acres.

But I'm still here...

This past couple of months has been full of what Mark Lowry would call "life... more abundantly".  What he means by that is that life is full of ups and downs... it's not a plateau by any means.  And (further paraphrasing Lowry), if Jesus came so that we might have life more abundantly (John 10:10... pretty easy to remember, if I could only remember to remember it...), then this logically means that instead of life being happy little series of hills and valleys...


life should be more like this...


... crazy, chaotic, completely out of our control at all times.

This is how it works.  I get that.  It keeps things interesting. 

Over the past couple of months, I started and finished my first bout of full-day student teaching... 3 weeks in a second grade classroom, which has in itself its very own microcosm of ups-and-downs.  This was a higher point in the crazy roller coaster ride of the past few months... the kids were overall pretty sweet, they theoretically learned some math, and I got 27 construction paper "thank you" cards at the end of the last week (plus a Dutch Brothers coffee gift card from the teacher :-D)  And now it's back to regular college classes for another 6 weeks or so... happy happy joy joy ^_^

Of course, there's no point whatsoever in mentioning everything that I wrote before that last paragraph unless I'm now going to talk about the abundant downside of life... but at least you can go into reading the rest of this post knowing that no matter how it might seem in the moment, there ARE still high points to life...

Recently, not one but two teenagers within our family's circle of friends have threatened or attempted to commit suicide.  Both girls survived, but to say that they are "OK" would be a huge mistake and would actually be a lie.  Physically, they look fine... "no permanent damage has been done" as the doctors say.  But still, they're not OK.

I know because I've been there.

The biggest question that people keep asking is "Why?"  As in, "Why would she do such a thing?  I mean, look at her... she's beautiful, she's got such a nice family, she's smart, she's got friends who love her...  There are thousands of people out there who would gladly trade their life for hers, or who would gladly take the years that she's willing to throw away... What on earth could make her think that suicide is ANY sort of an answer to the momentary troubles of this present life?"

Let me tell you why.

You may have a great family, with a mom and a dad and a nice house in the suburbs.  Maybe your family has been attending the same church since you were a baby, or at least since you were old enough for Awanas.  Maybe you went to the good schools in town, and maybe you've always gotten good grades and made everyone proud of you your whole life.  Maybe you have awards on the wall for your art, or for your band solos, or for your writing... maybe your name has been in the paper as an Academic All-Star or as the top finisher in the long-jump or the 500m dash.  Maybe your friends are all good kids with the same sorts of awards on their walls and the same badges on their Awanas vest.

Or, on the other hand, maybe your family is fractured beyond fixing.  Maybe your mom and dad spend equal parts of their time fighting and making up, making peace and raising hell.  Maybe your mom tells you that you're stronger than your past and your dad tells you to make sure you go farther than he did.  Maybe life is tough, but you know that you'll make it if you're tougher.  Maybe you've had to work hard for your good grades (or your not-so-good grades), and maybe you're just hanging onto your spot in the Jazz Band or on the soccer team through the kindness of people giving you rides to practices and events.  Maybe you're even good enough to someday get a scholarship to a college that's somewhere far away from this godforsaken town you've landed in, and then you will make your own decisions and run your own life.

Or maybe your story is somewhere in the middle, or a mix of both.

Either way, it doesn't matter.  Because none of it does.

Your church attendance, your Awanas awards... you know it's all a scam.  Underneath, you know how messed up you-- and your family-- really are.  You know that the thrill of winning first chair in the band or first place in the art fair will wear off after a day or two... and then everyone will expect you to top yourself next time.  You know that no matter how tough you are, or how good you look on the outside, nothing can fix the things that are broken on the inside.

And frankly, you get tired of keeping up the act.  It gets harder and harder each day to keep everyone from seeing the real you, from seeing how you're barely holding on, barely holding it together.  You feel like one of those plate spinners in the circus... You have to keep all of the plates spinning, because if one plate falls to the ground and shatters, people will notice and you will be a failure.  And you can't just stop, because then all of the plates will fall and shatter and no one will notice anything but your failure.

And when your life is reduced to the spinning of stupid china plates, you realize that none of it has any meaning.  That your life is meaningless and empty.  Nothing-- not your good grades, not your nice family, not your reputation or your status or your trophies-- has any worth or any value.

You have no value.

And when you have no value, your life has no value.

If your life has no value, it is insignificant.

If you're insignificant, then no one would notice if, suddenly, you weren't there.

So, you start dropping hints... "Imma gonna kill myself.  I know where they keep the guns."

"What do you care... I'll be gone soon anyway."

"No one lives forever, you know..."

"I wish I were dead."

And then you wait and see what people do.   You hope that it will make a difference, that someone will notice you and ask you how you're doing... and actually mean it.  You hope that, finally, someone will look behind the mask and either help you spin the plates or take the plates from your hands before they fall.

But instead, they tell you you're just being melodramatic.  You're just young, and you don't know yet that it will all pass.  You have your whole life ahead of you... don't sweat the small stuff.  When you're older, you will understand how silly your life right now really is, and you will look back on these days and laugh.

No one takes you seriously.

Unless you actually go through with it, that is.

And then, when they realize that they could have stopped you, but didn't... when they realize what a great and priceless treasure they let slip through their fingers... when they finally realize all that you could have been was lost because of their inaction... then they'll finally understand and take you seriously.

Death not only is supposed to make you a martyr, but it's also a way out of the meaningless endlessness of spinning all of those stupid china plates.  It's a way to say, "I quit... this is stupid...", without anyone calling you a failure or a waste of space.  It's a final rebellion against a system built on fakery and mindlessness: If you die young and leave a beautiful memory, you win.

Game over.

