Be Not Afraid: The Fear of Not Being Good Enough

I was asked to preach a sermon on the fear of not being good enough, tying it to Mary's story in Luke. God showed up when I picked up my pen, and this is what we came up with. 

Good morning! Some of you have heard me preach before, and some of you have heard me say that when the pastors ask me to preach a sermon, it’s always on a topic that God knows I need to learn a whole lot about. Well, today’s sermon is called, “Be Not Afraid: The Fear of Not Being Good Enough.” And God knew full well that I needed to work on this all week as I wrote it and practiced in my kitchen…so I just want to start off saying we are in this together today, guys. So before we begin, will you pray with me?

            Good morning, Lord. Thank you for bringing us together this morning to learn about how you view us and who we really are because of you, and thank you for never giving up on helping us learn and grow. Open our hearts and minds to hear exactly what you what you are saying to us today. In Christ’s name, Amen.

            So, we all know that it’s common to hear that Americans are becoming more and more afraid. Despite millions of advances that can improve our lives and statistics that show that our country is actually getting safer, I don’t doubt at all that fear is on the rise. I can feel it. Some people blame this change on the bad news that we hear and see in the media; others blame the new ways social media messes with our brains and with our hearts. Whatever the reasons, though, lots of people say that our culture is becoming more and more afraid.  

            Researchers have asked Americans what they fear the most, and many of the top things are external events that could possibly happen: war, corruption, pollution, losing a loved one. All of these things could happen to someone. But when they asked about what people fear in themselves, people talked about their fear of the unknown, and of not measuring up, of being inadequate, of not being good enough.

            As a high school math teacher, I talk about this with my students all the time. We talk about it most in AP Calculus. In that class, I have students who tell me they worry about their grades so much that they stay up all night studying. They come to me, terrified of what will happen if they get that test back with a grade on it that will drop their grade in our class, which will then drop their GPA, which means they won’t be able to get into the college of their dreams, and then they will surely never get the best job that they find both fulfilling and financially stable – surely, their whole life will be ruined. All because they weren’t good enough that one day in AP Calculus. At that moment, it feels like everything hinges on that one test grade. And they just keep working harder and harder, trying to be good enough.

            But my high school students are not the only people who struggle with this, right? Not that long ago, I learned about an experience called “imposter syndrome.” It’s the feeling that deep down, we’re about to be exposed as a fraud, as someone who doesn’t really belong here because we’re not good enough. When I first heard about it, I was so surprised – there was a name for the feeling I’d had during my first year as department chair, when I thought no one believed I should be sitting in that seat during the meetings. There was a name for the feeling of fear that someone is going to realize I have no theological background and no formal public speaking training, but they still let me stand up here and talk to you. Because you see, I was a kid who thought my life would hinge on that one grade in school, and there are many days now when I’m an adult who worries that I’m not good enough.

            The more I talk about this topic with other people, though, the more I realize I am not alone. After I found out I’d be preaching this sermon, I told a lot of people about the title, and so many of them said, “Mmmhhhm. Send that one my way when you’re done.” There are highly successful people all around us, people who have achieved incredible things in life, who outwardly convey confidence and ease – and so many of these same people also carry within themselves crippling self-doubt and intense fear of not being good enough.

Not good enough to run the meeting we were in charge of.

Not good enough to get that job we really wanted.

Not good enough for the promotion we worked so hard for.

Not good enough for that relationship to last.

Not good enough for God to want us in His story.

Not good enough for God to love us.

Not really good enough at all.

            So, you may be thinking by now – Cindy, it’s Advent. Aren’t we supposed to be talking about Christmasy things? Baby Jesus and Bethlehem and shepherds and angels and Mary? Well, you are right – so today we’re going to look at Mary’s role in the Christmas story to learn how we might deal with this fear of not being good enough.   

            So before we go any further, let’s read the story. Our scripture comes from Luke 1:26-38. (NIV)

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”

            “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

We are going to pick up her story again in a minute, but I want to pause right now and point out a few things that might help us when we’re afraid that we’re not good enough. I’m going to be honest, though – this is a tricky lesson for us to tackle. We have no proof that Mary felt the fear of not being good enough. None. Nothing in that passage I just read said she felt that way. However – by the end of the scripture we’re reading today, we will see very clearly that she definitely was not struggling with feeling good enough. So I’m not going to talk about how Mary dealt with the fear of not being good enough…but I am going to focus on the parts of her story that can help us get to the same trust in God that she clearly displays throughout her story.

So, the first thing I want to point out is how the angel greeted Mary – right off the bat, he says, “The Lord is with you.” Gabriel doesn’t say he’s there because Mary met all of God’s requirements for being the mother of His son. He just says God is already with her – before she had even heard of this crazy idea of a baby, much less before she could agree to it. God doesn’t come to us with a checklist of requirements that we have to meet before He calls us His beloved. He was with Mary before He called her to this special adventure…and God is with us before we realize it or acknowledge it, too. So God tells us we don’t have to be afraid of being good enough for Him to love us or use us because He is with us before we can do anything to be good enough. 

Second, Mary’s reaction to the angel makes me feel like we can be honest with God when we’re feeling afraid. Like I mentioned earlier, we don’t know if Mary struggled specifically with the fear of being good enough, but we do read here that she was greatly troubled, so much so that the angel decided to tell her not to be afraid. And then she asked a question – specifically, she asked about the very mysterious biological component of it all. Sometimes we think we’re not good enough because we’re afraid, because we’re confused, because our doubts outweigh our faith, because we just can’t figure out how to believe that God is in all of this – but these are all very human reactions and emotions. And while God will help us grow and learn and have more faith and trust in Him the longer we walk with Him, He understands that we’re going to feel this way from time to time. Even Mary asked, “How will this be?” If she can ask that, we can bring questions and fears to God, too. They don’t disqualify us from receiving God’s love or from being a part of His story.

            But if we’re feeling that fear of not being good enough, how do we move past it? How do we let go of the fear of not being good enough for God to love us and use us in his story? Well, let’s look again at what Mary heard that helped her say yes and jump into that role God called her to be in. When Mary asked “How will this be…since I am a virgin?”, she was asking about her own role and responsibilities in all of this. Maybe she wanted to know what she had to do to make it happen. But the angel redirected her focus. He didn’t reply with anything about her. Instead, he answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” It wasn’t up to her to get the job done. It wasn’t up to her to be good enough to live out the role God called her to. It was up to the Holy Spirit to make all these impossible things happen – all Mary had to do was say yes. All she had to do was agree to go on this adventure with God to change the world…and God promised to take care of the rest.

And that’s what God calls us to do, too. He doesn’t look at us and ask if we’re good enough to live out the life He wants for us. He doesn’t ask if we’re good enough to earn His love or tell others about Him wherever we are. God does ask if we want to join him. And like Mary, we can say yes, regardless of whether or not we feel like we can do what He’s calling us to. We don’t know what all went through her mind and heart to help her say yes – but somehow, she decided to trust God’s promises and say yes to God even when she didn’t have many details about how it was all going to play out. It’s not like the angel was terribly specific about the whole plan, right? And we don’t get a lot of details, either. But God asks us to trust Him, trust that He is good and that He will be with us the entire time.

