School vs. Sports: The Winner is...

"Where's Miss Williams?"

"Here?"

Raising my hand, I waved to the large and rather intimidating man who had just welcomed a bus load of us to Michigan. We came to watch a student of mine play hockey, and the man who called my name was the assistant coach. This former NHL player proceeded then to thank me for allowing my student the privileges I and the school grant him so that he can travel from Indiana to Michigan in order to play for the team.

I have to admit, I was greatly taken aback by this. And my astonishment continued throughout the course of the day. The quality of the playing at these games was truly phenomenal. Traveling up to Troy, Michigan and watching my student in what appeared to me to be, another world, opened my eyes all the more to truly understanding the child beneath the label of "student."

Sports, whether it be one where you travel over 200 miles to play every weekend, or the local basketball team, hold a significant role in the lives of students across the nation. Our culture promotes athleticism and idolizes those who show great proficiency. And there's a part of me that thinks that this obsession is justified. We're all looking for a hero, and maybe, just maybe, this guy who shows us week after week the meaning of the word "great", will be our hero. The one who will make a difference. The one we're unable to be on our own. But I digress.

Sports, when cultivated in a way that promotes discipline and hard work, comes alongside academics and each accentuates the other. On their own, neither can fully meet the needs of the student. This could also be said of just about any extra-curricular program, from drama to chess, these programs depend on students doing well not only in the program, but also in the classroom. For it is in the classroom the student will gain skills in and out of their interests and natural abilities. Overcoming the fear of failure in an area the student may not excel at, as well as developing discipline in the day to day monotony of routine, will aid them when it comes time to practice their skills outside the classroom. And it is outside the classroom that students will be free to perfect their areas of expertise, to practice and compete to determine how great a skill they themselves possess when compared to the skill of another.

Sports and school will be intertwined for years to come. The way I see it, if you were to pit school vs. sports, it would end up being a tie. Which, if you ask me, is the way it should be.

Presently Missing the Past...

I miss my family. I miss the way things once were. Where I used to love being home all by myself, curled up with a good book or engrossed in a new movie on TCM. I miss having my own schedule, that changed daily based off of the needs of that particular day. I miss being able to go over to visit my friend and being able to spend the night, chatting about our dreams for the future and giggling into the late hours about things we still giggle about today. Things certainly have changed.

And yet I love the present. I love that I have a classroom of my own. That there are students who come every week to see me, hear what I have to tell them, and hopefully gain something from being under my tutelage. I love that I live an unconventional life with roommates in all different phases of life. I love that my friends are here, there, and everywhere. My only wish is I could have them near me all the time...

I miss how things once were, but I also know that my life today depended on those moments and events from the past to make me the person I am presently, and if I remained there, in the past with things as they once were, my life would be stunted. Instead, I grow. I stretch. And I take time to miss the things of the past, so that I might enjoy all the more my life in the present.

Marriage: What I think it's all about, Part II

Mirrors fascinate me. I could spend hours looking in them, and not because of the image staring back at me(!), but rather because of their ability to reflect things so clearly. Things may be slightly distorted, and the image flipped, but overall, what is seen by gazing at a looking glass allows for a image to be retained in one's mind.

Marriage is all about love. A love that is not self-serving, but continually seeking out ways to offer itself in word and deed, and so by giving of itself, receiving all the more. This is a choice made everyday, in every circumstance and situation that is presented in the course of life lived with another. And it's far from easy. Believe me, I know.

I know, not because I'm married, I know because of what marriage is a mirror image of; Christ, and His love for the Church. Please note that this is Church with a capital C, not a lowercase. Capital C Church is for all those who believe in Christ and who have accepted him, it's not divided into denominations or sects, or any other splitting ourselves apart over the small stuff.

Christ loves the Church, and the Church in return should love Christ. And it's here I'm left with several interesting questions, the first of which is what exactly is meant by loving Christ?

I can get loving a person, another human being... I can do this through word and deed and present them directly to them. A wife loves her husband by showing him respect, and a husband loves his wife by continuing to pursue her heart. But what does it look like to love Christ? He's not even "really" here anymore. He left another in his place... so how do I show love to him?

There's this scene of Jesus talking to his disciples, it's a personal dinner discussion between him and the 12 of them. He's breaking the news to them that he's not going to be around forever, he's going to have to leave them. It's in this in this discussion that Christ spells out what it would look like to really love him. So he tells them, if you truly love me, you'll show it by doing what I've told you.

Huh, so... to love Christ, is to obey all the rules and regulations that are in the Bible, right? Err. That's what I used to think, and is where I got lost in legalism for years. It's not about being able to say that you don't do such and such, or that you do this and that. It's about being able to say at the end of the day that you loved on someone else. It's about being able to know that instead of picking yourself in such and such situation, you picked someone else. To love Christ is to love someone else.

