Fasting

Each year, my church participates in a churchwide fast following Jenetzen Franklin's model. We fast for 21 days, praying for God to move in our lives and praying for various breakthroughs. My parents are doing the Daniel fast (no meats, sweets, breads, processed foods), but I have decided to fast soda, Facebook, and my spirit of negativity, more specifically, complaining.

In the past few days, I've begun to notice how often and how quickly a complaint rises on my lips. Whether it's a negative statement about myself or another person, a complaint about my workload or our finances, I am not nearly as positive as I would like to be. I know that this negativity does terrible things to my spirit and to my witness, so I am fasting this negative trait that has bombarded my life. It is my hope that God will take it completely away from me.

As for soda and Facebook, they are addictions. Soda is not healthy for me and yet I partake in it anyway, and Facebook distracts me from many other things I could be doing with my time. I am fasting Facebook as a way to refocus my priorities. At first when I was making the decision to fast, I considered Facebook, and this voice in my head said, "No way! That's too hard!." A much quieter nagging voice kept pestering me, reminding me that this wasn't supposed to be easy.

So here I am, Day One. My Facebook app has been deleted from my phone. When I attempt to go to the website at school, luckily, this is what I see:

Slow-Paced Saturday

I love a Saturday. It is definitely one of my favorite days of the week. I love waking up, realizing I have no pressing things to do like go to work or church and rolling over to catch just an hour or so more of sleep. There are few things as relaxing as my Saturday mornings.

Now, I'm sitting here, looking around my house at all that needs to be done to get it "straight," and thinking I should have set my alarm clock this morning. Four years into this marriage, and Hank and I still really haven't found a cleaning schedule that keeps our house insanely neat at all times. And more than most people, I love an insanely neat house. Something about it comforts me and makes me go to sleep with a smile on my face.

Somehow, though I absolutely love a clean house and the smell of cleanliness, I am not a cleaner. This is a personality flaw, I'm sure, but the idea of intense cleaning overwhelms me, and I'm usually left not really knowing where to start. In our family, Hank is the cleaner...and the cooker...and the laundry-doer, you know all those normal jobs that 1950s men declared were for women. He sometimes jokes that he'd make some man a wonderful wife.

This year, I've declared that I'm going to be much more helpful around the house with tidying and cleaning and laundering, but I haven't yet figured out my system. Do you have a weekly cleaning system that enables you to keep your house tidy at all times? If so, please share. This 2012 woman is in desperate need of one!

Anniversary Brick

I'm sure there are some people in our great society who would read the title of this blog post and infer something very different altogether. The truth is that my husband and I recently celebrated our anniversary. FOUR glorious years, people! We go to our local library a lot, and every time we go, we always point out the bricks placed there in memory of people we know. I guess it's pretty obvious where this is going. For our anniversary, he had a break installed at the library for me. This is it:

Not sure why it's sideways. Perhaps it's taking a hint from my sideways day.


My New Year's goals have been going pretty well this week. I've read two books, eaten well, haven't spent way too much money, and managed to walk every day. Next week will be when the real challenge begins because I start back at my second job and begin my last Master's class (Thank you, Jesus). I just have to make time to eat right and get my exercise on. I need to shed at least 60 pounds so eventually Hank and I will be ready for a baby.

Apparently, my walking is helping me sleep better at night. In fact, it might be making me sleep too well. I am supposed to wake up at 5:45 in the morning to get myself up, showered, dressed, fed, and ready for school. Setting the alarm for 5:45 gives me approximately ten minutes to hit the snooze button (two times on my clock), and leaves me about five minutes to spare in case my getting ready hits a snafu. This morning? This morning I woke up at 6:51. I'm supposed to be at school at 7:45 and have a 20 minute commute. Getting ready was a challenge, but I did shower. There was, however, no time for food. This likely led to the faulty food choice at lunch. I've just budgeted my points to make up for it. McDonald's Southern Style Chicken Sandwich, you were 11 points of chickeny goodness.