There’s one more part of Mary’s story that I want to look at today through the lens of this fear of not being good enough. So here’s the setup – after the angel left Mary, she went to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, and when she got there, she was so joyful about God’s plan for her life that she broke out into song. Here’s what she says in verses 46-55 (NIV):

And Mary said:

“My soul glorifies the Lord

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has been mindful

            of the humble state of his servant.

From now on all generations will call me blessed,

for the Mighty One has done great things for me—

              holy is his name.

His mercy extends to those who fear him,

             from generation to generation.

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;

            he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

He has brought down rulers from their thrones

            but has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things

            but has sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel,

            remembering to be merciful

to Abraham and his descendants forever,

            just as he promised our ancestors.”

Reading Mary’s song makes me think she’s no longer “greatly troubled” like she was when the angel first arrived, and she’s not even asking questions about the logistics of the plan anymore – instead, she’s focused solely on how awesome God is. She praises God “for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.” She says, “From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me.” That does not sound like a woman who’s worried that she’s not good enough. So what is she holding onto to believe that she can live out this incredible plan for God? Well, God. She’s holding onto God, not herself. She doesn’t talk about what she’s done to be ready for this role. She doesn’t talk about why she’s the best choice for being the mother of the Messiah. She talks about the awesome things God has done, and how much He loves all of us.

            I’m starting to realize that my fear of not being good enough stems from what I’m focusing on – it’s not about whether or not I’ve done the right things or avoided the wrong things to be good enough for God to use me where I am and love me for who I am. It’s not about what I’ve done to earn anything. It is about what God has already done for all of us, and what I trust He will do so that I can live out His will for my life. God knows we’re not perfect and that we’re not going to get everything right, but he asks us to be a part of his story anyway. Mary looks back and references God’s promises and actions from the past…so that’s what we can do, too. We can go back and read scriptures like Ephesians 2:10 that says we are God’s masterpiece to remind us that He made us and loves us. We can read Colossians 3:12 that calls us God’s beloved, His dearly loved children. God is telling us He loves us because He made us. The question is, will we trust Him the way Mary did?

            I’ll end today with another story from my classroom, and I'll try not to cry like I have when I practiced. A few weeks ago, I was rattling off all the homework assignments I wanted my kids in first hour to do before the next test. One of my darlings asked, “What’s it gonna get us?” In my very typical and sassy way, I told him, “My love and affection.” And in all seriousness, he looked at me and said, “Don’t we already have that?” I stopped passing out the papers I was holding and just smiled at him. “Yeah, kiddo,” I said. “You do.”

            If my students, who I’ve only known a few months and who I work with for less than an hour a day, know that I’m going to love them whether or not they do their homework, if they know they don’t have to earn my love…then why do I have to earn God’s love? Why do I have to work so hard to be good enough to successfully live out the life He’s called me to live? I don’t. Plain and simple. And even though I understand it here in my head, sometimes that’s hard to believe here in my heart…but it is getting easier the more I talk about it here with our faith community. I can’t tell you to just stop being afraid of not being good enough. It doesn’t fade away that quickly. But what I can tell you is that today, I believe that God loves you and that God loves me, right this very moment, just as we are. And just like Mary, we can say yes right now to a life with Him, to whatever adventure He’s calling us to. We don’t have to wait until we think we’re good enough – because God loves us and wants to be with us right now, just the way we are.

Let’s pray.

Thank you, Lord, for loving us so much that you remind us we don’t have to earn your love, that a life with you isn’t something we work toward – it’s something we can say yes to every single morning. Thank you for telling us that we are enough. Help us believe it, and help us share that good news with others. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Immense gratitude goes out to Rev. Justin Snider for the freedom to write this as well as the sermon and conversations that served as my springboard for it. 

The Fish Fries

Tonight I spent the evening with my parents at the Oconee Fish Fry, chatting with old friends and making a few new ones along the way. We've spent the third Saturday evening at the Fish Fry almost every month for the last 23 years -- that's over 270 fish fries -- but next month is likely the last one. It's the end of an era in our family.

When we started going, I was just a kid. We'd meet my grandparents there and talk with everyone else who walked by...in a town of 200 or so, everyone knows everyone else. And my family knows no stranger, so even if we didn't know someone when we arrived, we knew them by the time we left.

Usually we walked through the door during the last half hour or so. The American Legion members and their wives working the meal -- all in my grandparents' generation -- would throw their hands in the air, exclaiming the end of the night was clearly near since the Arnold family had finally arrived. They'd all talk to my parents, but they made a point to include me and my sister in the conversation, too.

The man who Mom paid, making four more tally marks on his legal pad as we passed through the line. The bachelor brothers who served us from behind the window, flashing us big smiles as they filled our plates with french fries and fish. The woman who filled cups of tea and lemonade, asking us how school was and what we were learning. The woman who sold 50/50 tickets, chatting with my sister when she'd offer to pay for them and fill out each little slip of paper.

About five years in, my driver's licence was burning a hole in my pocket, and I made plans for a Saturday evening out with my friends. Mom reminded me that I'd be missing a night with my grandparents, and her tone told me the choice she expected me to make. True to my nature, I found a way around having to choose between time with family and time with friends -- I talked my friends into joining us at the Fish Fry. Looking back, I have no idea how I sold the idea to them, considering it wasn't exactly the cool new hangout for high school kids. Somehow, though, it quickly became "our thing." We'd waltz in with my family, sit and eat with them, and then head out to catch the late movie three towns over. My friends' families started eating with us, too, and we'd take over most of the long center table, talking and laughing and carrying on and generally making a scene.

Over the years, I've invited new friends and their families to the Fish Fry, too. The people working the event have changed...they're now my parents' peers, and our old friends aren't with us any more. I don't make it to as many as I used to, but that doesn't seem to matter once I'm through the door. So many of the faces have changed, but the sense of community and belonging hasn't. Tonight they still asked how we are, what we're up to, how the farm is, what's happening in my classes.

We still sat talking as they picked up the salt and pepper shakers and wiped down the tables. We still stood talking, coats already on and inching toward the door, as they drew the name of the 50/50 winner. For the first time, Mom won.

What a way to end on a high note.

The Alchemy of Potato Salad

As I grabbed the recipe for Grandma's potato salad, my second favorite food as a kid, I intended merely to scan it to see if I needed to buy any ingredients for the family reunion tomorrow. I stopped short on the first line, though: "Boil and mash lots of potatoes."

I am a decent baker. I enjoy creating food by following precise steps, using carefully measured out ingredients, and I'm pretty good at it.  I am also an excellent sous chef; I love to obey whoever is actually in charge of the food. I immediately knew that "lots of potatoes" meant that, despite the tablespoon measurements of mustard and Miracle Whip listed below, making Grandma's potato salad wouldn't be easy. 

