Capitulo Nueve: Sanidad

You know that feeling you get when you've been sick for weeks and all of a sudden you wake up healthy? You forgot how exhilarating it is to breathe out of both nostrils, to taste your food, let the bright sunshine back in, and your body just tingles with life and vitality. That is what today and yesterday have been for me. Not physically but in my head and my classroom. After a couple of miserable weeks we're back to happy and suddenly I can laugh at my ridiculous students, I can see the beautiful in the world, I can feel like a good teacher again, and most importantly of ALL- I can write in my blog. ;)


The weeks have been really hard for a variety of reasons. Bullying is the main one. More than one of my students are instigators and the followers feed off them. Then the perpetrator's parents see their angel getting victimized and jump in the scuffle and we all come out bloody. I haven't developed thick skin yet so I take everything personally: parent comments, bad grades, black eyes, cold weather- you name it- it's my fault. So this is what it's like to be a mom! All that to say that things are looking up. The sun has come out literally and figuratively, and for the time being, there is peace and harmony in the classroom.

One of my precious friends left part of Ps 121 taped to my classroom door this week.

I lift my eyes up unto the mountains; from where shall my help come?

My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

He will not allow your foot to slip;

He who keeps you will not slumber.

The LORD is your keeper,

the LORD is your shade at your right hand.

The sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will protect you from all evil;

He will keep your soul.

I know so much more fully that I am inadequate for the task. I cannot guard the 21 souls entrusted to my care. I cannot even guard my own. I am vulnerable and in the dark.  But God is my keeper.
He guards our souls and leads us through the valley and gives what we need for each day and then one blessed day he lets us step into the sun and whew the sun is ten times more beautiful than it used to be.


There are my ramblings for the day.

Thanksgiving is next week and I'm trying to decide between going to an island in the Caribbean or staying here to get ahead on class work. :) At least I'm pretending to ponder the matter.

My students are more bizarre every day and when I'm not pulling out fistfuls of my hair I'm laughing really hard at them. Today one of my students cut eye holes in his nylon book cover and slipped it over his head in the middle of reading. He acted perfectly natural with the mask pulled over his head and sticking up on the sides like antenna on a weird little alien. Needless to say the quiet was broken, never to be recovered- but what can you do?
30 more days until I'm home!!! whoot. Maybe I'll make a paper chain out of the tests I'm supposed to be grading. mwa ha!

Here are some prayer requests until then:

• Wisdom with parents. That I won't fear them, but will be able to calmly present evidence and be Christ- like and sturdy.

• Wisdom with students. To know their hearts, if they are telling the truth, how to best discipline and instruct in righteousness.

• Spiritual vision and faith for me, and biblical integration in every area in the classroom.

Thank you SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much for praying.