Confidence: the good kind.

I’ve been thinking some lately about self confidence. Where does mine come from? What about everyone else’s? How can I better teach and foster it in my students? How can I encourage it in my friends, or my coworkers? Is it a skill that can be taught and practiced, or is it some inherent gift?

I believe confidence, forged from self-love, is a skill. I think self-compassion and self-kindness are skills that can be honed. Since there is an insane epidemic in our society of body-hating, I think loving yourself (the way you are right now, not 15 pounds from now or a college degree from now, or a healthy relationship from now) is one of the first steps on the journey to a successful (and fulfilling) life.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. 31 The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”

It's not just happenstance that the Bible admonishes, in more than one place, that our first commandment in living for God is to love Him; following on the heels of that verse is the second, the one that many times is misinterpreted. "Love your neighbor as yourself." 

We intrinsically know we are to treat others kindly and with compassion for their circumstances, understanding for their shortcomings, and forgiveness for their mistakes. Yet most of us fail to grant these same concessions to ourselves. Instead, we are our own worst critic, constantly second-guessing, seeing the glass as half-empty, and finding it difficult to embrace our flaws as willingly as we embrace our strengths.

It’s hard to love all of myself, all of the time. But when I’m spending time alone with my reflection, I’m consciously seeing myself through the eyes of someone who loves and accepts me fully and completely… my imaginary “biggest fan,” if you will. But it’s not just physical. To me, external beauty is such a reflection of internal beauty. So while I’m loving my body and my face, I’m also loving my heart and my spirit and my whole history as a person.

I don’t compare myself to anyone. That would rob the experience of joy. I even try not to compare myself to myself, although there are certainly some thoughts, some memories. I remember how my body looked and felt in high school, how it felt after losing 50 pounds all those years ago... But it’s always done through this filter, this point of view of an imaginary fan who loves me the most right now, as I am in this moment. I don’t say mean things or think about stuff I want to change. I just admire. I just love. And for that time, through the imaginary eyes of my biggest fan, I am my biggest fan. I am the one who loves me the most. And you guys… I think people need this.

Because the thing is, you walk around making up what people think of you anyway. You can never really know. I mean, you hope your parents are proud of you, and you suspect that mean girl might just be jealous of you. But you can never KNOW. Your interpretation of what people think of you is essentially made up. And for some reason most people, most of the time, make up mean and negative things. They see themselves from the POV of an imaginary enemy. They imagine how they must come across to someone who doesn’t like them, who doubts them, who think they’re ugly, fat, dumb, or just not good enough. They spend their entire day hanging out with this judgey imaginary person who makes them feel insecure, and their entire life suffers for it. When you constantly see yourself from the POV of someone who judges you unkindly, the world feels like a harsh and dangerous place, so you shut down, take less risks, and find ways to live smaller.

The complete opposite, in fact, is true. We all deserve to be seen, loved, and admired for exactly who we are. 

I just need to load the wagon.

I jumped off the merry-go-round a few days ago.

Just...jumped.

For weeks the hurry and scurry of schedules, deadlines, state testing, and everything else that was somehow sandwiched in between had me spinning...

Faster and faster I spun, with no concrete destination, no end in sight (well, okay, I knew there was an end to most of it but I certainly couldn't see it), and with growing panic squeezing my insides with each subsequent turn.

By late last week my proverbial vision was blurred and all sense of what was up, down, right or left, right or wrong, had successfully evaded me. My internal scheduler went on the blink, my ability to reason and rationalize went on the fritz, and - can I just be real here? - I became one irritable human being.

Sometimes I struggle with just how open to be on this blog. Making myself vulnerable is never comfortable and yet, as a writer, I feel the need (even on this blog that is read by "tens of people") to share truths as I learn them. And the truth I re-learned these past few days is that there is only one place to go when I finally realize that the load is just too much for one lone girl to carry.

Maybe one day I'll learn to leave everything at the Cross before it becomes overwhelming. Wouldn't that be a novel approach?

