Okay so I am miserably behind on this here writing series, but hey, I’m not going to sweat it too badly. I am sure my faithful readers (all 3 of you, ha ha!) will probably forgive me, and besides, I was busy making lots of moments this weekend so I’m pretty sure I get a free pass just because of that!

Friday, as I was leaving school and wrapping up my very first ever workaholism-free week, I reviewed the 4,356,821 cards, pictures, and notes of all kinds from my students which had been shoved in my mailbox throughout the week. Now, you’ll probably not like hearing this, but I do not keep every single piece of paper on which a child has scribbled in my honor. When I first became a teacher I started to. I swore I would because every one of them is special and made just for me, so I was bound and determined to keep them all out of principle. Well, when I had filled up 2 copy-paper-ream cases in the first few months of my career, I knew that I’d have to camp on a more important principle. So I weed through them. I do read/look at every one, and I keep a few that are really, really special to me. The rest go in a recycling bin very far away from my classroom so no poor little child will ever be scarred by seeing that I, in effect, disposed of their gift. Call me a terrible person, but that’s how I roll.

But on Friday, I came across a keeper. It was buried under a million other crumpled pieces of paper with various degrees of writing and artistry on them, but this one made my week. Here is a partial picture:

 Although recess is still #1 in the hearts of all elementary school kids, I’m plenty satisfied knowing that learning came in a close second, and this child’s “very very buitifull, nice, and confident” teacher showed up as third on her list. How in the world could I not smile at that? And how the heck does she already know how to spell “confident” when she’s only 7!? Anyway, I digress…what a cool moment!

So the night just kept getting better when I left early(!!!) to meet my delicious husband for a Friday night date. We went to the Italian Festival, where we ate about 6 days worth of calories, I’m sure. We walked around holding hands and people-watching, and I fell in love with him for about the 7 zillionth time. I also fell in love with some beautiful artwork of the crust & crumb kind…

Oh, did these ever smell wonderful. I think I may have embarrassed Todd with the way I fondled and sniffed these artisan loaves (a common practice for me in an open-air bread market!) but…the big, Brooklyn-type baker selling his bread told Todd that it was okay, because “it’s bread…we’re messin’ with emotions here!” That dude totally gets it. 🙂

Just a quick (really quick—I’m super tired and I get up in 5 hours!) couple of thoughts about today’s moments:

We had our home group tonight (sometimes home groups are referred to as life groups, small groups, cell groups, whatever…it’s just a group of folks from our church who get together in someone’s home a couple of times each month to share our life, see what God is up to, and encourage each other, not to mention have a great time enjoying each other’s company!) and I left there with yet another way of knowing how incredibly blessed I am to have such awesome people to share this life with. Fantastically real people who are just as awe-struck and confused and appreciative in regards to God as I am. We had some great conversation about where we all are in our current steps alongside of God and His plans…much of our talk was wondering and reaching….isn’t that where God wants to meet us anyway? Words were spoken about trusting God with our kids, our lives, our everything. We talked about making space and time for God no matter what, even if it’s just a few minutes each day. We related our relationship with Him to our marriages, how we have to carve out 1 on 1 time for the other in order to thrive in this life together. And we all probably left with just as many questions as answers (or maybe even a few more!)

After all that, there was one thing on my mind that I was not questioning, though… the fact that I’m utterly appalled that I get the chance to spend my life with such genuinely good people. They know so many details of my bedraggled  life, yet they love me anyway. They are living examples of all the things that it means to be Christlike to me, all in their own individual and very important ways. Who am I that I should get to live and learn to love alongside these people!?? Thank you, Jesus!

Today I’ve been trying to think of a moment that stood out to me as fantastic and worth sharing with you sweet people, and I gotta tell you, folks, it didn’t come to me.

But there’s a moment that I’ve been thinking about this week that I just simply can’t seem to remember…and that’s a good thing.

You see, this month marks the 10th anniversary of the worst day of my life. In fact, it’s been a gloomy anniversary every year for a decade, it’s been preceded by weeks of depression and self-hatred, and followed by several more weeks of depression and deep regret. Yes, people, even with my perky smile and happy face, I’d been carrying around a sick, dark cloud with me each October. I guess I’m a pretty good faker, huh? Forgive me.  

The dark mood that has been married to that dark day in early October for so long has actually shifted from completely black to lighter shades of grey over the past several years. But this week, for the billionth time, something made me think of that day,  and all of a sudden I couldn’t remember the exact date. I even thought pretty hard about it, thinking that I really should remember something so important and life-altering. I thought and I thought, and though I know it was in early October, I simply could not recall the number on the calendar.

“…I will forgive their wickedness  and will remember their sins no more.”

The God who created me and everything, the one who sees my thoughts from afar and knows when I sit and rise and when I come and go…who knows the very words I will say before they are ever resting on my tongue…the God who knit me and every other human being together in our mothers’ wombs, the God who knows the number of hairs on my head…THIS God is the one who has chosen to forget this day in my history, and has allowed me to begin to forget the details which no longer matter to Him, and therefore should not matter to me either.