In fact, my first reaction was to call my mother, who had written up the recipe for me when I graduated college, to tease her a bit and demand to know how to measure "lots." But I knew what she'd say: "Fill the pan. See if that's enough." I already knew she had just guessed on the tablespoon measurements in hopes of avoiding this type of phone call. 

So I did just fill the pan to see if that was enough. And it seemed like it would be. But as I began mixing it all together, the texture wasn't quite right; my first taste of it clearly needed more mustard. 

That's when I caved. I called Mom.

Moments after saying hello, I asked how much more mustard to add, and without really answering my question she told me it might need more pickle juice or Miracle Whip, too. She reminded me that Grandma never followed a recipe, and that I had to just add to it until it was right. 

I kept mixing as she told me her travel plans for the next day and about where they'd had dinner that evening. I muttered that the mustard had helped a little, but I was going to try more pickle juice next. She paused for a moment, and my thoughts tumbled out of my mouth. 

"I am much better with a specific recipe. Like your cookies. I'm great at making those. This alchemy of making potato salad is just not the way I work." 

"What's alchemy?" she asked. 

"It's the word they used a million years ago when people tried to make everyday things into gold. They just kept fiddling around with things trying to make it work. Like what I'm trying to do with this potato salad. Only they never figured it out..." I trailed off. 

I just don't like cooking like this. I'm not good at it. I like a detailed recipe. I like steps, with specific requirements. 

And as the thoughts formed in my mind, I realized I sounded an awful lot like my students when they say they just can't learn our math lesson. I never let them stop there -- we always buckle down together, keep practicing, and even if their results aren't a perfect 100%, we see growth.

I've learned recently that most times if I need to hear the advice I would give my students, God is nudging me to hear it.  

The monologue in my mind sounded familiar. I've been telling God something like this for months, years. I like plans. I like knowing where I'm going. I like having goals to work toward and to-do lists to complete. I would like to know what life is going to look like around the next corner. And the next. And preferably the one after that, too.

But I'm slowly learning that's not how this whole life and adulthood thing works. And it's not how faith works, either. God's not giving me a five-year plan to follow or even much of a big picture these days. I think sometimes we do get that kind of vision, but that's definitely not where I am right now. God's been asking me to trust Him more and more, live today in His grace the best I can and then try again tomorrow. 

See if it needs more mustard, and then try again. Maybe try pickle juice if that doesn't work. But always try again. No one is on the sidelines saying I should have followed the recipe; it was always meant to be made one step at a time, taste-tested, and adjusted as we go along.

********************

Afterward: I finally stopped fiddling with the potato salad after a while and just put it away, unsure of whether or not it was really ready. When we tasted it the next day, my whole family agreed it was just right. It's amazing what waiting a bit can do...but that's a lesson for a different blog post.

Sprinkled with Stones

     When I was growing up, my sister and I would sit in the decorative rocks that surrounded our house, sifting through the stones, searching for interesting ones. Pink ones, blue ones, multicolored ones; ones that showed fossils of what was surely a prehistoric lizard, ones that showed a million years of sediment gathering in a single space. Our dad worked with rock quarries, too, so sometimes he brought rocks home for us -- some were smooth and chipped off in thin sheets; others were crusty with layers of other rock or even concrete. Some he'd break open with a hammer, and we'd look over his hands, hoping he would reveal colorful crystals. By the time I was ten or so, we had two ice cream buckets full of stones sitting in the shed where we kept our bikes. We wanted to keep them separate, in their place of honor, revered as the beauties we believed them to be.

    As an adult, I started picking up interesting stones whenever I was out and about on adventures of different kinds. I kept them on my knick-knack shelf next to my framed family photos, my tiny china teacup, my penguin statue. The stone on the footpath in France that looked like an eye gazing back up at me as I finally felt God walking with me. The flat worry stone from Spain, found on a day when worries were hard to find. The handful of tiny stones from the beach on Lake Michigan, from that afternoon when we knew our friendships were changing but still held hope that they would last. 

     I wanted to keep something from those days that I could hold -- something tangible from those places that held so many fleeting memories, so many lessons, so much emotion. I wanted to be able to point to one and say, "That's the evidence. That day was real. I was there. I won't forget."

     Now I've been collecting these stones for over a decade, and they sprinkle my home in a dozen different places. Some still grace my shelves for all to see.

     But I find others in the most unexpected places. Next to my jewelry box, all mixed up with my hairpins and makeup brushes. In the bottom of a tote bag. On top my bookshelf in the corner of the living room. These stones still tell stories of lessons learned and adventures had and the spectrum of tears wept to laughter shared. But I can't remember which of them came from which place anymore.

     The path on the day I spent quietly watching the deer work her way around the pond.

     The top of the Great Wall of China.

     The banks of the lake after we'd all just floated there together, laughing, when hours felt like days. 

     Did I bring one home last summer?

     As I held the rough, pink one in my hand and thought of the smooth, brown rippled one in the next room, I knew it doesn't matter where they're from anymore. Doesn't really matter which one is which. They're now as much a part of my home's landscape as they were once a part of the places where I gathered them; this is now where they belong. They still strike a chord within me each time they catch my eye, and the memories -- whichever they happen to conjure -- are so woven into who I am that I no longer need to hold the stones just to relive the moments.

Fasting and Connecting

With my earbuds in, my breathing was louder than the cars driving by behind me. I closed my eyes and listened to the bird songs instead of the playlist cued up on the other end of those earbuds. When you looked plugged in, passers-by don't often strike up a conversation.

But plugged in I was not. Am not. Have not been for a mere week and a half.

What's the withdrawal timeline for social media? When will the symptoms of jitters, mild to moderate loneliness, and a general fear-of-missing-out, the dreaded FOMO, subside?

My social media fast is simultaneously liberating and painful. As one friend put it, I've given up being social, which explains the boughts of loneliness that have settled like tea leaves in the bottom of a cup after a bag has broken -- dark flecks in what is otherwise clear.

I'm no longer feeling the knee-jerking need to check my phone every three minutes to see if someone has posted something new. To see if someone's pet has done something funny, to see if a child whose parents I know has discovered four-letter words, to see if a friend has visited an event that I wish I had attended, too. I'm not watching the world around me through the lens of Instagram filters, and I'm not wondering how many likes a post about my cat or my students might get. I'm not thinking about how to share my own exciting news of being called "professor" for the first time, or when I should post to maximize the number of reactions.

That's what it had come to. That's why the fast was so important.

But there are still moments when I fear I've missed someone's engagement or pregnancy announcement or prayer request. And fear is not an exaggeration -- it grips at my chest, increases my heart rate, puts a pit in my stomach the size and weight of a bocce ball.

All of these visceral reactions have continued to flare up despite the phone calls from loved ones sharing their exciting news with me and the text messages from friends just asking how my day was or telling me about theirs. See? I want to tell my addicted brain. They didn't forget you.

And yet -- that's the real fear underlying all of this. Who might forget me?

******************

It's been five and a half weeks since I've been on Facebook or Instagram. 