After several days of feeling faint twinges of annoyance at even the most simple of conversations, the most minute of inconveniences, I began to feel the effects of spinning way too fast for way too long. In the middle of it all, I had an enlightening - although brief - moment of clarity. The common denominator in each situation was <gulp> ME.

That, folks, is tough to admit. But you know what I mean, right? Sometimes we realize we just need to take ourselves out of the equation for a while.

So that's what I did.

I jumped off the merry-go-round.

No emails. No Face booking. No blog reading or blog writing. No phone calls. No texts. I. Jumped. Off.

For two days I stayed as quiet as possible, staying inside of my home and attending to only those things of "hearth and home." As the hours passed and I gradually let go of all the issues, circumstances, and events that I was trying (unsuccessfully, I might add) to micro-manage, I slowly felt my soul begin to refuel. Where I'd felt parched and dry before, new rivers of joy and inspiration began to - little by little - forge their way through until I felt like myself again.

I was behind a fancy Dodge truck a while back. Stenciled in beautiful scripted font, on the tail end of this truck, were these words: "Don't worry about the mules. Just load the wagon."

Now I'm fairly new to this cow girl business and I'm not entirely sure of the meaning. But I do know what I took away from the sentiment. I don't need to know the answers, the reasons why or why not, the endings, the WHATEVER, for every little thing I have going on in my life.

I need to merely load the wagon.

Load it by making sure I'm prayed up. Load it by fulfilling my responsibilities first and my calling next. Loading it by loving the people God has so strategically placed in my life with all that is within me. In the room that's left I can then layer in the extras. When it's full, I need to just accept that it's full. There will be time enough at a later date to load more.

And then I need to relax in the knowledge that I'm not the driver of this load. But, instead, my life is totally in the hands of the only One who knows my past, directs my present, and is already preparing me for my future.

So even though I'm back on the merry-go-round today, I feel that tingle of excitement again as the spinning commences. The thrill is back, the sheer exhilaration of freedom making me want to throw my head back, close my eyes, and enjoy the ride.

Classroom Heroes

This is the time of year when things get crazy in the school building. State testing, lots of kids out of class due to extracurricular activities, and lots of stress (in both students and their teachers) that sometimes leads to poor decisions. Our English department finished our testing yesterday and I have to admit that I feel as though a heavy weight has been lifted. We’ve (and by we, I mainly mean my kids) have worked diligently all year. They have risen to the occasion of every gauntlet I’ve thrown their way, and I could not be more proud.

The really cool thing about this time of year is that I can now teach what my friend, Tammy Kuhlengel, calls our “love units.” The things we are passionate about but have to place on the back burner until after testing because they don’t necessarily move our TEKS and curriculum forward. For me, it’s always a unit of some sort on To Kill a Mockingbird. I love the book, the movie, and all the nooks and crannies there are to discover within the cover of Harper Lee’s coming-of-age novel. I never tire of it; I’m such a fan that I even named one of our goats Harper Lee!

Last night, I was looking for a few documents I need to complete my grad school application. I came across one of my portfolios from one of my favorite undergrad education courses. It involved a complete development of a unit of instruction, including a novel study, media connections, articles, and concluded with a “Big Event.”

A “big event,” according to our professor, Dr. Susan Stewart, is the time in the unit when students take what they’ve learned and they collaborate on a project that assesses what they’re taking away with them. She taught us to “practice what we preach,” “make it meaningful,” and fully “immerse kids in the classroom.” We learned in that class to frame the text, in order to focus the students on what was to come. Next, we prepared them by giving them the first exposure to the text. Finally, you return with your students to the text and use collaboration for assessment.

The first page of our portfolio required us to give a personal background to the research we used for this assignment. I have to say that I sat on the floor last night and cried as I read over what I had written during that assignment. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve thought about it since I turned it in and yet, reading the words solidified that my goals and my ideals back then were evidently pretty transparent. It’s how I strive to conduct my classroom every day, even now, five years later.

