Insomnia Brings Peace

Insomnia brought me browsing back though old word docs, only to find this gem I sent a friend a long time ago...and when I wrote it then to my friend...God knew yesterday, what I would need today.

Are you too busy with work and school and all the other things that pull and vie for your attention? Slow down my friend. Walk with me. Hold my hand and let me pray with you and tell you what a wonderful God we serve and how today He is waiting right for you to tell you the things that no one else knows and longs to draw you closer to his side. Let Him give you rest and peace and let him talk to you about how wonderful you are to Him and how when He created you He set you apart to serve Him wholeheartedly without reservation. Let Him flood your whole being with thoughts of peace and peacefulness and some more peace. Let Him wrap you in Him so tightly that you scream to be let go, but both of you knowing all the while you are really screaming for Him to hold on tighter. Let Him laugh with you as you laugh out loud. Let Him see the parts of you no human has ever seen before and take you to a place you've never been before. Let Him watch over you as you smile in your sleep which makes Him smile all the more. Let Him comfort you with empathy and compassion and let Him wipe away the tears with His blood. Let Him in on the secret selfish ambitions of your heart and let Him burn them out with His fire. Let Him work like a construction worker on the inside of your heart, tearing down the old roads and bridges of past failures and building a new stronger, wiser heart with all roads that lead only to Him. Yes, walk with me today. Hold my hand today. Be brave with me today. Don't let anything hold you back. Let Him do what only He can do for you today.

Blog Thoughts

One of the reasons I didn't want to give my blog out to people I know, is because of the previous post. All these things run through my head. What will they think of me? Will they judge me because I used a naughty word? Can I seperate myself from "Stacey the writer" and "Stacey the Christian"? Am I a sell-out? Are bad words really bad? Should I have another "private" blog I don't give out to anybody?

Well to those of you who have been privledged enough to have access to my site and those of you bored enough to find the time to read through this sea of nothingness and insecurity...this is all of me. This is who I am. I am real here in the space...in this place...embrace me for who I am and the struggle to rid myself of who I'm not.

Great New Website

Would it be wrong to send an email back to people who have my email address DEMANDING them to stop forwarding me emails that:

A) have been forwarded and circulated around the internet thousands of times by the same stupid people who think it's OK to forward some cutesy, feel-good email and clutter up my in-box

B) fall into the category of just want to know all your favorite likes and dislikes. If you have to send me an email to find out what I like and don't like...do you really even care and will you even remember and do you even know who I am?

C) they just can't stand to live with themselves if they pass up the chance to receive a free laptop from Bill Gates...because this one REALLY works, REALLY IT DOES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

D) guarantee that if I add my name to a list of 500 people the President will certainty respond to our plea, which by the way, never mention who is sending this list to the President and how the names will eventually be circulated back to the original sender

????????????????????????????????????????????

I am fully convinced that people who send me this ridiculous forwards are the same people who don't think it's rude to answer their cell phone mid-conversation in a restaurant with the ringer up so loud everybody turns in disgust to stare at the oblivious person who actually thinks it's freakin' cool to set their ringer to play "Aude Lang Syne" for the world to enjoy.

I think I've finally come up with the perfect email response for the next person who forwards me one of these unnecessary emails:

To: The person who thinks I like to read their fun little forwards
Subject: FD: FD: FD: Great Website

Dear Sender of that Last Great Forward,

I've forwarded you the address to this website...I think you should check it out...and please make sure to forward it to everyone on your address list.

www. stopfuckingforwardingme.com

Best Regards,

Rushing to Wait

Hurry up. Come on let's go. You're not reading this fast enough. Don't you know there are other blogs waiting for your attention? There are precious words zipping thru cyber-space faster than the Dunkin' D’s drive-up window and they're calling out your name, man. Don't you realize the faster you get through this uninteresting pile of thoughts, there are others. Lots of others, out there waiting eagerly for your eyes to scan the verbage? What???? You still have dial-up???? Archaic.