Some days I don't miss it at all. Days when I would have been highly sensitive to how my potential posts would have been woven into my adventures, my interactions, my insights are now spent living right there in the moment. Some days I leave my phone in a different room and don't think to check it for the latest updates for hours. Some days I can even refrain from rushing to my phone if I hear a message come through.

Other days I still yearn to connect with everyone out there. Well, yearn to feel connected -- which doesn't always mean I'm actually connected with those people. Scrolling does not always result in authentic connection. In fact, I've found the ratio of time spent scrolling to time spent truly connecting is 100:1. That's just an estimate, of course.

Instead, when my people-homesickness settled into that space just under my collar bone, when my chest felt heavy and my brain started over-analyzing every detail it could cling to, I reached out for that authentic connection with people I love. Called. Texted. Emailed. Called again.

Prayed.

Listened.

Woke up and prayed some more. (Because that's also a real struggle.)

And I have learned from these intentional connections. I am loved. I am not alone. I don't have to know all the details for those details to fall into perfect place. I still love intensely -- it's not just a line on my Facebook profile; it's really who I am.

I don't yet know what it will feel like to scroll again the Monday after Easter. I don't know if I'll fall back into old habits, if I'll look for connection just to find a stale substitute but call it good enough. But I have hope that I might be building the stamina to simultaneously let go and reach out.

***

Making My Way Back to Words

"So why aren't you writing now?" he asked.

"I do miss words." I shrugged despite knowing it wasn't a video call.

"So why aren't you writing now?"

I articulated a list of responsibilities neither of us believed, and we moved on with the conversation. But words looking for an audience kept whispering in my mind.

Words are always in my mind. Always. I can think of only one moment in my entire 33 years when my mind did not have words in it, and it was fleeting and monumental. Spiritual. Even eleven years later, I am still amazed at how simultaneously my mind can feel full and yet empty of words.

Weeks passed. I talked with two friends on different occasions about their blogs, talked about the importance of drafting and then brought drafting up again with a student lamenting about timed writing assignments. I listened to another friend sing his original songs, heard his own words tell us of his heart. I picked up journaling again, started a list of reasons to praise God, considered a second trip through #100happydays, searching for a way to record my words.

I wrote more poetry than usual, thinking people might be willing to read about my mundane experiences as long as they were in verse. And if they were paired with a picture -- it had to have a picture -- then people would read it. I typed up my travel journal, a vulnerable one for myself and an abridged version that I shared with the rest of my mission team. I wrote a sermon on my adventure, and I collaborated with my friend on the pre-writing stage of a different sermon we gave.

And then the words pushed to the front of the crowd, demanding an audience. I stood in my kitchen, fork in one hand and bowl of scrambled eggs in the other, holding two separate verbal thought processes simultaneously --

Every time I make Mom's noodles, I start off thinking I've forgotten how to do this. It'll come back as soon as my hands start moving.

This will have to be a longer poem than usual. I have to say the part about the muscle memory taking over -- kicking in -- no, taking over. This poem will make T. S. Elliot look concise. 

Use my hands to mix the eggs and flour, add more flour to the sticky ball in the bowl, move this slightly less sticky and much larger ball to the rolling pad, and --

Now it smells like Grandma's house. That will have to be a line all its own. What if I just make this one prose? There's too much they need to know that would just be left out in a poem. 

The flour is flying everywhere -- it's on my shirt just above my waist, just like Grandma's all those years ago...Mom was wise to insist on a shorter counter in her kitchen.

Some people read essays. I think they publish books of them. Blogs are probably taking the place of essays. But who would read this? It's just me making noodles. 

"So why aren't you writing now?"

I know why I left words for a while. Because when the words are painful, or confusing, or lonely, or frustrating, or even just unsure, I don't want to leave evidence of it. For heaven's sake, what if my grandkids find it some day? What an awful legacy...
...of truth. Of learning. Of growth. Of reflection. Of the journey.

My fist immediately found the pressure the noodle cutter needed, but I frowned at how the noodles stuck in it. I shook my head. I sprinkled in more flour and, like the women before me, blamed the humidity. I sifted the noodles between my fingers, breaking them apart, letting them fall back into the bowl where the ball of dough had started. Again I picked them up, sprinkled them into the boiling broth, mine from an aluminum can instead of the re-purposed plastic butter bowls from the deep freeze.

Maybe I just don't know the audience yet. Maybe it's not about finding the audience at all. 

***

My Liberian God-Adventure: The Gbarnga Tranining & Final Thoughts

Over the weekend, we spent time with our United Methodist hosts – having meals together and seeing the city together. I got to know Dehkontee, Sam, and Rose the most. Dehkontee and Sam showed us Monrovia – we saw the beach that was just on the other side of our compound wall – we could hear the waves crashing on the beach at night. We went shopping for fabric to make clothes, and then we went out to eat at a fancy hotel restaurant. They welcomed artisans into the compound to sell us their crafts – crosses made out of bullets, dolls, purses, jewelry, wood carvings. Our friends took us to important Liberian historical sites, like the National History Museum, a ceremonial government building, First United Methodist Church, and the monument to their first president, JJ Roberts. We got a feel for the city on these trips out – we could see people just doing their daily routine and the effects of their history still impacting them today. We saw the Ducor Palace, once a five-star resort hotel looking over the ocean, but that was all but destroyed during their fourteen year civil war. That war ended in 2003, the year I graduated high school, and the ruins of the Ducor Palace still stand there, a physical reminder of the tragedy they endured. We heard their stories of survival – through the civil war and then through the Ebola crisis – and our hearts broke for the tragedies they endured. More importantly, our hearts rejoiced that they survived, that God was still telling a story of love and hope through their lives.  

            On Sunday we worshiped at a United Methodist church in the city – the congregation welcomed us like old friends. Worshipping with them, like worshiping with our teacher colleagues throughout the week, was incredibly powerful. That afternoon, we visited West Point, a neighborhood located on a peninsula on the edge of the city. Over 70,000 people live there, in a one square mile area. Sam is closely tied to the community – and so are we. In 2012, the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference paid to build a school there, their first high school. This year they graduated their first senior class. The school is furnished with desks made at the Midwest Mission Distribution Center, and our Annual Conference is still active in supporting the teachers and the students at West Point.

            On Monday, we traveled to Gbarnga, a city 120 miles east of Monrovia. People here in Illinois had described it to me as, “going to the country,” even though it’s the fourth largest city in Liberia. It took a record-breaking two and a half hours to drive there – we had planned for four hours, which is down from ten hours that a friend of mine took six years ago when he went. You see, back then, the beautiful highway wasn’t there – instead, they traveled on dirt roads between cities…so this highway was a really big deal.

            We passed small villages, rice patties, rubber tree plantations, mountains and valleys full of jungle forest. And then we drove into the Gbarnga Mission Station, 300 acres of land that house a school of theology, St. John’s United Methodist Church, Tubman Gray K-12 School, farmland, and the homes of the people who work there.

            When we pulled up, I could already hear the sounds of the country – birds and bugs and puppies and chickens and children playing. And yet it was so quiet compared to Monrovia. And then we met Dr. Anna – the principal of Tubman Gray School.