I'm hoping to sleep well tonight, but not sleep over in the morning. Pray for that, too, will you?

2012 is COLD!

I don't think our heat ever turned off last night. It's insanely cold in South Carolina, much colder than we're used to. My sweet husband wore a t-shirt, sweater, sweatshirt, and jacket as well as a pair of khakis with jogging pants underneath them today. I guess it goes without saying that our classrooms are suffering from the cold weather just as much as anything else.

So far, I'm doing okay on my New Year's Goals. :) My sister and I walked 1.4 miles yesterday (in the cold), and I took my vitamins and thyroid medicine. I'm hoping that I'll be able to start telling a difference in the way I feel after taking my meds religiously for a few weeks.

While my BFF, Patrick, was in town, he helped me pick out some "running shoes." Since we graduated from college, Patrick has become much healthier and runs nearly every day. I'm super-jealous. Throughout my life, there have been a few things I wanted to become: a prima ballerina, the first woman President of the United States, and a runner. My goals, obviously, have been very varied over the years. At this point, I've given up on the ballet and politics, but I still very much want to run. My sister and I are going to walk briskly for a few weeks and then we're going to attempt Couch to 5K.

Beware, Patrick, the next time you show your face around here, I'll outrun you. :)

Goals

I'm not usually one for making resolutions, or at least making them and calling them that. I'm more a "goal-setter," a person who sets a goal and doesn't stop short of attaining it. That said, I'm setting some goals for myself this year. On the radio this morning, the hosts of the morning show I listen to cited the research of some famous psychologist who says that you are more likely to keep resolutions if you tell less people about them. Since no one reads my blog but me, I figure this is as good a place as any to record what I want to achieve in 2012.

-Read 120 books with 20 of them being nonfiction and 10 being "classics."
-Lose 60 pounds.
-Take vitamins and Synthyroid every single day. No exceptions.
-Work on keeping the house clean and my classroom organized.
-Walk 300 miles in 2012.
-Tithe without fail.
-Attend church twice a week.
-Rebuild my savings account.
-Pay off all credit cards.

I realize some of these seem trivial. It doesn't seem difficult to take vitamins and doctor-prescribed medicine that you know you need, but in the hustle and bustle of life, I often forget. I know I feel better when I take my thyroid medicine, and I had a friend express the need for me taking prenatal vitamins. (Sidenote: No, I am not expecting!). I whined that I just forget to take them, and she made the point that if I have a child with a neural birth defect, and I didn't take vitamins in order to prevent it, I will never forgive myself. She's absolutely right. So vitamins and meds it is.

Some of my goals are embarrassing. I hate admitting to anyone that I don't tithe like I'm supposed to. I know the importance of it, and I know that not doing it lets God down. This year, I've let other things get in the way. I have to re-prioritize. Also, I know I'm supposed to be in church regularly, but sometimes taking a nap and spending Sunday night in my pajamas is so tempting. I'm ashamed that I choose my own comfort over putting God first when He sacrificed His Son to die a most painful death just for me.

So these are my goals. I'm hoping that blogging them out there to no one in particular will keep me more accountable.

I've Gotten My Read On...

Near the end of 2010, my husband looked at me one night during dinner and said, "How many books do you think you've read this year?". I honestly had no idea. Since I read all the time, I imagined it would be a lot, but I wasn't sure. One of my goals for 2011 was to read 52 books over the course of the year. I reached that goal in mid-June, so I expanded it to 100. I'm currently reading my 100th book of 2011.

A lot of what I have read has been young adult lit. I'm guessing that's a casualty of the job, but I'm always trying to find books that my students will read and enjoy. Some of it, however, has been great.

I will always plug The Hunger Games, but I actually read that near the end of 2010. If you haven't taken the time to read it, get your hands on it and read it soon...at least before you see the movie.