But... I'm still here to write this.  Apparently, I was such a failure that I couldn't even succeed at suicide... which is the same spot that these two girls who have been weighing on my mind so heavily these past couple of days are in right now.  What was supposed to be a final victory over an unfair world has now turned them into victims and prisoners and (according to their parents and the "professionals" who have been charged with watching over them) "persons who cannot be trusted."

But... I'm still here.  Let me tell you why.

This life we live... all of the status, all of the activities, all of the homework and practices and awards... in and of themselves, yes, they are meaningless.  No matter how much we do, or how well we do it, or how many awards we get, there will always be something left undone, or something we're not perfect at, or someone else who tops us.

All of our nice houses, or our nice families, or our nice friends... Some of that niceness is a facade, just like the siding on a house or the paint on a car.  It makes it look better on the outside, but it doesn't do a thing to fix the rusted engine, or the leaky pipes, or even the squeaky garbage disposal.

Without a real meaning to life, life is meaningless.  Without a good reason to spin those plates, there's no point to spinning them.  In other words, if you're thinking your life has no meaning, no purpose... you may be right.

Which is as scary as standing on a cliff and getting ready to jump.

But... what if there is a meaning to life?  What if there is a reason to get up and go out and be?

What if you are valuable because, out of all of the possible combinations of eggs and sperm and all of the situations in the world, someone chose the specific time and place and matter to create you?  What if you are not a mistake, not an oversight, not an accident... What if you were chosen to be born into this world, to live in these times, to know these people... for a specific purpose?

Think about it this way.  Think of everything you did today, all of the choices you made and the choices you didn't make, all of the things you did and the things you forgot to do, all of the things that were awesome and the things you wish you could take back... somehow, all of those random bits of circumstance ended up with you sitting here, reading these words right now, and thinking about a couple of girls who you've probably never met and who probably won't even read these words themselves.

If that ain't random, I don't know what is :-)

But I actually don't believe in randomness.  Because when I was at the point where my life had no reason to go on, and where I figured I had nothing left to lose by committing suicide, I discovered that there really is a God, and that He really does love me... not because I was an amazing plate spinner, but simply because He chose to create me in the first place.

I had been told the "good news" countless times by countless Christians growing up... but not one of them could give me a reason why they thought that their God would love me.   Sometimes their spiel was, "God loves you... Won't you make Him happy by getting saved today?"-- as if God's love was a limited-time, call-now-while-the-operators-are-still-standing-by sort of offer.

Other times their routine was, "God would hate for you to be cast into hell... If you choose Jesus today, God won't have to do that to you..."  Which always made me imagine God standing there, wringing His hands and waiting indecisively for me to let Him off the hook on the whole casting-into-Hell-business.

And then there was always this one: "God loves you.  He sent His son to die for your sins.  If you ask Jesus into your heart today, all your sins will be taken away and you will live happily with Him for all eternity."  To which I had one question... Why?  OK, two questions, really... Will Jesus make the kids at school quit picking on me, or make my mom and dad stop fighting, or give me an immunity to head lice?  Which is actually more like four questions, but you get my point...

By the time I was 16 or so, I had my reaction to these oh-so-concerned soul winners down pretty pat.

Them: "Hello there, young lady... We're from that (fill-in-the-denomination-here) church just down the street.  Do you know for sure if you died today that you would go to Heaven?"
Me: "I don't believe in Heaven."
Them: (Pause... for some reason, this must never have been the next line in any of the scripts they rehearsed back at the church.)"Well... if you don't believe in Heaven, you'll end up in Hell, then.  You wouldn't want that, now, would you?"
Me: "Don't believe in Hell either."
Them: (Another pause... usually accompanied with frowns and blinking eyes as well.) "Well... if you don't accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, I guess you'll end up in Hell, then.  Have a nice day!"

Which always made me laugh... If their God was so concerned about me that He sent them to tell me about Him and rescue me from the eternal torments of a lake of fire and sulfur, why were they always so quick to leave me once their script ran out?

But...

God-- the real, true God who really did create the universe, and who really did create me-- is much, much bigger than any of the so-called missionaries who tried to boost their own spiritual self-esteem by converting one more angry, hurting teenager for their church.  God really did send His son Jesus to die for me... not because I owed Him one for creating me in the first place, but because He loved me and wanted me to return to Him and be a part of His family.  God already knew all about my screw-ups-- after all, if He didn't, then He certainly couldn't have been much of a God at all-- but He also already knew about why I was so screwed up in the first place.  God already knew about all of the people I had hurt... and about all of the people who had hurt me.  He already knew that I couldn't keep the plates spinning... and He knew which ones were about to fall.

God knew all of this all along... Even when I didn't.

All I knew was that I was at the end of everything I had, and it wasn't enough.  All I knew was that I had nothing left to lose, nothing left worth keeping, and nothing left to live for.  I figured that, if this "God" or "Jesus" or "Whoever" was real, then great... Maybe He could save me from myself.  And if He wasn't... then I was no worse off than I already was, and suicide would still be there tomorrow.

So I kind of put it to God this way: "OK, Jesus... fine.  Save me... I dare you."

For the first time in years, I found peace.  And for the first time in four days, I was able to sleep.

The next day, I woke up.  Nothing in my circumstances had changed... same apartment with the leaky window, same crummy minimum-wage job, same classes that I was struggling to care about and pass, same insecurities about who I was supposed to be and whether I was doing any of it right.

But for some strange reason, now I had hope.  And that was what made all the difference.

And so... I'm still here.  And now I can see that God let me go through all of the crap in middle and high school-- including my 6 suicide attempts-- so that I could stand here, on the other side of darkness, and say, "Hey... I'm still here.  Let me help you across."

As I was thinking about what to write here and driving my daughter back from Youth Group, I heard this song, and it just seems to fit... Yet another example of the Randomness That Isn't that is God ^_^