There's Always Something

With Christmas coming up I've been re-filled with anticipation and eagerness.  It's the first year that I feel like both of our daughters are old enough to really be excited.  Last year Meimei was still too young to understand why everyone was so excited.  She was excited, yes.  But Meimei gets excited because her plate is blue and today her favorite color is blue, and so this year she's really excited that she gets to celebrate Jesus.   I watch the world turn through her big (big for an Asian, anyway), brown eyes and wonder what she sees sometimes that I don't.   Her world is always open and full of light and laughing.  There's always fun to be had, something new to try, or in her case, taste.  So far, in the last week, she's tasted: the car window, her chair, the table, the bathtub, the soap (she didn't like that one), and her pillow.  If it weren't for the fact she tells me that she is deliberately wanting to know how they taste, I'd ...

Less than two weeks and we're back.  The campus that has been waiting eagerly for the routine of its inhabitants will be reunited with them.  The place will come alive with the sound of students and faculty, lunches being eaten, bells being rung, lockers being open and shut.  And I am grateful . I don't think I've ever so eagerly anticipated the return to school.  It isn't that I haven't appreciated a summer spent in the sun and the chlorine of a pool (trust me, summertime is better chlorinated), a summer with my younger daughter learning to paddle and my older daughter bravely taking swim tests, with trips to the library and picnic lunches, family vacation and so many hugs I lost count.  I've loved it.  But it's also been a summer of heart brokenness.  I don't think that I have ever lived a summer like this one, watching those I love hurt so deeply that there are no words of comfort, only prayers of hope.  So I'm ready for this summer to end an...

In the last few days I've had the fortunate unfortunate opportunity to witness two families go through death of a dear one.  One death left behind a young man who's now the man of the house.  The other leaving behind a family who will never hear his tiny voice cry or laugh.  In these deaths I saw the beauty of Life. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. Matthew 18:20 ESV A young man, now fatherless, stood awkwardly in a suit and tie.  Overnight, he's been forced to become the man of the house, feeling the responsibility for the care and protection of his mother.  This afternoon, he has already assumed this role.  Standing tall, ready to receive guests, shaking hands, accepting condolences.  A group he recognizes arrives, teens dressed carefully, not sure whether to smile or seem sad.  One by one, they shake his hand, hug him tight, offer their quiet, broken, uncertain words of comfort.  They smile when he...

Good teachers teach.  And over the years I've had a lot of really good teachers.  Teachers that did a fantastic job of imparting information to me.  To be honest, though, I loved school and learning, so I basically thought that as long as the teacher was saying something that I didn't already know, which was a lot of things, then that teacher was a good teacher.  In my 12 years of formal, pre-secondary schooling from K-12th grade I attended 7 different schools: 4 elementary, 2 middle, and 1 high school.  2 high schools if you count the one I walked across the parking lot for when I was in middle school.  So I went to a lot of schools.  I had a lot of teachers.  And most of them were good.  But a few of them were truly great.  They were great not because they were exceptionally knowledgeable or because they were exceptional orators.  As a matter of fact, a couple of the best teachers I've ever had were a little awkward in speeches (a...

I've always wanted to blog.  I really don't know the kind of blogger I'll be.  I know the really good ones make you feel like the words come to life.  I don't think I'm one of those.  But I hope that somewhere in my awkward combinations of letters that form words, and strings of words that form sentences, maybe something beautiful will happen.  Perhaps a memory will be saved or a revelation found, a thought explored or a brokenness revealed and then restored.  I hope mostly that this space is real. I'm a full time wife to JJ, a full time mom to Natalie and Virginia (Meimei) and a full time high school mathematics teacher at a Christian school.  I'm a part time sound technician and part time coach.  And as I'm learning on this journey, I'm a lot of other things, too. I've only been teaching high school math for a little over a year.  But as it turns out "high school math teacher" isn't an apt description for what I, and any of th...