Classroom Heroes: Cultivating Characterization AND Character

His name was Mr. Beeson. I’m sure he had a first name, but I’m equally as certain that not one of his Junior Honor English students knew what it was. He wore a tweed sport coat and a tie most every day that school year of 1984-85, yet hardly ever wore a smile. All business….no bull, that was his motto, and he stuck to it harder and tighter than white on rice. I can’t say that I remember a lot of what we did or read in class that year; I do, however, remember being humiliated more than once for volunteering a thought and being shot down because it didn’t qualify as a “right” answer…in his opinion. Junior year English was not a favorite, and my friends and I didn’t have much reason to anticipate the next year.

Except…Carol Harrell walked into Senior English, full of light and and life and laughter, and – despite the Dr. Suess-esque name – she revolutionized how we thought about, approached, and embraced literature. She was a real person, who not only loved to talk about all things literature but seemed to truly care about our thoughts as well. Her classroom became the spot we all couldn’t wait to reach each day. It didn’t take long under this umbrella of safety for us to blossom and, as we learned to express ourselves, we also began to grow as individuals. In short…we began to feel like heroes. Senior year will always hold a special corner of my heart. Even though it would take me some twenty-five years to reach the place where I was “ready,” the seed for teaching was planted way back in Carol Harrell’s vibrant classroom in Garland, Texas.

Creating classroom heroes.

Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Here we go!

So...today marked the end of a wonderful (not EVEN kidding) week of professional development before the start of yet another school year. Our hallways fairly hummed with the promises of all this upcoming year can be. Morale is high and it's obvious from the tired yet happy smiles that my coworkers are feeling much the same as I am.

We are ready.

On Monday morning, schools all over our region will open their doors and students of all ages, of all walks of life, and of all talents and abilities will come inside the hallowed halls of learning.

Some will come eagerly, and early. Others will barely breeze into a chair before the final tardy bell. Still others will come quietly hopeful. Maybe last year wasn't quite their year, but they are thinking this one just might be. Maybe their situation changed over the summer and they are ready for the routine of school to provide a needed respite. Maybe they just miss their friends, their coaches, or US - their teachers.

No matter how they come to us, we have to be ready. 

Ready for each student and whatever circumstance may accompany them. School should be a place of comfort and of safety and I am so proud to work with those who feel as I do. Despite teen attitudes, eye rolls, and the occasional "blessing out," we find happiness in what we do.

Real happiness.

In the today's culture, where our validity seems to be centered on things we accumulate: money, possessions, relationships - I'm afraid that we're missing out on what the real meaning of happiness is.

"Things" bring temporary elevated levels of adrenalin (not necessarily happiness) that tend to plummet as soon as we adjust to our new acquisitions.

So that new car, new clothing, new house, new relationship, may very well bring pleasure and contentment and certain levels of pleasure...for a time. But when "the new wears off" we need something deeper, more permanently grounded within our souls, if we are to be the joyful creatures that God intends for us to be.

I learned a long time ago, from a close friend, to practice the law of attraction. We can draw people, circumstances, and even certain "things" by daily practicing optimism, outward signs of joy (smile, even when you don't feel it), and - most importantly - exercising that small mustard seed of faith.

Happy people attract happy circumstances. That doesn't mean that illness, hardship, and tragedy never cross their path, but it does mean that they are not shaped by the circumstances of their life. Instead they shape their life and bring meaning to those circumstances.

I'm thinking happy thoughts today. Practicing the law of attraction. Surrounding myself with like-minded people. Cherishing the relationships in my life that mean more than worldly wealth ever will. Clinging to a faith in God that has never failed me.

And looking forward to another nine months of learning and laughter with some of the finest of our next generation.

We are ready.

Here we go!

The beauty of friendship. TRUE friendship.

The older I become the more appreciative I am of the true girlfriends that fill my life.