            I didn’t realize at first how influential Anna would be to me. Upon arriving at the Mission Station, Anna introduced herself to us, we met her husband James, and they helped their cooks serve us lunch. I learned about Anna’s background in education, ministry, and leadership. After a few hours, she took us on a tour of her school – and as we stood in her high school library, full of books and visual aids donated by US schools – she told us about her teachers. How she hoped we would teach them about learning styles (one of my most favorite topics in the whole world) and engagement strategies. She said she often taught them about lessons that are more than just taking notes…which is literally a discussion I had with my department in Jacksonville last May. She said that it was possible her teachers would be more likely to believe us, since we were seen as the experts from outside…which is, again, something I’ve had to deal with many times in my career. I stood there in awe – this woman who is living a half a world away was telling me she faces the very same leadership difficulties I do. Over the course of the next four days, Anna and I had several conversations about teaching and leadership, particularly as a woman. We talked about having high expectations for the people we work with and for our students, and how difficult it can be to support them while they reach those expectations. She and I have struck up a friendship that I hope flourishes in the future. In fact, I’ve already had lunch with her in Peoria, when she was here in August visiting churches who help support her school.

            Our team spent the next three days following the same schedule in the trainings as we did in Monrovia. Like before, we started and ended each day with devotions with our teachers – and it always ended with us holding hands in a big circle, singing to God about the great things He has done in our lives. Carol and I even covered a few more lessons on how to teach writing because the teachers there had a stronger foundation of training to begin with – Anna is building up her faculty with highly qualified teachers.

            Our afternoons in Gbarnga were different than they’d been in Monrovia, though. The guest house where we stayed was just a ten minute walk from the school, so we didn’t have the long commute to fill our afternoon. So we just sat on the porch of the guest house – and in those hours on the porch, I felt God’s peace like I had never felt it before. The sounds of the country, the butterflies floating by, the neighborhood children playing with the baseball and bat we brought, the 4 o’clock flowers opening slowly before us, the rainbow fading away as quickly as it had come. I spent hours just being in that very moment. Being still, knowing God is in control. Being still has never been so easy before.

During those hours, I talked with Bunny about other missions she’s been on, and I talked to her and Rose about becoming a better prayer warrior and how to fast. As we sat there one afternoon, we heard our cooks singing, “How Great Thou Art,” at the top of their lungs – it left me speechless. I nearly cried, but let’s be honest, that was a common occurrence by that time. Praising God in Liberia showed me what it means to really praise God – like we hear in Psalm 86. In versus 11-13, it says, “Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths, from the realm of the dead.” Our friends helped me praise God with all my heart because they showed me how they did; they showed what it was like to rely on His faithfulness when they had nothing else, when He had literally delivered them from the realm of the dead – first during their civil war, and then during the Ebola crisis. They taught me how to praise God in a way that shows that I know He is truly God.

We ended our training in Gbarnga like in Monrovia – with a closing ceremony complete with gifts for our colleagues and friends. And again, their gratitude was so immense, so magnificent – they spoke of the things they learned in the training, of how they had grown during our time together. One teacher said that their hunger for learning was more than satisfied. James reminded us that we cannot fully measure the impact of the seeds we planted during our training, that God will grow those seeds. Anna spoke, holding back tears and thanking us for coming, thanking God for providing even in the most unlikely times. I did not hold back my tears – yet again I was overcome with the love they felt for us. Then one by one they gave us each a gift, again chosen specifically for each of us. Anna and her teachers gave me this dress, and she said it was just a small token of the immense gratitude she felt for us coming.

We left Gbarnga the next day, eyes full of tears but hearts full of peace, love, and gratitude, and we headed back to Monrovia for two short days before returning home. That leg of the trip was full of adventures, including a flat tire and seeing someone drive by with a goat on top their car. On our way, we made a short stop in the Weala District, another United Methodist Mission Station. Since 2008, Springfield First has built a strong relationship with the Weala District. Bunny made sure we stopped there during our travels since my church is so closely tied to it, so that I could see firsthand what our generosity has provided – a high school wing to the school, a church, a parsonage, a well, an operation theater. Just standing there, where we have sent so many prayers and so much support, brought me to tears.

            We arrived back at the guest house in Monrovia on Friday afternoon and started packing and preparing to go home. Something in the day’s travels left me feeling a bit off, you know there’s nothing worse than feeling a bit off when you’re away from home. Bunny seized the opportunity to teach me even more about prayer – she prayed for me, and she asked her friend Cynthia, whom we had met a few days before, to pray for me. The next morning, I felt just fine – wonderful, in fact. Before breakfast, Rose asked me how I was, and I told her I felt great. She looked at me and calmly replied, “Because when you’re about God’s business, God’s about your business.” She said it twice; she knew I needed to hear it twice. I was speechless, again. God doesn’t promise living out His call will be easy, but He does promise He will be with us. “Do not fear, for I am with you,” he says to us in Joshua, and again in Isaiah. Always. And that’s enough, if we learn to look to Him, rely on Him. That’s not easy, either, but God remains constant.

            In Matthew 28:19, Jesus charges us in the Great Commission to go to the ends of the earth for Him, sharing His love with everyone. I did actually travel half way around the world to share the best way I could – through teaching and education – because that’s who God made me to be, so that’s how He asked me to show His love. That was God’s business that He wanted me to be about. The more I followed, the more He paved the way for it to all work out. Our friends in Liberia, they don’t have the means to travel, so they show God’s love to the ends of the earth who come to them. The teachers we trained, the United Methodist staff who hosted us, the cooks who fed us, the drivers and guards who took care of us – they loved us unconditionally. They don’t love me because they know me all that well. They love me because God loves me and because we are in this crazy, amazing, pain-stricken, and beauty-filled life together.

            Just before I left, a friend of mine told me that my “Be still” verse from Psalm 46:10 had more to it than I’d been reading – the entire verse is, “Be still and know that I am God. I am exalted among all the nations, I am exalted in the earth.” To the ends of the earth, Jesus said. I want to leave you today with this -- be still, and ask God where and how He’s calling you. Maybe it’s serving others right here in Nokomis, or far away like Liberia, or anywhere in between. Maybe it’s financial support for people who need your help, or maybe it’s giving your time and energy to serving them. Be still. God is calling you to share His love in some way. What part of God’s business is He calling you to be about?

My Liberian God-Adventure: The Monrovia Training

After three and a half months of planning and praying – far more of the latter than the former – I boarded the plane to Monrovia, Liberia, on July 10. We arrived on a Tuesday, and the next two weeks were some of the most transformational experiences of my life.

