Refreshed! That’s how I feel. It’s great taking a day off. I had planned on taking yesterday off so I could catch up on grading. Well, those were my intentions. I did not do one thing yesterday. It was amazing. I read a whole book, caught up on emails, did some errands I had been meaning to do for forever, you get the idea. The best part…I cleaned. My whole place. It is so much easier to get stuff done when you are in a clean environment.

When I am surrounded by mess, and I’m trying to get work done, all I can think is, “Man, I have really got to clean that up!” It takes me 5 times longer to do something because every few minutes I’m staring at the mess I should clean. I think it’s like that a lot with me and God. There are so many things I could do for God and for the Patio much more efficiently if I just cleaned up the mess in my life. Many times I find myself in a position of serving and the whole time I’m thinking of something that is heavy on my heart. This has especially been true for the past couple of weeks. Due to this burden I have been short with people, I have pushed things aside, and it has taken me way longer to get things done than it would have if I had come to God with everything. But my tendency is to push it away and ignore it until it all hits me from no where and I am a huge mess. At that moment I can’t get anything done. Every time I try I am enveloped with all of these emotions and I’m struggling to put on a normal, happy face for the benefit of all. And, to be perfectly honest, for the benefit of me and God. If I smile and act happy than I don’t have to face it and bring it to God to see where I’m falling short. Because who likes to be told there’s something wrong with them? Well, God has definitely shown me so much these past couple of weeks through all of this. He has shown me how silly all of my insecurities are and how hard on myself I am. I never thought of myself as a perfectionist, but I am starting to realize that I am a little bit. At least when it comes to me and how people see me. Its hard, and scary, trying to keep up with all of that. So I am very happy to say that I have been cleaning up my mess. Well, God has been cleaning it up. But He lets me help too. So if I have been short with any of you the past couple of weeks, I am so very sorry. If I haven’t been there when I said I would, I am so sorry. Expect this to change. And please, call me out on it if it happens in the future. Because it is unnacceptable and I will not let my mess interfere with the work God is doing in the Patio and in Reedy Fork.

God is so amazing, and every time in my life He smacks me around and tells me to wake up and see the amazing things He’s done and to get over myself it is so refreshing. I am so incredibly lucky to be involved with all of you guys and to know I am loved. Wooo! Now the holidays don’t seem so hard! Not to mention, my mom, sister, and niece were able to come visit me yesterday and stay till today, so we are gonna have a lot of fun shopping and hanging out. But more on that later!

2:56.  That’s what time it is right now.  3:35.  That’s the time I’ve been waiting for since about Tuesday night of last week!  5 days without seeing any of my students. Man am I pumped!! My sister from Chicago is coming with her boyfriend and my nephew and are staying with me tonight. I am sooo excited! I haven’t seen them in over a year! And we’re pretty sure her boyfriend is gonna propose to her, so that is exciting too! I love him, and think this will be really good for her and Alex (my nephew). And my dad is cancer free! So much to give thanks for this year, it’s crazy! God is just amazing.

However….the holidays always seem so couply. I’m the ONLY one in my family who is single. The only one. This is something I have been struggling with for a while. My single-ness.  I know it’s a blessing, and I should think of it that way. But man it’s hard. Especially since I feel so ready to settle down. It seems as if I spend a lot of time talking to God about this, and asking him when the right time will be, and why isn’t it now?! I see couples and families all around me and just really want to be at that place in my life right now. You know that saying always a bridesmaid never a bride? That’s me. To the core. Through all of this, I really don’t want to lose my focus on God and what he’s doing in my life through my single-ness. Because I know it’s not gonna last forever (hopefully!!) and I want to make sure I’m becoming the woman God wants me to be for whoever he has for me. But I don’t feel as if I can do that if I’m focused more on wanting to be in a relationship. I spend most of my time either praying God makes these feelings for the guy I like to just go away or for him to do something about it. Such a waste. I can’t even really believe I’m opening up about this, because this is way too much of a vulnerable/embarrassing topic! I guess I’m just informing you all to ask that you pray that I don’t lose my focus on God, and continue to seek his will through all of this, even if it isn’t what I would have planned for myself. Also that I can fully enjoy the holidays and celebrate the fact that I’m single rather than thinking of it as a bad thing.

 I hope you all have amazing Thanksgivings with your family! Can’t wait to see you all on Sunday and hear all about it!

