Ringing Like a Bell

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 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 ...

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 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...

Since school has been out, I've been catching up on all the little things I've put off during the year. One of those things, besides resting and going to the dentist, is listening to all the podcasts I've missed in the last few months. One of my favorites is the Freakonomics podcast. The subtitle is "The Hidden Side of Everything." So if you like thinking about off-beat things in a weird way, let me recommend it. The Stevens (Levitt and Dubner) do a lot of talking about unintended consequences, and last week I listened to one called " The Cobra Effect ." Here's a quote: MEHROTRA : So the “cobra effect” refers to a scheme in colonial India where the British governor, or whoever, the person in charge in Delhi, wanted to rid Delhi of cobras. Apparently in his opinion there were too many cobras in Delhi. So he had the bounty placed on cobras. And he expected this would solve the problem. But the population in Delhi, at least some of it, responded by f...

Summer Reading. Ahhh, the phrase that strikes fear in the hearts of vacationing honors students everywhere. Last year, I set up an interactive message board for my rising tenth graders, so they could communicate about the book we were all supposed to be reading over the summer. It didn't work out quite the way I intended. In June and July, only three kids posted to the board. Nobody else asked me any questions. There were no signs of life from any of the other seventy students. Nothing. Then in the last week before school began the message board lit up. There were so many posts that I couldn't read and respond fast enough. Can we say procrastination ? After that experience,  I abandoned the message board idea and changed the assignment this year. I put my email address at the bottom of the assignment page. In case you're wondering, I haven't heard a peep -- yet. In about a month, I'll probably get about twenty emails a day from panicking students. I'm resign...

Keep your eyes on the road . I learned that lesson , where I should have learned it -- in driver's ed. class. Our teacher, Coach Burnette, took us down lots of winding country roads, and believe me there are plenty in rural Alabama. My lifelong friend, Joey, and I were in the same driving group along with another girl named Debbie. I'll never forget Debbie's 30 mph stretches and her 50 mph right turns. I don't know how he did it, but somehow Coach always remained calm. He had a "teacher's brake" over on the passenger side, but I'm not sure how much good that really would have done in an emergency. The man must have had nerves of steel. I really didn't have much experience behind the wheel then, and I'm not exactly the best driver in the world now. I wasn't too worried about what Joey and Debbie were going to think because both of them had already driven. They hadn't had too many serious issues. I could handle it. Right? I crept  ...

Each Thursday after school a group of students meets in my room. There aren't many of them, but that's okay. Each week a different one of them offers a brief devotional, and they pray. They pray for all sorts of things, but, most importantly they pray . I'm not able to participate in the group with them because of school guidelines about staff and religious activities, but I can offer them a place to meet and my supervision. Interestingly, I think my being just an observer is a good thing. First of all, the students bear the responsibility for the group. The decisions are theirs -- not mine. Second, watching them has been such a gift. Let me explain.  I know most of them outside school from church or the community. I teach in a small town, so I get to know my students in their actual lives -- not just as bodies in a classroom. The Bible Buddies, as they call themselves, have encouraged me so much. Each of them takes leadership and discipleship seriously. They are commit...

I have a good memory for faces but not always for names. My husband teases me unmercifully about it. He wobbles his head around in imitation of me and says, "He looks familiar!" It all started one night when a new episode of Cops was coming on. During the brief intro clip montage, I saw the face of a guy from my hometown. I perked right up and said, "Hey! I know that guy!" Sure enough, near the end of the episode, there he was being arrested during Mardi Gras. It happens all the time. Sometimes we'll be out somewhere in public, at a restaurant or a store. I'll turn to my husband and say, "I think I know that guy -- He looks so familiar to me." Then the waiter or clerk will say, "Hey! Remember me? You taught me five years ago!" My husband just shakes his head and says, "I swear. We can't go anywhere." It is a small world after all. Sometimes I'm sure he thinks I'm making it up, but I do really recognize peop...