What love. What incredible mercy that I am being shown with this sprinkle of amnesia. Thank you, God, for doing everything to show me that I am new. Thank you for blotting out my sins….for pushing them as far away from You as the east is from the west….Thank you  for shoving every one of my sins down to the ocean floor.  And as if that wasn’t good enough, thank you for telling me that there will one day not even be an ocean that contains them!

God has made it very clear to me that He is bringing to life the words of Joel 2:25 in every corner of my life. He’s made it clear that He will repay the years that the locusts have eaten, and this is just one more way that He is keeping that promise to me. I am a loved woman. A very well-loved woman. By my husband, by my dear friends. But none of that comes close to the way I am loved by this incredible God, who pursues me and in fact has always been pursuing me…I am so loved by Him that He’s helping me blot out even my own transgressions.

How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure

Well I’m a bit late posting this since it’s technically for yesterday, but hey, a girl’s gotta sleep, right? Sorry about that…no one has ever accused me of being too punctual.

So my cool moment of the day was when my principal stopped by my classroom just to hang out. He had been doing evaluations this week and although I’m not up for a technical evaluation this school year, he said he just wanted to check out how my classroom ran and everything. Of course I told him he was welcome to hang out for as long as he liked (you kinda don’t get to not welcome your principal in anytime they want, right!?)

Now this principal is fairly new to our building although he’s worked in education for a long time. He has a good head on his shoulders and I really respect him as a leader. My previous principal unfortunately was not well-suited for her job and spent most of the time just trying to make sure all of us teachers knew that we were completely expendable in her eyes and that nothing we could ever do would be good enough. So I’m kind of primed to be nervous when my administrator walks into my room, you dig?

But that moment was different. I wasn’t the least bit nervous. And no, my kids weren’t perfect either. They were doing the occasional annoying-thing-you-never-want-them-to-do-with-an-important-visitor-in-the-room, like shouting out across the room or clearly goofing off when they are supposed to be completing some serious work. Yeah, that happened. Not to mention when two of my boys attempted to move a pocket chart hanging stand (which I’ve *specifically* shown them how to move by grabbing it in the middle so the two ends won’t come apart and wreck the whole thing!) and grabbed it by the two opposite ends, pulling the hanging rod apart and causing the entire 4X4 foot pocket chart to come crashing down to the floor, along with all the cards that were in it, which then scattered all over the floor. With my poor principal sitting right there seeing the whole disaster. Nice.

My response? Well, pick everything up, dudes!

That’s what you do, right? You pick things up when you make a mess. It’s not rocket science.

So while this may not be the most profound moment of my life, it was awesome because even with all that craziness happening, I wasn’t nervous or feeling like some horribly inadequate teacher just because my kids weren’t all sitting at their desks like perfect little angels. You know why? Because they’re not perfect little angels. And I’m not a perfect teacher. And things aren’t always perfect in my (or any!) classroom. And I’m totally okay with that. In fact, that’s why I love what I do…it’s so unpredictable from moment to moment. So unpredictably imperfect, all the time.

So whatever you do, whether you sit in a high-rise office with a skyscape view, or whether you work for your family by changing diapers all day, I pray that you get to enjoy some unpredictably imperfect moments today! 🙂

So now that I’ve committed to cutting myself off of working a thousand hours a week, I of course see the big list of distractions that are starting to come my way. I had a cool moment that made me see how delicate my commitments can be. How lightly I can take them. And above all, how there is way  more at work than just what we can see in the flesh.

I got an email from a member of our district’s administrative team, someone I really respect. The email was an invitation-only opportunity to take some free graduate course that will help pilot a new online certification in a specific area of education. Oh, and not only this, but this new program that select teachers would be piloting just happened to be for my alma mater…the college I loved dearly.

So, what’s not to love about this? FREE graduate courses for a new, cutting-edge program at my all time favorite college, all initiated by a person in my district whom I respect and am certainly flattered by, being that she only selected a few teachers in our whole district to whom she extended the opportunity.The courses start in a couple of weeks and would run through the beginning of June, with a few weeks off before the start-date of the Master’s program I was already planning to begin next summer. Everything’s online and I go at my own pace. All I have to do is complete the courses like I would any other course and give feedback to the college about the new program. Sounds pretty good.  Sign me up, right??

Well that’s what I thought, except for as soon as I went to hit the “reply” button to let her know that I would gladly take one of the limited spots that were available for this one-time opportunity, I gor this feeling. A funny feeling, like I was just about to begin a huge adventure in missing the point.

This is a great opportunity. I’m flattered that I was considered. I can’t imagine what this respectable superior would think of me if I were to turn this type of thing down…I’m sure she would write me off and not offer any similar opportunities in the future.

But what about your promise? What about not being a workaholic? Didn’t you just begin the new goal of leaving work by 5pm each night so you could have some sort of life? So you could re-prioritize? So you could focus on what’s important?