You get in the car, honk the horn, and rush...to wait in traffic. You race through the grocery store, cut grandma off in the cookie aisle, and scan the registers for the shortest line. You decide definitely Lane 4. Turns out the man in front of you decides he really had to have the last item with no price on it and will gladly wait for the price check. You then decide, better change lanes because price-check bad. Looks like granny is in front of you after all in Lane 5. Because she got a personal phone call from her not-so-sick daughter who couldn't go to school today, you wait impatiently because the cashier won’t take your money. You restlessly bag your own groceries, smashing the tomatoes underneath the coffee because the "minimum-wage-making-I-could-give-a-rip-about-this-stupid-job-bagger" is too busy being preoccupied with the "clueless-forced-by-her-mother-to-learn-responsibilty-and-pay-for-her-own-cell-phone (which by the way she will still pretend not to know you tomorrow in the hallway after second period) jane-bagger on register 6. When the puppy-eyed chap finally makes it over, just in time to ask "Would you like help out to your car?," you put on your best patronizing smile and politely relinquish his foolish request. Once you get within 20 feet you begin friviously pressing your keyless trunk entry key until finally it pops and you think to yourself, "so that's where I parked." Finally, you finish stuffing the trunk to capacity and slam the lid down tight. Remembering to push the cart kamikaze-style across the parking lot aiming for the cart coral makes you give yourself a pat on the back (hey, you are a concerned citizen who is registered to vote). Bullseye, well not quite, but close enough. You step back to your trunk, which has popped ajar and you slam the lid down just hard enough to completely smash the bread. Now you are ready to high-tail it out of the parking lot, only to see granny pushing her cart, smiling so bright at you in your rearview mirror--and even though the temptation flashes like a bumper sticker RUN HER DOWN--you must simply wait...and you force yourself to smile back.

Attitude Adjustment

He walks in late, head hanging low, low, low and I watch as the bodies in the room begin to stiffen, shift and become uncomfortably resonate. In a split second my classroom has turned from warm and inviting to shaking a cooler than cool Polaroid picture. I turn the snapshot in my hand as the dark black film slowly fades into lifeless reality and instantly faded faces don’t smile back at me.

Roosevelt Taylor. That’s his name. Don’t try to find him, you won’t. Why? Because he is just one of the million poverty-stricken young black males who just know they are gonna make it out my classroom, his high-school, and this town riding high on a rap contract or NBA draft. And I struggle daily with the question: how do I teach this young boy the only thing that will take him out of here is the one thing he is unwilling to give.

A willing attitude.

So I suck up my pride, take him out in the hall, humble myself before him and ask him how I can help him. Turns out, he doesn't want to go to the NBA or the gansta rappers hall of fame, he just wants to go and see his counselor to find out how he got placed in the wrong classes. Funny, and I thought the one who needed the attitude adjustment was him, turns out it was me all along.

Faith Feelings

Well, I have been informed it has been 13 days (14 now--thanks Andrew) since I last blogged, so since it seems the world is eagerly anticipating my next big blog...here it comes...get ready and hang on tight...it's gonna be quick, free, and easy.

I have a friend who told me this once and I think it is the truth "Feelings will follow Faith, if Faith refuses to follow Feelings." Actually, she reminded me of this truth today on my voicemail, and I smiled when I heard it again and began to think about it. How often are we told not to trust our feelings, not to go by what we see, feel, hear, taste, smell, sense...we live by faith and not by sight right???? Well, didn't the same Lord who created faith, also create our ability to feel? Didn't Jesus sense that a woman was drawing near and pulling at his faith? Wasn't that something he literally felt, pulling on his robe, not only knew.

Without faith, we would never feel anything. And without feelings, we would never have the audacity to faith anything. For instance, what would a loving intimate marriage be like if the partners never felt any type of emotional connection towards one another? That marriage would be more like a business partnership, not a special union. In a loving relationship aren't the actions of love, provoked purely by a feeling, a faithing if you will, of God's love for us? When I think about how good God has been to me, when I look at my husband and realize what a blessing from God he has been in my life, when I start to think about all the really important, wonderful aspects of his persona--then I am truly overwhelmed with feelings of love for this man. My feelings did follow my faith, but my faith was completely dependent on my feelings. Without the feelings there would be no gas in the Ford of my faith.

Feelings energize the faith that is available through the Word of God. The secret is to be able to have an accurate amount of both faith and feelings. To balance them both ever so gently that the response to your faith must only be the overwhelming feeling of living in the love of God.

(I'll be waiting for your link Andrew)

Teacher Turn-Around

Well, today was my official first day of my first "real" job...if you can call being a teacher a real job...and if you can call a permanent sub position a "real" position...as if the title "teacher" should actually carry with it some sense of implied power...when actually I really should be more like a facilitator that enables learning, instead of creating drones to recite my knowledge back to me ver batim...aren't we supposed to be steering clear of plagiarism??? Isn't teaching about equipping our youth to locate information and make their own informed decisions? It's not about knowing the "right" information...it's about "finding" the "right" information and presenting it in a way that others just might be inclined to listen.

Many of my colleagues, from the old-school lectern, find the method of telling students what they should think and how they should believe most effective practice...and if you ever find yourself bold enough to challenge why what they say is fact, you have pushed them resort to the ambiguous end-all "Because I said so." There is nothing more annoying to me than a person who believes something, yet has never done the research on the subject. They've read one article, forgot to mention the fact that they read it in "People" magazine, and now are totally trying to convince you that you should never eat any food that is white, espically if you are within 50 miles of an ATM machine. That's almost as good as getting your information on the internet. No basis. No facts. No brains.

