Blindsided

Gotta love those experiences of being blindsided by little paws and arms attached to kids from the elementary school side of campus.

Frequent givers of hugs.

Pushers

Grateful today for beautiful humans who crashed into my youth, childhood, and young adult years, pushing me beyond what was previously comfortable for or required of me.

The challenges they set in front of me ended up revealing things I didn't know I was made of.

And these days, my high expectations for the teenagers at school remind me of all that.

Taking Honduras Home

This photo taken in a southeastern U.S. city sparked hope for my future.
It opened my thinking to possibilities I'm rather interested in for somehow bringing the simple peacefulness of
small town Honduras to my native land when I return there someday.

Scorpion

The Pre-K teacher had some unplanned excitement of an unusual nature. Her finger looks a little purple now after an initial misstep, but in the end she found a way to..."contain" the situation.

This container may have once held Pringles,
but whoever reaches inside now will get something
far different.

Thug Life: It's Hard Out Here For A Teacher

I noticed a thought in my mind that went like this:

Some moments of a teacher's life are like trying to force-feed a room full of people so they take what you know they'd suffer without.

"Claps or pounds on two - 1, 2..."
We have a rhythmic little system for checking answers in class. The teens have learned to clap twice or pound on
the desk twice on my command to indicate whether they agree or disagree with the answer just given
by a classmate. Lets me know instantly whether a question needs to be discussed further.

Feeling Outside My Mind For What's Impossibly Inside It

Realizing today that I'm having a bizarre experience internally that feels a little insane.

A bit of backstory:
For some reason the other month, God decided to say something to me about the future.

Now the thing he said is completely unsupported by present circumstances. There's no basis for it in the reality of today. I guess that's not so strange, in light of ways the Lord has interacted with man since ancient times.

In the history of my faith journey, there have been times God gave me instructions for something I needed to do. But the message he sent this time was about what he plans to use his own hands to establish.

Getting back to the point of all this -
I guess this is just the first time I've experienced how much it freaks the mind to simultaneously know something very significant regarding the future...something the brain has no way of knowing outside of the Holy Spirit...something observable facts do not yet support...and to have limited control or responsibility in the matter other than trusting God, continuing to listen and walk, and waiting for the moment he presents his work so the rest of the world understands what you knew all along...while at the same time being inevitably affected and influenced by the unseen truth that's now part of your reality because of the confidence you have regarding the things God says.

Very strange mentally. Also cool all the way around.

Quiet

More and more conversations are pointing out the way modern life often lacks two things that were more commonly experienced in days gone by:
quiet and stillness.

By now, we're all aware that these things give way to our busyness and to our attachment to the technology that is with us constantly due to increased functionality and portability.

A public speaker once pointed out that at any given time, a person today may have at least three or four ongoing conversations in process between face-to-face, wireless internet, and text messaging interactions. Without a doubt, there is quite a bit of information and "noise" steadily washing over us nowadays. And those advocating that we all need a break from it regularly - probably daily - seem to make a good point.

I thought of all this today, realizing that the dreaded detention sessions in my classroom during recess may be the only moment of quiet and stillness some kiddos experience.