While I'm not old, I've certainly lived long enough to recognize the futility that comes hand-in-hand with senseless competitiveness and desperate struggles to be everything you think your friend (or neighbor or sister or cousin, or even a perfect stranger) is.

As I cruise through mid-life I am thankful for the great group of women who surround me. They praise my strengths and tolerate my idiosyncrasies. They cry with me and laugh with me. They know I'm not perfect and yet they're okay with that. My secrets, hopes, and dreams are buried in the vaults that are their hearts. My name is safe on their lips. Time nor miles can separate true friendship.

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that  they can grow separately without growing apart." - Elizabeth Foley

It hasn't always been this way and - because of that - I am so thankful for this stage in life. It takes a while to see the world and our place in it with clarity. It takes even longer to understand that no one can fill our exact place, just as we cannot even begin to fill someone else's. We are unique, God's Originals.

The reality is that we, as women, tend to wear veneers, whether thick or thin, that shield our vulnerabilities and present only the "pretty" side of ourselves. The side we want others to see. The side WE choose, not necessarily the portrait of the woman God created us to be. Some years ago I became very aware that most women are not so much unlike...me. We come in all shapes, all sizes, all makes and models, but the essentials are very familiar.

We need to be loved, appreciated, respected...all of these, for sure. But what we need more than anything is TO love. To love without boundaries, without limits, without expectations. To truly love is the greatest gift and women are abundantly endowed with it. We are nurturers by nature and, yet, so often we fail to nurture and support one another.

We are a sisterhood and our strongest ally is most likely standing right by our side. But she may be too shy, too opinionated, too angry, or too - goofy even - to approach. Even so, I have a feeling that her heart beats much the same as mine does. I'm quite sure that her arms shelter someone much as my own do, and that her eyes drip tears of joy and sadness and pain...exactly as my eyes do.

"In everyone's life, at some point, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit." - Albert Schweitzer 

She has hurts and disappointments. Pride and shame. Strengths and weaknesses. Irritating habits and endearing characteristics. She is my sister. My friend. My neighbor. The fellow teacher that I pass in the hallways each day. She is the young girl that sits in my English class and she is the elderly woman that I see weekly at church.

I may not always know her name.

But I pray I always see her.

She's not all that different from me.

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water. At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot often arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been created to do. After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house." The old woman smiled, "Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side? That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them. For two years I have been able to put beautiful flowers on my table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace my home."

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it's the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding.

For all my cracked-pot friends (AND for me) - whether I know your name, just recognize you by sight, or quite possibly have not even met you yet - here's to remembering to smell flowers on OUR side of the path!

Here's to you, Steve Jobs!

Funniest thing, Steve Jobs started following me on Pinterest today. It's funny because, well you know...

But honestly, it's great that it occurred just as I was trying to summon up the courage to pick this blog back up. Sometimes we take ourselves so seriously (preaching to myself here:) that we let valuable opportunities, connections, and maybe even relationships pass us by because we're too concerned with image rather than with what's real beneath our image.

The truth is that I lost the joy of blogging a long time ago. I used to blog faithfully and loved every single, tortuous minute of it. It was a great escape, a place to log thoughts, ideas, feelings, and life happenings. Some days I wrote about things that touched my soul, other days I chronicled funny events from the day. Some days were all about poetry and, still others, were nothing more than a collection of pictures that spoke to me.

And then I became a teacher and began to teach writing to a bunch of high school kids. I went in SO STINKING CONFIDENT, just knowing - knowing - that I was going to single-handedly inspire the next generation of writers.

It didn't take long for me to tuck my tail and head for shelter and - for me - that shelter was somewhere far, far away from the blogging world. My confidence in my own abilities, talents, and gifts was severely tested inside those first few years of teaching. I quickly realized that writing according to TEA standards was nothing like writing from the heart - probably the one thing I wanted most to impart to my classroom of budding writers.

