Joy Comes in Batches

I've always loved May--perhaps I can use that as a feeble excuse for why I've waited for so long to write, in order to make that pleasant plunge from the cold and snow of December into the fragrant, moist air of spring. . . or perhaps because like cookies, good things are even more delightful when there's more than just one to share. . .

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Student Teaching
January 3 - March 25. 6th Grade ELA at the Berrien Springs Middle School. A great team. 144 wiggly youngsters. An opportunity to share my own delight with language and an opportunity to be "found out" as a Seventh-day Adventist Christian by my students in a public school environment. An experience cut short by the offering of a permanent substitute position...



Miss Knott the Art and Entrepreneurship Teacher
March 28 - June 10. Thirty calls for help at once, ranging from "Hey Miss," to "MissssssKnott," to my personal favorite from little Bryce, "Hey there Miss Lady." Paint and clay and business plans and shared inspiration and undercover mission work...




Graduation
May 1. Five years later and still so much to learn! A little anti-climactic: Teaching Friday, April 29, high Sabbath, busy Sunday, teaching Monday, May 2. Reunion with many dear ones.






Soon to be U-Per
May 1. Acceptance of a 5-8 teaching position at the Wilson Junior Academy, Wilson, MI. God has a sense of humor. Yes, I had to look up the location too! A philosophical and mission-minded fit. A complete God-caused-weekend-flip-flop from "This is Nineveh!" to, "Lord, I would be honored to work with such a committed church and school board. Your will be done."






Dr. Rachel Knott, DVM
May 13. An eight-year-old's dream receives a diploma.The mountainous beauty of Fort Collins, CO. 11,000 feet of elevation, snow-buried huts, a sun-pinkened face.





and

Jacob Gibbs
January 16. A ministry-minded Sabbath friendship becomes a mutually admitted matter of God-concern... and then...
(March 23) a more than friendship sort of friendship, well-doused with prayer and joyfully growing.

Only One Explanation

I felt my wheels twitch as they moved off from the damp pavement to a slushy sheet of snow at 60 mph. Before my mind could tell my hands what to do, they had turned the wheel sharply in an attempt to correct my angling toward the big utility van I was passing.

***

The roads had been pretty decent up until then. Just as I had left Berrien Springs at 2:30 a.m., the snow had tried to smother out my optimism for the seventeen hours ahead of me, but I had passed through the pocket and by the time I was on I-90, heading impatiently toward Vermont, the road was dry in places, wet in others. I was out of Michigan. Through Indiana. Ohio's end was in sight with the snow speckled signs telling me I was 50 miles from Erie, Pennsylvania.

The winds had been gusting around me already for five hours, occasionally bearing snowflakes, and in Ohio, the snowflakes had gotten thicker. I wasn't too worried though. I was heading home.

***

My little Geo Metro, Chuck, had a mind of his own when my hands set him free like that--as if he was suddenly getting me back for the times I've squished four people into his two-seated smallness and stalled him as my left-foot got accustomed to his finicky clutch and forgot to cover his ragtop before it snowed. He was skating all over the road like a whirligig beetle.

And then I saw myself headed straight for the side of the utility van. I remember thinking it wasn't going to be good. I remembering wondering if it would hurt when Chuck's chin and nose would crumple up in front of me and then munch me up too.

And then we hit, Chuck ramming his front into the flank of the white van. My computer on the seat next to me flew into the dash. Chuck was still going, spinning, heading back west on I-90 east, then turning again, completing his antics and wobbly 360 as he knocked himself out with a smash against the guardrail.

***

Before leaving at 2:30, I had knelt down on the brown carpet of my apartment. Usually I'll close my eyes for a few seconds as I sit behind the wheel in preparation for a journey, the words running around quietly in my head. But yesterday morning I needed something more. I needed to hear that prayer be real.

And it was. In the yet-dark hours as I headed out and the stars streaked across the sky. As I sat wedged against the guardrail and found that I was alive and that nothing hurt. And when I looked and found that even the bulb of my broken taillight would continue to glow out behind me--along with the warmth of gratitude within me--for the remaining twelve hours, for the last of the lingering journey, Home.

Seeing, Among Other Things

Ginny Owens sings that she doesn't climb mountains to see the view. I want to sit in my purple chair and stew on that for a few minutes, but she is going on, hardly waiting till she can open her eyes to God's wonderful wonder, His display of great beauty and power. She can't keep from singing.

I can't seem to keep from running these days. All that time, my calves sore, my body ready to plop into bed when I have to stay up late and finish the assignment I couldn't do while I was running. I guess that's predictable, but...

Can Ginny Owens run? Can she climb mountains? How can her feet know where to go even if someone tells her? Can they know each root, each pebble, each ledge slanting away from her and slippery with snow melt?

And why would you hike without a view?

If your heart is singing, I guess that's why. If your faith is seeing, even though you're blind. If your body aches with the burden of God's love blowing the scent of mountains across your face, not merely because you gritted your teeth and made it go.

The Evidence of a Long Time

That frightfully buzzing, biting run
Petered out in a dorm room so many
Seconds ago that my
Computer no longer remembers
I used to visit my blog
Occasionally.

Biathlon

I run the final length of dirt road and plunge into the corn, crawling, the bubbles I stir up with my outstretched arms and hands streaming over me like dew or sweat or pollen, lisping through broad green tongues, "aren't you claustrophobic? Aren't you tired? Aren't you giving up yet?

I emerge, dripping, breathing hard, trying to huff the strength down into my legs, and run onto the wooded path, the wind whistling through the water in my ears as if my arms are taunt, freshly straight behind a skiboat on a wakeboard.

And now my competitors join me fiercely like a herd of deerflies buzzing around me, biting my back, shrieking in my hair, making my face flush brighter, faster, faster. They follow me, undaunted by hills where they crowd around me thicker, hardly lagging as I once again find myself on the dirt road, the paved road, up the last hill.

On the sidewalk my last tenacious contender, in a burst of extinction, rams against me, laughing at the swinging of my arms at her, but daring not enter behind me into the winners circle of study.