Ringing Like a Bell

I love memes. Part of the reason I love them is that they make me laugh, and they are a great equalizer. Anybody with a funny thought can make one.  Since the coronavirus shutdown first began, we have all been flooded with memes, and they're hilarious. "Wash your hands to the intro for Law and Order" , or "Is that you Rona?"  There were some others that really caught my attention. The ones about the death of swimsuit season or the picture of a chubby baby with the caption, "When you've eaten all your quarantine snacks on the first day." The gist is that we're all being tempted to eat too much because we're bored at home.  At about the same time, I saw a conversation between two women, obviously friends, on Twitter. This is not quoting exactly, but I'll paraphrase the best I can.  "I can forget bathing suit season this year!" "I know. I'm definitely going to gain five pounds, but I've felt so stressed....

I have been reading Ann Voskamp's Advent devotional book this year, The Greatest Gift . Usually my friends and I read one together, but this year I dropped the ball. So only my sister is joining me in re-reading this great little book. Each day, along with the other devotional essentials, Ann includes a suggestion to take action in light of God's gift of Jesus. I've been trying to do them all along because it's fun and helps encourage me. She invites her readers to sing Christmas carols out loud, to create something from love, or do something just to please God. I've had no problem following along -- until yesterday. Here's yesterday's task: "Go to a new place today -- to a neighbor's home you've never been before. Be a blessing and bring your neighbor a blessing of some sort. Leave him or her a Christmas card telling about Jesus, the blessing God gives to all people on earth!" Let me say that there is nothing wrong with this idea. It...

About a week before Thanksgiving this year, I met Santa Claus. I have been having a challenging fall semester and feeling generally defeated. My students went through a phase where they were heckling me while I tried to teach, and I hadn’t had a lot of support in dealing the problems in my classroom. That day I was dressed totally in black, reflecting my mood. The store was crowded. I was exhausted. It was dark and raining out, but I had to get groceries. Finally, I made it to the checkout line. An elderly man came up behind me and started putting all his items on the conveyor belt. I glanced over and noticed that everything he was buying was holiday food: a turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing. He didn’t have a beard, but he smiled kindly. His hair was white. He leaned over toward me and handed me a coupon, “I think you need this.” I shook my head because it was a store loyalty coupon, and I was pretty sure it had to be used with a certain loyalty card account number. “I do...

I have this habit of over-dramatically saying, "This person wouldn't even listen to Jesus Christ himself!" when I get particularly frustrated with a difficult person (ahem...teen). When I say it, I am honestly just being sassy and maybe even a bit thoughtless. This morning I was working on the passage I will be teaching in Sunday school this week, Isaiah 52 and 53, where Jesus is described as the "suffering servant." I freshly realized that Jesus did actually come in the flesh to difficult, stubborn people. In fact, he is even now calling all of us mule-headed folks, and many times it doesn't make any difference. Every person still has the freedom to choose. Will we run our own show, or listen to Jesus and let him be our Lord? I would also like to point out that when he did come, he was killed by the very people he was in the process of saving. So from my perspective as his follower, should I be surprised by difficult people? Uh, no. If Jesus met wit...

I hope you have someone or more than one someone in your life that inspires you. I'm blessed in that sense. I am constantly surrounded by the most amazing, inspiring women. I often feel that these ladies are the unsung heroes of everyday life. You know the ones -- the ones who keep on keepin' on even in the toughest circumstances. The ones who manage to fill lunch table conversation with laughter and joy, who will cry with you, who will bake you a birthday cake, or tell you there's something gross stuck in your teeth. One is always smiling and laughing. I've never spoken to her without a hug or an "I love you," maybe even both. She teaches a tough science course and is always thinking of new and better ways to engage her students. She helps them find pumpkin DNA in the fall and is legendary for her homey holiday sweaters. She wears them with joy because she really does love Halloween, Thanksgiving, and especially Christmas. She is so dedicated to her stud...

I was a spy today. Sometimes that happens when you're teaching; you see and hear things you, as an adult, were not meant to see or hear. Most of the time I wish I could un-see or un-hear it. Use your imagination: obscene gestures, profanity, or just plain old meanness.    Here's a little background. It seems there are a few students who've moved into our little community over the summer, so they're just getting to know everyone, a daunting task when you're a self-conscious teen in a small town high school where everybody already knows everybody else. I'm not just making an assumption here. I teach writing classes, so I often have an open doorway into the hearts and minds of my students. In fact, just a few days ago a girl in one of my classes turned in a paper that made my heart a little tender. In it, she detailed all the times she's moved and how hard it can be to leave old  friends behind and make new ones.  Here's where the spying part comes...