That's the beauty of it, marriage between man and woman and that which happens metaphorically between Christ and the Church is shown by denying yourself to benefit the other. They are mirror images of each other, and serve to be a reminder of what love looks like.

Marriage, and what I think it's all about: Part I

With weddings on the brain as of late, I find myself contemplating what it's all about and question my own reasons for holding out hope that I too might find myself in the middle of matrimony.

I've heard it said that marriage is a commitment between two people to be the witnesses of each other's lives, a promise that each life will not go unnoticed for the other is there to notice it. I like the idea of being a living story watcher and teller, both, at the same time.

I've heard that marriage is covenant, a word that isn't used very often in the modern vernacular. When it is, the word is most often tossed around and thrown into the wedding ceremony itself. It's a term used by ancient middle-eastern cultures, and it's from a certain middle-eastern culture that many of our own ideas about marriage originate from.

I've heard that marriage is not having to say goodbye at the end of the day, but finding out that there's a part of you you didn't realize was missing.

And yet, I know marriage is full of things that disprove each of the above statements, that couples aren't always paying attention to witness the other's life, that covenants and promises can be broken, and that it's a whole lot easier to just think about yourself and forget the other part.

Through all of these mixed messages, here's what I have learned about what marriage all boils down to in the end. It's about a choice. Marriage (and all healthy relationships, if you ask me) is about choosing to love someone over yourself. Which is WAY easier said than done. All people are naturally and instinctual selfish. I the worst of them all.

And so in a sense, marriage, goes against what we are naturally programmed to do. It goes against who we instinctually are. So how in the world is a marriage actually work? How could it possibly work? Here's where that choice part comes in, the choice is to love.

The kind of love that makes marriage work, is not the self-serving kind, it's the self-giving kind. The kind that doesn't expect anything in return, the kind that can be taken advantage of, the kind that can be taken for granted. Love, is the choice. Love, is a choice.

I think that people forget this... thanks to the sexual revolution and the I-want-it-now generation, love has gotten lost and confused with being solely a feeling or emotion. But ask any pregnant woman and she'll tell you emotions change, and in a hurry! That's not what TRUE love is. Love, withstands the passing of feelings, and in the end, becomes a choice. Even though I may not feel like loving a person, I choose to do so. Marriage, is about choosing to love a certain person every day, no matter what, more than you love yourself.

That's marriage, and what I think it's all about. It's all about giving up the rights to thinking about yourself first, it's about choosing the other person, it's about: love.

I've been rather teary eyed lately. Throughout the past several weeks, I've been melancholy and listless. Let me begin to unpack why.

The school year is in full swing, and it's around this time of the year that I begin to wonder if I have too much going on at once. Our school's fund raiser for the year is selling Nelson's chicken so that the classes can go on their field trips. It's a lot of work on the teacher's end, what with tabulating how many tickets different students were given, correctly accounting for each day's sales and moneys (I feel like Scrooge when I'm behind my desk counting a pile of crinkled ones or pile of coins) brought in, and recording all of this information. I'm grateful for everyone contributing to our school by buying the chicken, but it's very frustrating that I am left to count the money piled on my desk when I should be spending time instructing students. There's no easy solution to this problem, and so I am thankful that chicken sales ended this past Friday.

It's also at this time of the year when I create a video promo for the Young Hoosier books. Indiana has a book program where there are 20 selected texts for various age levels, and at my school we offer prizes for students who complete a certain number of books and show their competency by passing a computer generated comprehension test. For each one of the 20 texts, I created a script and, with the help of my students, included summaries of each of the books intermediate Hoosier students will read this year. It's a lot of fun, but trying to fit in a time to tape students each day is somewhat difficult. Thank the Lord for cadet teachers! Without mine, the taping would yet to be complete! Filming has ended, and so I was left with the raw footage for me to sift through and edit. This was not difficult, only time consuming... and this year I found myself with fewer days to complete my project.

This was due to the wonderful even that took place this past Saturday. My cousin Emily got married! And to a wonderful man I might add! I loved being able to be a part of the wedding, and being able to share in their day. I also enjoyed their wedding because it gave my friends and I an excuse to get together, which doesn't happen often as we all live so far away from each other. Karen in LA, Emily in Kansas, Abbey in Ohio, and me in Indiana. The Lord has taken us to such different places in our lives, and yet, despite this fact, we all have remained close to each other.

These three major events all happened to fall upon the same time frame, the end of September/beginning of October. These three major events have left me very, very tired. When I get to these points, I become like a tea kettle and have to let out my steam. Thankfully for those in earshot, it's not through an ear piercing scream (I hate that about tea kettles), but through tears. I cry.

It's at these points that I am forced to remember that it's not on my own strength that allows me to continue on through each day... and maybe that's what I'm supposed to learn from these experiences. There's more, and I'll share that later, but for now I rely not on my own understanding.