The plan was that I was going to go to Uganda and teach a women’s Bible study every morning. Finally I was leaving the arena of working with kids at church and was going to do “big people” work. It felt like arriving. End of the story: I stunk at that. Felt like one of…
There are two suitcases on our son’s bed upstairs. Come Saturday morning they’ll both have handles wrapped with airline tags reading “Tel Aviv.” The preacher and I have been planning this trip for months, but for some reason I’ve been keeping this close to my chest. I keep thinking, I need to tell my people…
Before I hit play on the DVD, I tell my students we’re going to watch the movie clip with Spanish audio and with Spanish subtitles. “There’s a problem, though,” I tell them, “because Disney hired one person to translate the audio and someone else to translate the subtitles. The words aren’t the same! They essentially…
“The most incredible thing happened on Friday night,” I told him, “just before I fell asleep.” “What was that?” he asked. “Well, I was filled with anxiety as I thought over my week of teaching, because my mind was doing its usual critical analysis of everything I did wrong. I was mentally rehashing all the…
I confess that I was at Jo-Ann Fabrics buying body parts for my Spanish class. Every year when Halloween approaches, I go on the hunt for some new visual to help teach body vocabulary. So far I have a skeleton (Mr. Bones), a pair of waxed lips, and, as of today, a giant set of…
My son has started vlogging, because there’s nothing else to do at college, right? But what a gift to this momma, who is at the tip-top of Montana while her boy is in central Texas. His Youtube videos give me a glimpse into his life every week, and he makes me smile. Recently, Caleb asked…
We are a lovely shade of purple here today. That’s the real-time air quality report color for Kalispell, Montana: very unhealthy –just a scosh under bright red, which is hazardous. Lungs are burning. Asthma inhalers are being used more often. We can look right at the sun in broad daylight, which is kind of funny…
My last teaching job was in 1994. When I re-entered the teaching field a few years ago, I noticed teachers were talking about a new-fangled tool called a rubric. What in the world was a rubric? So I used “the Google” (something else that didn’t exist in 1994) and learned a rubric is a chart…
She told me she watched a spotter plane fly around behind her house for a long time. Then came the helicopters, with water bags hanging heavy and low. They dropped bag after bag of water on a fire that had re-ignited in an old burn pile. It’s been a summer of high temperatures and no…
Such lovely tomatoes Matt plucked from his garden pots and put in the window sill to finish ripening. I donned an apron and set about dicing them and making them into bruschetta, while I listened to a panel discussion online about the theology of work. The panel took a question, written by a man who…
Four years ago I walked into my new Spanish classroom and set down my purse on the desk. Me and my purse –that was what I came with, to this incredibly challenging job of teaching. “Newb” is what the young people call it. Brand new teacher with no experience and nothing up my sleeve. I…
It seems old fashioned now, but my family used to go to prayer meeting. A generous handful of us would exchange warm, family-style greetings and then get cozy in the church pews. Then people would start making prayer requests. Somebody would ask us to pray for their aunt who was having surgery. Somebody else would…
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