shouts of joy

After a restless night and a full day of teaching I have nothing symbolic or figurative to write. My head has ached since yesterday, but my heart all week. Every morning in staff worship we pray for a student who is undergoing chemotherapy. Administration posted notices on Monday at the front door of the school that doors will be locked between 8:15 am and 3:15 pm. A frozen body was found yesterday in a field next to the school. What kind of hell are we stuck in? The collected dust of these hellish happenings have begun to settle in. Sometimes it's hard to see anything good past it all. Locked in our classroom this morning during worship, a student recommended that we watch this music video. As the video played, several students sang along and unknowingly began to wipe away that dusty build up from the roller-coastering week. 'And just like a drum I can hear their hearts beating. I know my God won't let them be defeated. These are our daughters and our sons. Brave and

Surprises when they're good are the best, aren't they? I very much love a good surprise. Surprises that jump out of the dark when we're afraid of the dark to begin with, aren't the same. I had something like that happen today. I stood in the bathroom straddling the two rugs over the icy cold tile floor this morning after blow-drying my hair. I had put on the first layer of beige powder and snapped open the yellow eye color case when a spider quickly moved across the opened case toward my fingers. I let the case drop to the counter, and breathing quickly I looked around for something to make the creepy crawler disappear. I shivered as I crunched him into a tissue and flushed him away. Because of fear I flushed a poor spider. Because of fear I've also flushed a lot of other good things. As I thumbed through the many sermon notes in my Bible today I came across notes taken from a series of sermons on Isaiah. Over and over it was written and underlined: say to t

1 year. 1 whole year. I like to do re-caps every few months, maybe so that the end of the year doesn't bust out of the tunnel like a getaway train. And every time I attend to those recent events I find it hard to believe I am where I am. How did this winding, curving, never ending, motion sickening, pot-holed, yet ever so scenic and peaceful road ever lead me to this lovely place? As I prepared to welcome the new year with friends and family I spent several minutes trying to rewind to the exact moment just one year before. It wasn't long before I had rewound to a crushed-spirited girl, laying in a bed with an ice machine wrapped around her right leg, her mind lost in the darkness from the heavy painkillers, and an alarm set for 11:55. Deeply concerned, I wondered how she ever found her way out of that shaded grove.  How far she's come. What strength has been displayed. In fact, I'd hardly believe her to be a girl anymore. As she's relearned to walk, to talk,