            When we arrived at Roberts Airport, tired and kinda gross from being on airplanes for 16 hours, our United Methodist hosts picked us up. Dehkontee is the volunteer coordinator for the Liberian conference, and Sam is the manager of the United Methodist Missionaries Compound, which is where we stayed while we were in Monrovia. The sign on the door of the compound had our familiar United Methodist cross and flame – one thing that felt like home. The concrete brick wall that surrounded the compound and that was adorned with barbed wire and upside-down broken glass bottles, however, did not feel like home. Sam and Dehkontee helped us settle into our guest house for the night. We brought mosquito nets – tents really – to sleep in, and then we left them for our friends to use after we left. We met more of our friends who work at the compound that night – like Rose, who owns a catering business and is always the resident cook when Bunny brings a team to Liberia. Throughout our trip, she made amazing meals for us – eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, rice and stew of all flavors, fried chicken and plantains, donuts and coconut tarts. And fresh pineapple. Guys, I didn’t know pineapple could be so sweet.

            We hit the ground running – the very next day, we started the teacher training in Monrovia. First we held three days of training for five local schools there in the city. We started each day with a big breakfast and a devotion, and we drove for about an hour to Elaine Chapman United Methodist School and church. The commute was a bumpy one, but our drivers, Roland and Harrison, always delivered us to our destination safely. Our hosts gathered us all in the sanctuary for a moving opening ceremony – one teacher preached, and others led us in several songs. Our friends lifted their praises to God around us, hands clapping, voices singing. And I was in awe.

            We then split up into small groups, each with one American teacher and five Liberian teachers. We asked them about their greatest joys in teaching, about their biggest challenges, and what we needed to know about their situation so that we could best serve them. As we shared in our group, Jenny, Anthony, Benedict, Arkie, and Alvin shared their teacher-hearts with me – they said they love seeing a student finally get it, finally understand something they’ve been struggling with. That moment of success, that moment of breakthrough – that’s what I’ve described as my favorite part of teaching since I was a tutor in middle school. That was the first of many times that I realized, even though we are in such drastically different situations, we are so very similar. And those similarities are, in the end, far more important than our differences.

            They also shared their challenges – not enough funding to buy books and other materials. Not enough funding to pay teachers. Sounds familiar, too, huh? And yet I tried to be very careful to acknowledge the drastic disparity in their lack versus our lack here. The words we use may be the same, but the gravity of the situation is certainly different.

            We spent the rest of the day and the majority of the next two days separated into grade level groups for our training. Two of our teachers, Jeremy and Tanya, led the kindergarten through third grade group; Carol and I led fourth grade and up group. Some of the teachers taught the same class of students all day, like our elementary teachers here; others specialized in math, science, French, or reading like our middle and high school teachers. Their primary teaching method is direct instruction – teachers write on the chalkboard, while students silently copy it all down in their notebooks. I call that “sit and get,” and in my classes, it doesn’t happen much. Less than half my lessons are days when students take notes, and even when we do take notes, I have students collaborating and talking with each other throughout the period. So our training focused on ways they can help their students collaborate more, do more hands-on work, and generally be more engaged than just writing down information. Carol and I read stories that they could read with their students, and then we talked about how to connect lessons in other subjects to those stories. Our first book was about two friends who travel to visit each other, so we talked about social studies lessons on map reading, math lessons on calculating distance, speed, and time traveled, and science lessons on land formations. I taught them about studying four representations of a single math concept – graphs, equations, numbers, and words – and we worked together to adapt the idea of deepening their students’ understanding to English, French, and science classes. We taught how to ask students to graph numbers and functions by standing in different places in the room, and we played card games to foster number sense. I also taught about brain breaks – little exercises that we do with our kids when they get lethargic or overwhelmed or just because they’ve been working too long and they need a break. I love studying how brain research can improve instruction and learning, so this was one of my favorite activities.

            Later, Carol and I discussed another book on music and emphasized having students read dialogue aloud, and I tied it to a fractions scavenger hunt lesson. We finished our training with a book called What Do You Do with an Idea?, and we asked the teachers to use something we had covered to create their own lesson plan. Carol and I gave them time to work and helped them write lesson plans that they could implement in their own classrooms. Some were excellent, and some needed extra help, just like in any classroom.

            Between sessions, the teachers often broke out in spontaneous praise and worship. They’d come back from break or lunch, walk up to the piano and drums, and just start singing. Some songs were from their Liberian tradition – ones with lyrics that said,

“God you are able, you are able, God.”

“Jesus, we just want to say thank you…for our friends, for this day.”

“Good morning, Jesus, Good morning, Lord. I know you come from heaven above. The Holy Spirit is in control. Good morning, Jesus, Good morning, Lord. In the morning, I will rise and praise the Lord.”

Other songs, though, were familiar to me after singing them here, in this very room – “I Surrender All” struck a particular chord in me. Our friends were passionate – they weren’t just singing to sing along. They were really giving everything over to God – everything.

Singing alongside our friends, praising God with them, helped me realize something – there’s a difference between singing because it’s Sunday morning and praising Jesus because you know He’s God, because you know the Holy Spirit is in control. “Know that I am God,” from the Psalm took on a whole new meaning in Liberia.

            As the trainings wrapped up, Bunny took pictures of students who attend the schools on a scholarship sponsored by the Illinois Great Rivers Conference. Dozens of students filed through to have their pictures taken, and even more milled around asking how they could get a scholarship, too. I’ve been giving to this scholarship advance for five years. Right now, $175 sends a single child to school for an entire year – it covers their uniforms, their books, and their tuition. If you’re interested in helping students like these attend school in Liberia, there is a way to give directly to schools through the Illinois Great Rivers Conference. Just contact me if you’re interested in supporting that mission financially.  

Each morning with breakfast, and each evening after dinner, Bunny led us in a devotion and prayer. During some of those times, she reminded us that we don’t arrive in Liberia, or anywhere else for that matter, assuming we can change the entire culture or the entire country, much less solve all their problems, fix their entire school system. We can’t do it in the mere three days we held the trainings, and we certainly can’t in a single trip or even multiple trips. We emphasized this idea in our lesson planning session, too – not everything we discussed would be applicable for everyone, but that’s okay. We just gave them the tools to make one change, and we had to trust God would magnify and multiply it as He sees fit.

            Bunny emphasized that idea during our closing ceremony, too. During our last afternoon with the group, we gave another devotion and gave each teacher a bag full of school supplies and a certificate of completion for them. Bunny talked about how we didn’t come with all the answers, but instead we came to be their friends who worked alongside them – not ahead merely leading, not behind just telling them what to do, but alongside collaborating with them.

As we were getting ready to serve them, before we could even give them what we’d brought them, they told us of their gratitude – some teachers stood to tell us how thankful they were for our help, for our sacrifice of traveling so far to join them there. And then, before we could offer our gifts, they gave us gifts – beautiful shirts made there in the city. Each gift was selected specifically for the recipient – and we knew what kind of sacrifice they had made to give us these gifts.

            And in those moments, I know, we were living out God’s intention for the church – in Acts 4:32 it says, “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had,” and that is what we were doing. We came together as a family of faith, and we shared what we had. I just so happened to have educational background to share with them. They shared finances that were already more limited than I can imagine, and more importantly, they shared their deep understanding of praising God and going to God in prayer honestly and humbly about everything.