Yeah, about that…

It only took a second to see what a terrible idea the whole thing would be. That it would undo everything I was so excited about doing…all the changes that might serve to make me a more balanced human being, one who enjoys life instead of just working it away. I could see that the only reason I was really wanting to do it was because for half a second, my ego had been stroked. Because I may be thought less of if I don’t jump at it and say yes.  Lord, help me. Why do I even care about that?

Wow. Talk about a reality check. So instead of giving into the [self-made?] pressure of doing what others might think is right, I crafted the most polite rejection email I’ve ever written. I explained that the opportunity was great but that with all of the other commitments in my life right now, it simply wasn’t feasible for me to take on this additional responsibility. I hoped it did the job, but actually I didn’t care all that much.

I was more excited that I’d had a moment where the Holy Spirit nudged me and I actually listened. Yay! As soon as the email was sent, I felt completely lightened. It dawned on me that if I was getting such resistance, that something was trying to distract me to the point where zn opportunity so tempting would pop up in my lap AS SOON as I started my new schedule and life, then what was I being distracted from? Obviously this whole rejecting-workaholic-ways thing is the right thing to do.

Thank you, God for that moment of clarity. It only makes me want this thing more.

Greater is He who is within me than he who is in the world.

Well maybe this is cheating a little bit because this moment actually happened on Friday night, which is technically before the 31 days challenge began…but I am the boss of this blog so too darn bad. 🙂

My husband and I were sitting at the bar of one of my favorite restaurants while we waited to get a table, and we had one of the best conversations in the universe. We were talking about our relationship and some of the great things that we’ve shared recently, but also about the difficulties we both have had, the struggles we fact, both new issues and the ones that have been difficult to shake over the past several years of our lives. We confessed sin to each other, spoke of things we wanted to change in the future, and shared dreams we hoped to accomplish but needed God to set them all up.

During the conversation, we were reveling in the fact that we can literally talk to each other about everything. Neither of us has to put on a different persona around the other…we just be who we are, say what we think, and the rest falls into place. He was telling me that some of his good friends, other fantastic godly men, are often saying how much they admire the communication we share in our relationship. It’s good stuff. However he also said that many of them have the opinion that there are some things, particularly certain struggles that men face, that should only be shared and confessed between guy friends who will hold each other accountable to change. Not that women aren’t intelligent enough to discuss those things with, but they feel that there are some struggles that men face that the details of which are burdensome and potentially damaging to their wives’ hearts, and by “unloading” all of that on his wife, a man actually may make himself feel better by making his wife feel worse.

I see the point they are trying to make, and so does Todd. I believe that sometimes that may be true. But it’s just not that way with us. Above all else, we’ve vowed to be truthful and completely real with one another, struggles and all. We both agree that we’d much rather hear all the icky details than to never know the struggles that each one is going through. After all, we can pray for each other very pointedly that way. It also helps me understand whatever my man is going through so that I can help him in the battle whenever and however I can. So we talked about this, and tossed around ideas of what it might be like if we took the advice of some of his friends and kept some struggles only to ourselves and our same-sex friends.

But when it came down to it, I told him that I believe God has given us a special grace for helping each other through our various issues and points of struggle. So in a way, if we don’t allow each other access to those issues and struggles, we aren’t able to extend that grace to each other for help and healing. He kind of nodded his head and for a moment there, I thought he was actually lining up with the other train of thought.. But then, he said:

“Yeah, I get what the guys are saying, and maybe that’s the way it is with their wives since everyone’s relationship is different. But I’m just not comfortable with that. I don’t like having chambers of my heart that you don’t have access to.”

~~~~insert dreamy sigh here~~~~

Wow. He doesn’t want to limit my access to certain chambers of his heart? Now that’s an open line of communication, ladies and gents. I was teary-eyed, just so thankful that God saw fit to give me a man who would even think those things, let alone say them out loud. That’s a good moment. And I realized that I would have completely missed that had I not gone home right after school and allowed time for my husband the way I should. If I had been my usual workaholic self, I would have been at school until 7 or 8  in the evening and that date —that irreplaceable moment–would never have happened.

All this made me wonder…what other incredible moments have I been missing out on?

I’ve decided to take on a 31 Days writing challenge (along with about 500+ other folks!) that I stumbled across through a blog-linked-to-a-blog-linked-to-a-blog-that I love.  Since I’m already starting a new journey today that focuses on reorganizing my priorities so that my life is oriented around the things that matter, this is a great way for me to think through the journey.

As I was thinking about what I wanted my writings for the 31 Days series to be focused around, I thought of moments. Those moments of life that have been slipping by me so quickly and for so long, because I was too tired or stressed or distracted to really live in them. Those moments that make me laugh and cry and wince and melt and praise and know I’m human and eternal at the same time.  Those moments when I connect with my Creator, His Creation, and know that it’s good. Those moments are the ones that make up my life and yours, and they’re the ones I want to live in again.

I’ll be sharing the moments that I’m noticing and making as I ask God to show me how to make space  for them again, and I pray that some of them will be encouraging and inspiring to you. If you want to see the daily posts or archives for this series, just click on the “31 Days” tab at the top of the homepage.

Now go make a moment!