Two of my top favorite YA books I read in 2011 were If I Stay by Gayle Forman and The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson. Both are stories of terrible loss, but they also dig into the stories of those who are left after another family member (or more than one) is gone. If you're at all interested in YA lit, please give them a read. They are most excellent.

Both pictures are courtesy of Amazon.

Teaching

My profession has been heavy on my heart lately for a variety of reasons. For one, I am in the middle of writing up my responses to the Teacher of the Year questions. One of the first questions asks why I became a teacher. I'm supposed to write two double-spaced pages, but I can sum up my response in much less than that. I am a big believer that I didn't choose teaching, but instead, it chose me. Some are called to study law, some are called into medicine, and I was called to teach; it is as much a part of my DNA as my eye color. I honestly consider it one of the most honorable professions in the world. Sure, there are jobs I could work and get paid much more money or have much more prestige, but I'd rather sit in my classroom and shape the lives of young adults over money and titles any day of the week.

Last night in my graduate class, one of my fellow classmates (and a teacher) shared with our little 618 family that this would be her last year teaching. She's not retiring and hasn't been laid off. After three years, she's just decided teaching is not for her. I am devastated to say the very least. I've seen her presentations in class, heard her talk about her students with such passion, and now I feel like our field is losing something great. Denise Hildreth-Jones, one of my favorite Christian speakers, is also a novelist. She often tells the story of how she never believed she could be a writer until someone told her that she needed to write a book. Her response was, "I don't write," and the person said, "Yeah, you do." After publishing several novels, she tells this story to reference the power other people have to call us into our destinies. I wholeheartedly believe that teaching is mine.

When I was a little girl, I often had to be my sister's student while she played school. I desperately wanted to grow up and have either a younger sibling or a classroom of my own so I could teach real people instead of stuffed animals. My parents assured me a classroom would be the more likely of the two. I remember racing in the door from kindergarten, eager to teach my daddy the letter "J" and all the j-words we had learned that day. A love for learning had ignited even then, and it has continued to grow.

Are there bad days in teaching? Sure, there are. Do I often leave school at 5:00 exhausted and lugging home a night's worth of work to grade? Of course. Sure, I'd like a job that allows my day to end when I leave my place of employment, and there are days I'd practically kill for a decent lunch instead of whatever the cafeteria staff has dreamed up. But at the end of each and every day, there is nothing I'd rather do than teach. It is who I am.

Me with one of my favorite students on her happy graduation day.

Rising to the Challenege

If you go back through the four blogs I wrote before I abandoned this blog attempt altogether, you will see where I was being wishy-washy about graduate school--knowing I wanted my Master's, but not knowing if I was ready or able or motivated enough to do it just yet. This summer, I bit the bullet, and I have completed two classes (and made A's). I am currently enrolled in the next two; you'll have to check back to see what this monsterous research class does to my GPA. After this summer, I'll only have six classes to go, and I will be the proud owner of a Master's and recipient of a pay raise. I'm pretty excited about both! I'm also working on completing National Boards for teaching this year. I'm definitely more scared of that than I am of the Master's degree.

The husband and I are still house hunting ferociously. We found our "dream house," made an offer that was accepted, and then the house completely failed the termite inspection. And by failed, I mean the inspector said it was the worse he'd seen in years. Now we no longer refer to it as our "dream house" but the "termite house" instead. I was pretty sad, but it was great that we found out before we purchased and moved into the termites' territory. It would have likely made them very angry. We are currently looking at a house and planning on making an offer today. It's a foreclosed property that is in great shape, so we're keeping fingers crossed and sending prayers up.

Honestly, between graduate school, reading books that I think hope will be useful as I attempt National Boards, and hunting for houses that are in our price range but not in the ghetto, my summer has disappeared. In about three weeks, I will head back to the classroom and welcome 60-70 new students into the wonderful world of American literature. I hope I'm ready for that challenge in three weeks.