Summer's nearly over. In just a few days, all the concerns about the new school year will rush in, and I'll be consumed by it completely. For now, I find myself languishing in a lovely middle ground. I have rested from all the demands of last year, and since the new year is still several days away, I'm in a good place. I'm a tiny bit bored in a pleasant sort of way, which is what led me to re-watch an old romantic comedy I already saw years ago -- New in Town .  I remember watching the movie when came out in 2009, but there's something about it I forgot. It slipped my mind that one of the characters in the movie is an uncomfortably exact reflection of me. Let's just say it isn't Renee Zellweger's character Lucy -- if only. As I saw the film again a few days ago, I was transported back to 2009. The first time I watched the movie I was transfixed -- not by the plot, the actors, or any kind of amazing special effects. On the whole the movie is just wha...

I woke up early on Friday to take my car to the dealer and have a couple of recalls fixed. On the way back, I had two choices. I could take Highway No.1 back to Youngsville, or I could wind my way home to Louisburg on old Highway 39. I decided on 39. The sun was bright and shone on an old graveyard, grass freshly mown and oddly beautiful. I passed houses with white sheets fluttering on the clothesline. I drove slowly listening to my favorite newgrass bands: The Vespers, The Wailin' Jennys, and Sarah Jarosz. I admired the lush tobacco with its pale pink blooms, waiting to be topped. It was one of those moments of joy, contentment, and awareness. I was right where I wanted to be. Somewhere along the way I realized something funny. I was, without realizing it, smack in the middle of one of my dad's car rides. When we were little, he'd round us all up on sweltering summer days and announce, "Come on kids, we're goin' for a car ride!" I hated it then. The ...

I embarrassed my brother. It wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last. He took us (my husband, our sister, and me) to eat at Big Bob Gibson's BBQ when we were in Decatur, AL. First, let me say that the place is a destination all by itself. If you're not from North Alabama and you've never had smoked chicken with white barbecue sauce, don't let yourself die without trying it. I think it is the next best thing to manna from heaven, but I also understand that's how most Southern people feel about their local barbecue flavors. Consequently, my own love of white barbecue sauce made eating at Big Bob's a highlight of my most recent trip home to see my family. Anyway, back to the story. My brother is one of those people that can make friends with anybody. It's a trait he surely inherited from my dad. You might come up on one of them engaged in the apparent conversation of his life and ask, "Who was that?" To which he will reply, ...

For weeks I've been on the lookout for the perfect summer bag. You know the one -- just right for the beach, pretty but not too fancy. I haven't been able to find the right one anywhere. Every time I've stepped into a store with purses for sale, I've browsed. Nothing. All the bags I've seen are either too fussy with lots of weird fringe or metal slugs attached to the sides. The longing for the right purse has been there buzzing in the back of my mind whenever I go out or pick up the purse I've been carrying (One I borrowed from a friend like seven years ago and still haven't returned. Sorry, Whit!). I am happy to report that today I received the bag I've been waiting for all this time. I have a theory that moms get tired after elementary and middle school, so all their eagerness, parent- teacher conference fuel, and gift energy are spent by the time their children get to high school. Consequently, teacher gifts are always pretty thin on the gro...

In full disclosure, I have drafted this post multiple times. That should help explain why it's been so long since I've posted anything. Every time I post to this blog, I've tried to be really honest about the lessons I'm learning and the issues that exist in my life -- to be authentic. Lately that thing has been forgiveness. I've been hurt. Friends of mine have been hurt. There's been a huge, gaping need for forgiveness in my life. I watched a movie recently that had a great scene in it that I think demonstrates what it means to forgive. It is called In My Country and is a fictional story that includes historical elements from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa. A small boy sits, stone-faced in a plastic chair while two adult men recount the way they killed his parents in front of him. One of the perpetrators stands up, then kneels in front of the boy. He's a grown man sobbing, begging to be allowed to do something...