The teacher we are will determine the students we have in our classrooms. We don't create the students, we simply create the environment where sincere ideas can grow. We are to foster an environment that will draw out the student in each of our hearts--for the student, as well as, the teacher. We forget that we will have the kind of students we choose to be. I am saddened by what I have seen around me.

For the first in-service of the year my school flew in a consultant from Kentucky. She had a sweet southern drawl and a kind disposition. Several times while going through her powerpoint lecture, several teachers were actually talking out-loud to one another carrying on side conversations. And these very same teachers wonder why they cannot control the noise in their classrooms.

Shame on the educators of America. It's time they stop being the bad examples they blame on their students.

Booty Boot Camp

We're potty training--#2 (no not that #2). This time it's our daughter. And this time it's a drop in the bucket.

A year and a 1/2 ago with my son, it was quite a different story. The screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" after the simple question "Do you want to go on the potty?" The dramatic one-woman act I put on to ensure he and I were both completely grossed out by the poopy monster in his underwear that to this day still has me wondering "who was that woman?" The pictures I attempted to draw of the toilet bowl and cuing my son, "Oh look, what's that...yes, that's right a potty...ohhhhh, and look what's in the potty." All of it to no avail. Until I came up with a plan.

Booty Boot Camp.

Seven full days of pure unadulterated training. Drill Sergeant Momma Yes Ma'am was ready for business and young private would be getting his privates ready to do business. This wasn't a camp made with stickers and sweets, there were workouts and chants. The uniform: one camouflage T-Shirt. Absolutely no socks, no pants, and most definitely no underwear allowed. Every move Young Private Project Boot Camp made was fully inspected. There were no "It's so quiet around here...hey what's he doing behind the couch?" moments allowed. DSMYM was like a bloodhound on a hares butt. She didn't miss one trick (well except that one when she herself had to go to the bathroom and private continued eating his Cherrio's, with lips that read cheery O upon discovery of the muddle under his seat--but that was early on in the camp.) Much of the time was spent parading around the makeshift obstacles of pillows and blankets, marching in sync, chanting.

DSMYM: 1-2 Pee Pee
YPPBC: 1-2 Pee Pee
DSMYM: 3-4 Poo Poo
YPPBC: 3-4 Poo Poo
DSMYM: 5-6 Potty
YPPBC: 5-6 Potty
DSMYM: Pee Pee Poo Poo Potty
YPPBC: Pee Pee Poo Poo Potty

Finally after 5 straight days of complete isolation in BBC, it was decided a field trip would prove a worthy test of understanding. A full-fledged all-out readiness test: complete with full uniform, steel armored tank and durable helmet. Destination: Wal-Mart. The place where all good soldiers must place both feet firmly on the battle ground. DSMYM was well prepared with kitchen tongs (for enemy fire), battle garb (in case of soiling) and power aide (for pushing this test to its limits). It was time to see is YPPBC had the makings of a fine soldier.

The time came when all good soldiers and all good sergeants are put to the test. Stuck between the extra-large grandma taking up both sides of the cookie aisle and the single-mother with five children (two in the cart, one under the cart, one on the side, and one in the aisle) the small voice came. Like a short whisper in a long cave, "Mommy I have to go potty." And we were off, like a steed shot out of the opening gate. The cart shimmied between granny and the oreos knocking them right out of her hand. No time to look back. Around the loop, cutting off a old man lazily sweeping the floor, we flew into the unsanitary bowl, whipped down pants, and let it pour. The battle had been won. And we didn't have to clean the pee off the floor.

Booty Boot Camp was a success the first time around. Thankfully I won't have to go there again.

3 Kisses

Every night before he goes to bed, my Dad indulges (or so I've been told). In the time and space between p.j.'s and toothbrush, he begins his love affair. I can just see him leaning back in his recliner, snuggling his heavy throw blanket up under his bare arms, channel surfing -- waiting for just the right moment. They are lined delicately to his left on the side table amid the magazines and day old newspapers. The shiny silver wrappers create the illusion of a miniature fortress. The blue and white stripped papers stick up like flags at high seas. He smiles as he lifts the tiny morsel to his mouth. He lets it melt slowly, the chocolate leaving a soft film of residue on his tongue long after he's swallowed. Like any ocean wave, the taste recedes but lo there are two more waiting. Just as patiently, just as particularly he enjoys the remaining candies.
Just enough.
3 kisses.