Thursday night’s Bible study as well as church this morning has opened my eyes to so much. It has shown me how incredibly selfish I have been lately. As I read over past blogs and previous journal entries (or lack thereof on that one) I see myself saying the same things over and over again, just using different words. I pray the same prayers. I ask God for the same things over and over again. It seems that I get so caught up in work so as to have something that is all mine. I get caught up in grading and planning that I push everything else aside. Friends, family, church, GOD. And all for what? So I can complain with everyone else about how hard work is? So I can complain with my coworkers about how bad my kids are, and we can see who’s situation is worse? So I can have great stories to tell when I actually do make time for someone and we’re catching up on life? All of that…lame. And if you notice, God didn’t fit into any of that. I have been letting myself live the past few months and thinking Sunday mornings and the occasional Bible study is enough to suffice God. But it’s not. And I refuse to let myself keep falling into this trap. Since Thursday my prayer life is all I could think about. And how can I change it. How can I use prayer to grow closer to God, and to truly communicate with him and hear him, rather than to use it to complain to him and ask him to change my situation. In all honesty, my situation is not bad. At all. I just want it to be better. And I can’t even think how much “better” God could make it if I just let it go and give it to him. The grading, it’ll happen. But weeks from now, months from now, if I turned down hanging out with a friend because I had stacks of papers to grade or lessons to write, what could be the consequences of that? If I say no to God one more time to grade a set of tests rather than spend time with him, is that going to be the time he stops talking? I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to be that Christian who is halfway doing it and letting everyone think everything’s ok in my spiritual life. I’m letting you all know now, it’s not! But…it’s going to be. Please, hold me accountable to not putting work before God. To not putting work before friendships and relationships. Hold me accountable to being a blessing and not a burden. Because nobody likes a complainer. And nobody likes a workaholic. I want to see Reedy Fork come alive. And it’s going to be hard to do from behind a stack of papers.

I think I’m a workaholic. And I say that wishing it wasn’t so. I need a break from work soooo bad. Teaching is definitely not what I thought it was. This past month has been the hardest month ever for me. I can’t get over how emotionally draining it is to do this. Seeing and experiencing all of the different things I do as a teacher makes me realize how lost the world is. How lost Greensboro is. It makes me so sad, and I think it affects me so much because I want to change it all. I want to be able to rescue these kids at my school. This past week was ridiculous at my school. There were multiple fights (one of my students was in the worst one, and not as the victim), kids being extremely disrespectful, our school was put on lockdown, multiple suspensions (3 were my kids alone), and on top of all of this having to deal with the kids in my classes, being yelled at and cursed at and having to plan and get all of my kids passing. The good days are starting to get few and far between. I just pray I can get through this year with my sanity and my kids passing. Also for this school and these kids. That they would come to know the Lord and start to respect those around them and value their education and want to do something with their life. I do thank God soo much for those kids who I have built relationships with and make it worth coming to school for that day. I just hope that this gets better. For those kids, for the school, for the teachers around me, especially the teacher down the hall who is ready to quit. I pray she sees God’s plan through all of this and knows why he put her in this situation and what he plans on teaching her through this experience. Also that he gives her the strength to make it through each day and those kids she is having problems with do not destroy her joy of teaching. I pray that for me as well. Because the problem isn’t the teaching part. It’s the discipline part and the rudeness and disrespect. And time. I need more of it. We all do! I guess I rambled on enough. I hope I have the time to make posts more often. Hope you all are doing well and school, work, etc. is great!

This post is gonna have to be quick, cause I have a million things to do and no time to do them! Saturday I talked to my mom for a little while and received some GREAT news! The doctor’s are almost ready to declare my dad cancer free!!! There is one spot they are waiting to get back and then they’ll know. So please pray this spot is nothing and does not require surgery. But they do know the cancer has not spread inside his body, so that is a miracle! I am so thankful and praising God for the amazing things he does. It’s just crazy how after he breaks us he decides to bless us, especially when none of us deserve it. I’m so glad my daddy will be able to walk me down the aisle now! In many years, of course! School is starting to get better too. Still having problems, but kids will be kids, right?! I hope that I can force myself to become a little bit more organized and plan a week or two worth of lessons in advance so I’m not stressing out throughout the week. But I guess that will just have to come as I get used to teaching and everything that goes into it. Pray I don’t get burnt out and want to quit!

(Thanks God for being so faithful and generous. You know exactly how far to push us to come running back to you. I know I can’t get through any of this that life has to throw at me without you. Help me to always focus on you and know that everything else will happen as you planned. I trust you and love you.)