I've written before about the quotes that motivate and sustain me each school year.  This year my focus has been on the fact that I belong to God twice over -- created and redeemed.  Interestingly, my students seem to have a unifying phrase this year too, very different from mine: That's it! I'm dropping out! Multiple students have said that to me this year half-jokingly, half-seriously. At first it was funny, and I laughed. Now when they say it, it makes me sad because I've realized that many of them do leave school instead of pushing forward to a future full of opportunities. What's more is that I think it exposes a certain mindset they have in general. If anything is difficult or challenging or painful, their first instinct is not to dig in deeper but to quit. Can you blame them? I can't. That's what I want to do too, all the time. My drive to work yesterday was a minute by minute struggle against turning around and going back home. For starters ...

Pat McCrory Office of the Governor 20301 Mail Service Center Raleigh, NC 27699-0301   November 16, 2013   Governor McCrory: Let me introduce myself. I am Brandy Carter, and I teach tenth grade English at Bunn High School in Franklin County. I'm sure you receive many letters each day and lately plenty of those letters have surely been from educators like me.   I'm not anyone special. I show up early for school each day, try to build good relationships with my students, and summon my best efforts to teach them the things they need to know. I figure that makes me the equivalent of an Average Joe, which is why I decided to write to you. A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with one of my colleagues that inspired me. He was a firefighter before he became a teacher, and he was explaining to me how firefighting teams work. When there's a large fire, the chief stays in one central location handling all the communications. His job is to manage th...

I ate a Gigi's cupcake today. It was a lemon-lime one. When our (former) students bring us the leftovers from their parents' shop, I always want to try a new one. I was tempted by the one just to the right, which was clearly cookies and cream. I'm brining up the cupcake because my dessert fast has ended. I actually ended just over a month ago. On the first day I shocked myself. I didn't even eat anything sweet; I didn't want to. That's how much my attitude toward dessert changed in a year. When I finally did indulge, I ate a Reese's cup, and it tasted AMAZING! It felt like I was tasting the confectionary equivalent of the Mona Lisa. I also got a colossal sugar rush that lasted for at least thirty minutes. Since then I've had a few sweet things like the cupcake I ate today, and I still really like sweet things. The difference now is that I've realized I don't need them in order to survive my life. Part of the reason I didn't write abo...

It's that time again. Early Monday morning 900 students will fill the halls of our high school. The last few days of this week began with lazy procrastination and culminated yesterday afternoon in a fevered rush to make everything perfect for the first day of school. Earlier yesterday morning we had our annual district-wide convocation. For the last few years it has been held digitally, so our staff gathers in the library to watch our superintendent give his remarks about the year ahead. Usually it consists of a lengthy list of accomplishments given school-by-school which is followed by what amounts to a professional pep rally. If you work in public schools, you'll know that it takes a lot of encouragement to make it through a school year; the task ahead is daunting. Sometimes we even watch an inspirational video. I think I shared last year's with you,  Dalton Sherman asking, "Do you believe in me?"   I was moved to tears last year and walk...

Today began with such promise. I woke up early to an unseasonably cool breeze and sunshine filtering through the trees. Today is the last day of my summer vacation. It seems as if it was to be the last perfect pearl plucked from the strand. I took Bailey for our morning walk, prayed, and read my Bible. I already decided yesterday that I would give our house one more good cleaning before my time and energy got sucked away by the greedy demands of teaching public school. The turning point came while I was wiping down the kitchen counter. I saw the slobber stains all over the glass of our back door. That's where Bailey spends most of her time outdoors, waiting impatiently for someone to let her back inside. She uses the doorknob as a signal by hitting it with her nose; the more frequent her hits, the more frantic she is. That's how her saliva gets all over the glass and the knob. That's when my glorious morning morphed into a bad episode of I Love Lucy . It's easy to...

"I hated it when my teachers did that! It was so unfair," I hear that statement or similar ones pretty frequently in social situations. Sometimes it's awkward. Someone will say, "I hated it when my teachers punished the whole class for what one person did." How am I supposed to respond to that? I'm guilty of the thing this other person just declared that he hates. What's worse is that I used to be just like him and think the same thing -- until I became a teacher. Now I know. Things aren't always what they seem to be. People are particularly nasty when it comes to talking about tests or as we call them now "assessments." Nobody likes being tested; it's a lot of pressure. You are judged, graded, and evaluated. Most of the time the results are less than favorable. I have heard, more than once, teachers say things to students along these lines, "I wish we didn't have to have tests, that we could just learn, but that's n...