I decided today to write a little update about my dessert fast. If you'll recall, I explained it all four months ago in my post called Confessions of a Sugar Addict . So that means I haven't had any cake, ice cream, or candy for a while now. At first it was really hard. In fact, I dreamed about it -- a lot. Every dream went something like this -- I'd be in a store walking around shopping. Then I'd look down at a package of candy in my hand, usually chocolate, and I would start eating it. About the time I was really enjoying it, taste and all, I would remember that I was supposed to be doing this dessert fast. I'd spit the candy out and feel terribly guilty for forgetting about God and the commitment I've made. I had that dream several times for the first two months. Now, I haven't had a dream like that in a several weeks, thankfully. I don't feel like the longing for sugar is constantly nagging at the back of my mind anymore. I've also managed ...

One Christmas when I was in high school the adult ladies Bible class at my church, The Hamilton Church of Christ , decided to host a special dinner for the teen girls in our congregation. Each of us was paired up with a lady from the class as our 'buddy' for the evening. My buddy was Ms. Fayrene. When she came to pick me up, I gave her the Christmas pot holder set I'd picked out for her a few days before. She acted like I'd just given her a check for a million dollars, and right away she started talking about how much she loved the Christmas season, exclaiming that the gift was perfect. I'd always known her in a general way, but until I sat down in the front seat of her car, we'd never really talked one on one. She was wonderful. She asked me about my life and listened intently to what I had to say. The twenty minute ride to nearby Winfield was over in the blink of an eye. At The Boar's Butt (yes, it had a drive through), we stepped into a fabulously d...

A few guys I taught last year are crazy. I don't mean literally crazy. They're loud, and somehow they manage to find me wherever I am. One morning I walked up to another hall to visit one of my teacher friends. I sat down in one of her student desks for a quick chat before school when these students burst through the door panting. "There she is!" They yelled. They'd tracked me down. Last year they waged one of the best student council election campaigns I've ever seen. They didn't hand out Jolly Ranchers or make empty promises to the student body. Oh no! They just screamed. A lot. In between classes they constantly yelled, "Vote for him!!" Over. AND OVER. They followed that up with a series of posters with Conan the Barbarian [Arnold Schwarzenegger] giving a hearty endorsement. It was obnoxious, but what can I say? He won. There's this thing they love to do - The Trust Fall . It might be familiar to you from corporate team- building work...

I'm a Hallmark movie kind of girl, so of course I got emotional waiting for my brother at the airport. I stood there on the day before Thanksgiving with about fifty other people. In any other situation, it would have been awkward standing so close to complete strangers, just waiting around in public, but all of us were united in the camaraderie created by waiting for our loved ones. A flight landed just before my brother's, so people started to trickle out. I watched as people I didn't know jumped into each others' arms, and little children cheered, "Grandma!" As I stood there, a lump developed in my throat. I hadn't seen any of my family in months, so I was already excited. I also felt moved by the love I could sense in the reunions of strangers standing around me. I recently read a book called Edmund Persuader . If you're a Jane Austen fan, you should check it out. Here's a quote that came to mind while I was waiting in the airport: It ...

Of all the things I need to teach my students, one of the most difficult is clear pronoun-antecedent agreement. For those of you who don't speak 'grammarian', that's the connection between the thing you just talked about and the he, she, or it that replaces that thing later on. When my students write, they are forever rattling off a list of men like Bob, Charles, Tom, and Alex. Then they begin the next sentence with 'he.' I've lost count of the number of times I've written, "which guy?," in the margins of  student essays. A few days ago, one of my classes was discussing a writing assignment. The thread of conversation carried us around to the topic of homeless veterans, which might have seemed illogical, but you've got to remember that I'm teaching a herd of fifteen-year-olds. One girls said, "That's messed up. They shouldn't let that happen." Her friend chimed in, "Yeah, They need to do something about that....

I end up focusing on a quote or motto every year. I don't plan it. It happens organically. Like many other people who work serving others, it takes a lot to keep me going. I don't do my job for money or fame, so my motivation has to come from somewhere else. It's the same for other teachers, nurses, customer service representatives, or anybody else that spends lots of time helping other people. The first year I taught, it was Philippians 4:13, "I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me," for obvious reasons. Yep, that year was quite a challenge, but whatdaya know -- Christ did strengthen me, and I made it through. A few years later, it ended up being a quote by this lady named Lorie Keene, " Whether we are biological mothers or not, each of us has been given a special gift as a woman that   can be used to love, cherish, encourage, and nurture the children God places in our circle of influence ." I've already written about that yea...