***

Interested in how this trip started? Check out the first post in this series.

My Liberian God-Adventure: The Prologue

          Some journeys begin long before you leave. 

         This blog series started as a sermon that told of my recent trip to Liberia. I've adapted it a bit to fit a blog format, but I'm sure some of it still reads more like a sermon. This won't be like the previous blogs -- not the ones about literature, not even the travel entries about China. This one will be different. Everything about this trip has been different, so the way I share it will be, too.

          I’ve been teaching high school math ever since I graduated from college with a BS in Secondary English Education and an endorsement in math. I’ve taught Algebra I, Algebra II, AP Calculus, and behavior interventions for kids who are at risk of dropping out – all while acting as department chair the last four years for our nine-person team. While that timeline was moving forward, I also started attending Springfield First United Methodist Church – the big one on the corner of Koke Mill and Wabash, if you’re familiar with the city. For several years I sat in the back of the traditional service and kinda kept to myself – and then I started taking classes on prayer and served on the Staff Parish Relations Committee and then the Prayer Leadership Team, and then I got involved in the Young Adults ministry and started co-leading that, and then I helped launch a new contemporary service that we treated like a whole new church plant – and now I even preach in that service every couple of months or so. 

            I took a journey earlier this year. I’ve been calling it my God-adventure. On July 10, I flew to Monrovia, Liberia, with a team led by Bunny Wolfe, the mission and outreach coordinator for the Illinois Great Rivers Conference of the United Methodist Church. We spent two weeks there, and we held two trainings for teachers who work at United Methodist schools – over six days, the five of us American teachers worked with over 60 Liberian teachers on engagement strategies, classroom management, and lesson planning.

            But I’m getting ahead of myself. This journey didn’t start July 10. In fact, the seed was planted in 2012 when a friend of mine who is a United Methodist pastor told me that our conference sends teams of teachers to train Liberian teachers. The idea caught my immediately attention. Then, a few months later I heard a woman from Springfield First talk about her medical mission trip to Liberia, and as I sat there crying in the pew listening to her story, I knew God was calling me to go. But…the conference didn’t send a team that summer, and the next summer I spent every waking moment writing my AP Calculus curriculum…and the next summer I worked on my thesis for my master’s degree at UIS…and then the next summer my school asked me to chaperone a German exchange program….The timing for the trip just wasn't working out. But Liberia always stayed in the back of my mind, tucked away in the corner of my heart. I prayed for the country during the Ebola crisis. I gave scholarship donations for students going to United Methodist schools. Whenever anything came up about Liberia, I responded, “You know, my church conference sends teachers there to train other teachers – and someday I’m gonna go.”

            But life just kept rolling on – and in 2015 I moved from Springfield to Jacksonville, and I found myself in a much quieter, much slower paced chapter in my life. I had finished my master’s degree, I was settled into teaching calculus and leading as department chair, and my social scene had drastically changed with my move to Jacksonville. I had no idea what might be next for me – and that made me worry. I worried a lot – I worried that I didn’t know what goals to pursue next, what direction to take as I moved forward, and I even worried that maybe nothing new would be on the horizon for me. Eventually, I started praying, “What’s next, God? Use me – just point me in the right direction.”

            And in that season, God told me to, “Be still.” Really. Psalm 46:10 started following me around – it says, “Be still and know that I am God!” It showed up in my devotions, in sermons at church, in videos that came to my email, in my newsfeeds on Facebook and Instagram (I kept half a dozen screen shots from my phone during those few months as a reminder), we talked about it in my small group at church, and most importantly, it came up in my quiet time, alone with God – it just kept echoing in my heart. “Be still and know that I am God.” Now, remember the litany of activities and responsibilities that I rattled off earlier? The ones that kept me crazy busy while I lived in Springfield and then all of the sudden all wrapped up at the same time when I moved to Jacksonville? Yeah, I’m not good at being still, guys. I’m terrible at it. It makes me anxious and uncomfortable. But God knows I needed it, that I needed an extended Sabbath to slow down…and so I eventually started focusing more on being still and knowing that God is God, and that I am not. I kept asking God what was next for me, but I stopped trying to figure it out, stopped trying to do it all by myself. I even decided that for 2017, instead of making a New Year’s resolution, I’d focus on the word surrender with God – surrendering to His preferred future for my life instead of desperately trying to be in control when I clearly was not.

            So last spring, I found myself facing my first totally free summer vacation in six years – no grad classes to take, no curriculum to write, no exchange program to coordinate. And I was actually okay with the idea.   

            And then on March 24, I got an email from a friend of mine – well, she and I went to college together, and she goes to Springfield First, too, and we’re friends on Facebook – that kind of friend, you know? She emailed me because she’d heard about a mission trip our conference was taking to train teachers in Liberia. And even though she doesn’t know me very well and we don’t talk very often, she thought I’d be interested. Me. God put it on her heart to contact me. I read that email before going to work that day, and I remember thinking, “I’m going to Liberia this summer.”

            Over the next few days, I told my sister and a couple friends – and they all agreed right off the bat, too, that it was time for me to finally go. But my old ways of worrying came creeping back…how would I pay for the trip? How would I plan for it in just three and a half months? What if God wasn’t calling me to go on this particular trip? What if, what if, what if? So, I started praying, and I asked my small group at Springfield First to start praying, too. You know, sometimes it’s hard to hear God in the still, small voice…but it’s even harder to ignore God when He talks through your loved ones. “Go,” they said. “You know this is the right time. Get more information. If God opens the doors, you know it’s the right time to go.” It’s also hard to argue with doors that are not only opened but completely blown off their hinges – and that’s exactly what God did. In a matter of three days, I found out it wasn’t too late to sign up for the trip, that the conference offered a grant to cover half the cost, and that the next informational meeting was a just week away in Springfield.

            So I jumped – I took a huge leap of faith, and I went to the meeting, ready to go to Liberia. I sat in the room with the rest of the team who had been planning the trip for months, and I cried as Bunny showed a video of the students and teachers we partner with in Liberia. Bunny flipped on the lights and asked us to share why we wanted to go – and I could barely hold it together long enough to say, “God is calling me to go – to help these people somehow, the best way I can, as a teacher promoting education.”

            And at the end of the meeting, Bunny needed the rest of the payment for the plane ticket that day…and yet again I had to take another leap of faith. I had no doubt about God’s call – but I had planned to do some fundraising first to cover the cost, and instead I had to pay first and trust God would cover the finances, too. We all know that’s one of the hardest areas to surrender to God…but somehow I did. And God showed up in a huge way – He sent generous people my way to help me cover the rest of the trip. He even convinced the insurance company to cover all six vaccines I needed before leaving – and we all know that’s a miracle in and of itself. But that’s not the only way God sent support – so many people prayed for me and emailed me and encouraged me before leaving. That support was so incredibly valuable.

            And after three and a half months of planning and praying – far more of the latter than the former – I boarded the plane to Monrovia, Liberia, on July 10. We arrived on a Tuesday, and the next two weeks were some of the most transformational experiences of my life.