Instead I had to learn to staunch my own creative urges in order to learn to teach writing in a whole new "barbaric" way. I was faced with the challenge of teaching students how to write expository and persuasive essay writing within the confines of a stringent, strangely forulaic rubric that included a length of only 26 lines.

It doesn't take an English teacher to tell you that an essay is so, so much more than 26 lines. It's about the "soul" that is discovered through writing. 26 lines leave very little room for soul. Instead, it is too often one-dimensional and lacks that certain something that has readers

Here's to you, Steve Jobs!

Funniest thing, Steve Jobs started following me on Pinterest today. It's funny because, well you know...

But honestly, it's great that it occurred just as I was trying to summon up the courage to pick this blog back up. Sometimes we take ourselves so seriously (preaching to myself here:) that we let valuable opportunities, connections, and maybe even relationships pass us by because we're too concerned with image rather than with what's real beneath our image.

The truth is that I lost the joy of blogging a long time ago. I used to blog faithfully and loved every single, tortuous minute of it. It was a great escape, a place to log thoughts, ideas, feelings, and life happenings. Some days I wrote about things that touched my soul, other days I chronicled funny events from the day. Some days were all about poetry and, still others, were nothing more than a collection of pictures that spoke to me.

And then I became a teacher and began to teach writing to a bunch of high school kids. I went in SO STINKING CONFIDENT, just knowing - knowing - that I was going to single-handedly inspire the next generation of writers.

It didn't take long for me to tuck my tail and head for shelter and - for me - that shelter was somewhere far, far away from the blogging world. My confidence in my own abilities, talents, and gifts was severely tested inside those first few years of teaching. I quickly realized that writing according to TEA standards was nothing like writing from the heart - probably the one thing I wanted most to impart to my classroom of budding writers.

Instead I had to learn to staunch my own creative urges in order to learn to teach writing in a whole new "barbaric" way. I was faced with the challenge of teaching students how to write expository and persuasive essay writing within the confines of a stringent, strangely forulaic rubric that included a length of only 26 lines.

It doesn't take an English teacher to tell you that an essay is so, so much more than 26 lines. It's about the "soul" that is discovered through writing. 26 lines leave very little room for soul. Instead, it is too often one-dimensional and lacks that certain something that has readers going back for second - and third - reads.

Pascal said, "When we see a natural style, we are astonished and delighted; for we expected to see an author, and we find a man." Soul writing is human. It is a person with ideas and emotions who captures our attention - not because he or she has all the answers - but rather because their writing is authentic, honest, messy, and even contradictory at times.

Somewhere in those first few months of teaching I allowed that spark of creativity to become dampened by the reality of what teaching meant. I still strove for creativity in my classroom; I just borrowed others' creative ideas instead of trusting my own. I still spent long, taxing hours pouring over lesson plans; they "ticked all the boxes" but still left me feeling as if there were more I could do.

More I could be.

I forgot how to write soulfully because I was so busy learning how to "teach" writing.

Over time, I have tried to pick up blogging again, simply because I love to write, love to play with words and emotions and events and - in the end - have left a stamp that is uniquely me upon the blogosphere. I failed. More than once. Okay...more than twice.

And that it okay.

I recently found a Pinterest project that has been calling my name ever since. If is a homemade rustic headboard with tiny words up in one corner that say "Awake my soul." I intend to make that headboard and stencil those words.

I want my soul to be fully awake. Then - and only then can I share my best self with those around me.

My life is full. I'm a wife, mom, a Nana, a writer, a teacher, a caretaker of too many animals to name, Thoreau's owner; a woman who has been transplanted from the big 'ole Dallas Metroplex to the rural community of Naples, TX.

Otherwise, now known as "home."

So even though I know Steve Jobs is not really following me on Pinterest, here's to his wisdom - both in business and in life - that is certainly quotable. Today was a timely reminder.

This is my story. My adventures. Written and recorded with no rules.

Awake my soul.