ICUCOW 2015

          Earlier this week, I had the privilege and honor to be the guest alumni speaker at the Illinois College Undergraduate Conference on Writing, sponsored by the Campus Writing Center and affectionately known as ICUCOW. I presented all four years I attended IC, and I helped organize the event when I worked in the CWC. When one of my graduated students asked me if I'd be willing to speak at the event a few months ago, I was elated -- I couldn't believe I could go back and be a part of that awesome community of writers again.

          Each year, students from all disciplines at IC submit their work -- academic papers, nonfiction, creative pieces, poetry -- and the CWC staff selects the best for presentation. During this year's 18th annual ICUCOW, twelve IC students read their work, and I was in awe. These writers are thinking big thoughts, writing meaningful and moving pieces, and will soon be joining the ranks of adults influencing the world. I told the readers and audience that when I sat in their seats, I don't think I realized I sat among such greatness.

          As the guest speaker, I served as the bookends for the conference. I opened with a piece I wrote as a senior at IC in 2007 for an application to present at the Sigma Tau Delta National Convention in Pittsburgh, PA. That year, the conference theme was confluence, and we were asked to merely write a one-page paper on the word. I won a monetary prize for this particular paper, and I felt it was a good way to explain to the audience why this once-English major is now teaching math:

Confluence: Sigma Tau Delta Convention Theme Paper 2007

            It is not surprising that in educational theory, the mathematical/logical multiple intelligence is not directly linked to the verbal/linguistic one. Many people love either numbers or words. I love both.

            After beginning to study both English and mathematics, I have seen many people furrow their brows and ask, confused, why I chose both disciplines. Nothing, they insist, links the two. I beg to differ; if nothing else, other English/math students and I are the link. Our multiple intelligence combinations, the unique ways we think, are the confluence of the two disciplines.

            For a time, I thought English/math students were the only link, but as I delve deeper into the studies of these disciplines, I realize they have countless crossovers. The principles and thought processes of math apply to English, and vice-versa, but it is difficult to recognize them without working actively in both. In proof-based math courses, I learn how to explain in words why mathematics works the way it does. As I learn the mathematical concepts behind each theorem I prove, I must focus on aspects of my writing such as clarity, focus, organization, and word choice and consider whether or not my audience will be able to follow the steps I am providing. Thus, each time I sit down to my geometry homework, my writing skills improve a little more.

            As I analyze literature and discuss it with other English students, I also find myself applying mathematical methodology as I prove my point. I use generalized examples, similar to ones I use in proofs, to explain a connection among stories’ themes and counterexamples to explain why I disagree with someone else’s interpretation. I have even explained Claire’s behavior in David Auburn’s play Proof (2001) by identifying a flaw in her logic that is similar to many novice mathematicians’ mistakes. She assumes that her sister is insane and then uses that assumption to prove that her sister is insane. All of her evidence for her sister’s insanity is a result of her assumption that her conclusion is true, thus making all of her evidence irrelevant.

            After working in both disciplines, I clearly see how studying English literature relates to studying mathematics. The confluence of the two creates a unique frame of reference for me and allows me to see both disciplines in a rather untraditional and unexpected manner.

***

     After hearing twelve amazing student pieces, I then read an old favorite of mine, which I feel shows that my passion for working with students outweighs my love of either words or numbers. I've posted it here before, but here it is again:

  

What I Want for You

Eight times now,

I've stood before 100+ students

for the first time,

their names still crisp on the Skyward roster,

my voice steady, poorly camouflaging my butterflies.

Eight times now,

these students have become my kids,

Mine.

Some like me; some don’t. That’s not required.

Over nine months or so,

we get to know one another, the good and the bad,

and the crazy woman up front

develops not only expectations for you –

but hopes for you as well.

This is what I want for you:

To know how nice it feels to hear someone genuinely ask how you are today.

To learn how you’re wired, so that you can use your strengths and improve your weaknesses.

To always, always, know there is room to improve, to grow.

To live life full of joy and find ways to pass it on.

To respect everyone, even (perhaps especially) those you don’t like.

To realize you are more than capable of success, and to see that the effort really is worth it.

To find your passion, what makes you want to get up every morning, just as I have found mine.

***

         After I finished, my graduated student presented me with a spiral-bound copy of all four of my ICUCOW presentation pieces from 2004 through 2007 and this year's addition. I was honored that my student and my former CWC director felt I was qualified to speak at the event; I was touched that they would create such an awesome keepsake for me. 

Why I Continue Teaching

NPR recently posted two articles about the decreasing number of people going into the teaching profession, and ended with a call for why current teachers continue in such a difficult career. Here are links to the articles and my response to NPR.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2015/03/03/389282733/where-have-all-the-teachers-gone

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2015/03/03/389282733/where-have-all-the-teachers-gone

I just read your articles, "Where Have All the Teachers Gone?" and "There Are Fewer New Teachers. And No One Seems Surprised," and as a high school math teacher, I wanted to weigh in on why I continue teaching. 

My answer is simple and yet increasingly complex: I stay for my students. 

Every day I enter my classroom with plans to help my students improve in one way or another. They deserve to have someone in their lives who is dedicated to fostering their improvement. Over the last eight years of my career, I've found I'm good at that, and I don't want to let my kids down. They need me. 

When I think of the big picture, my students need me for far more than answering questions on study guides, helping them graph polynomials and calculate their derivatives. They need me for far more than helping them prepare for the next Common Core assessment or the ACT they'll take as juniors. 

They need me to help them understand how to problem-solve, how to think for themselves, how to take responsibility for their words, their actions, and their lives. They need me to coach them in persevering through whatever problems they face; they need me to remind them that their self-worth is not tied to a test, but that not giving their best on any assignment is cheating themselves out of the rewards of triumphing over the challenges of life. They need me to hold them to high expectations and help them believe they can actually reach them. 

The students I teach today will change our world tomorrow.  By committing to fostering their success and improvement, I have hope that the change they bring will be positive. 

So I suppose I stay for more than just my students. I stay for the future of our society.

The problems we face as teachers -- aligning to new standards, spending an inordinate amount of time testing when we could be learning, working 10+ hour days even during our vacations for pay that is a mere fraction of other professions' -- may plague my colleagues and me for my entire lifetime, or they may change. One facet of our career will remain steady, though: our students will need us. My students need me, so I stay.

Book Challenge

This came through Facebook a while back, and I thought I'd go this route instead of posting it as a status...

Book Challenge Rules: In your status, list 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Don't take more than a few minutes and don't think too hard. They don't have to be the "right" books or great works of literature, just ones that have affected you in some way. Tag 10 friends, including me.

I decided on 15 books instead (to use the 5 that my sister didn't use in her response). 

In the order I read them:

1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
2. Short Stories by Mark Twain
3. The Way They Learn by Cynthia Ulrich Tobias
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
6. Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen
7. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
8. Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter
9. Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
10. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
11. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
12. Atonement by Ian McEwan
13. Darkness Visible by William Styron
14. March by Geraldine Brooks
15. Love Does by Bob Goff