I wish I was really good with words so I could say exactly how I’m feeling. But I’m not, so if this isn’t the most eloquent blog then sorry for that. I haven’t felt this drained in as long as I can remember. I don’t think I remember ever being like this. Teaching is definitely much harder than I thought it would be. Not that it’s not good, cause it is. Just hard. Very hard. Yesterday was the first GREAT day I’ve had, and today brought my count back to zero. Almost every day since day one I wonder if this is really the career for me. So many times I want to just give up because it is so hard. I haven’t cried this much since Mexico! haha! But seriously, it’s awful. The good moments are amazing. But the bad moments are so bad that it makes me question myself. That whole fear of committment thing due to fear of failure keeps popping up lately. I find myself telling myself that if I just don’t care or don’t try too hard than if I fail it won’t matter because I didn’t really put everything into it. But not caring is much harder than caring I am finding out. I can’t help it. I care so much about these kids, even the ones I want to smack upside the head! Because then I wonder what is going on with these kids and their personal lives that they are acting out in class, getting mad over something as little as having to wait to go to the bathroom till the bell rings. One of the teacher’s I work with tells me she just turns it on and off. When she’s at school, that’s school and all its problems are there. But when she goes home she leaves it at school and just doesn’t think about it or anything. That’s great for her, but how in the world do people do that?! With anything?! It is beyond me. I didn’t realize how much teaching would hurt. It’s only been a week and a few days and I already want to fix everything in those kids’ lives. It sucks having to face reality and know that some kids won’t let you help them no matter how much they need it.

And not only school, but having to balance that and everything else in my life. I hate opening up, so this will be hard, but I’ll get over it. Some of you know my dad has skin cancer and has had multiple surgeries so far. I throw myself into work because then I won’t think about my family. My sister and her marriage are falling apart, it makes me sick my niece has to go through that, and my brother is 16. Enough said on his part! I’m so scared that one day my phone is gonna ring and I’m going to have to hear that my dad’s cancer has metastisized and he has only months or weeks to live. Just the thought makes me so sad and literally hurts my heart. I never talk about it because that only makes it more real. If I just don’t think about it than maybe it will go away. I really don’t know how to deal with it. Then I let my imagination run wild and I think about the what if’s. What if I get the phone call and my dad never gets to walk me down the aisle? (I’m clearly not getting married anytime soon!) And never gets to see my kids? And what about my mom? What will happen to her? I go nuts! This is probably the first time I have mentioned these feelings since I first found out. This has been on my heart for a while, and I guess I needed to get it out, and I don’t know why this is actually easier than talking about it to someone.

I would love to end with some great spiritual advice or say that all of this has made me realize whatever it might make someone realize, but I’m not. I can’t. I’m so busy that I forget to read my Bible sometimes and spend time with God. This stuff with my dad isn’t bringing me closer to God because I try not to think about it, which includes praying about it. Not to say that I completely don’t, because I do. It’s just not often, or as often as it should be. I’m trying to get involved in a lot so I don’t have to think about the hard things in life, like my family. Or failing as a teacher. Or the fact that I’m 22 and single as they come and all of my close friends are married or close to that. So maybe God is telling me something. Maybe I need to just let it all go and trust God more. Cling to Him tighter and know that He is good. Know that He has planned an amazing life for me, good times and bad, simply because I put my faith in Him. Maybe none of this is about me, and it’s all about Him and how He could take all of these uncertainties and do something great. Maybe I need to quit worrying about every aspect of my life. Maybe….

I’m not sure quite why I thought teaching high school would be any different from teaching elementary kids.  Today was the first day, and it was crazy.  Schedule changes, random kids walking in and out of my classroom because they didn’t know where their class was. Crazy.  Then there was class itself.  Each of my class has its own personality, and I don’t know how to respond to that.  One class is extremely talkative, another could care less, and so on.  It’s hard to have to adjust to those classes and learn how to “reign in” the crazy ones and try to bring the quiet ones out of their shell.  Throughout the course of the day I had kids poking each other (which I thought stopped in middle school at the latest…!!), making inappropriate comments, cutting up, trying to get me to let them out early, I mean the list goes on and on!  By the end of the day I could not wait to get home and lay on my couch and watch some Friends!  I can’t wait for the next couple of weeks to go by so I have my kids established in some sort of routine. And myself as well.  I’m still not quite sure what I’m doing on Thursday…! Oh well, it’ll happen.  It’s still crazy to think I have my own classroom and the things I say and do in there could change someone’s life.  Some of my kids are fighting for recognition and just wanting to be heard.  I have two girls in one class who are pregnant, and that just makes me so sad.  My biggest prayer is that God uses me to make a difference in each of those kids’ life and that through me God is able to be seen.  I believe that each of those kids is in there for a reason, and I pray I can make use of this opportunity.

God, please help me to be a great teacher.  Not only a teacher, but role model to all of these kids, and someone they can go to if no one else.  Help me to be firm yet loving and let them know that I do care about all of them.  And help me that I don’t go crazy by the time this is all over!

When it comes to committment, I am totally like your typical (stereotypical that is) guy. It scares me to death! The fact that I am saying I will give everything I have to that particular something is huge, and it involves so much sacrifice. And to be honest, I’m not scared of giving my all. I’m scared that I’ll give my all and still fail. So to avoid that, I usually just avoid committment altogether. This is something that God has definitely been showing me I need to work on. When our faith is all about committment, it’s probably something I need to get over my fear of! I think this fear is where a lot of me running away from God stems from. Like I said, I give my all, and still mess up. But the great thing about God is he is so forgiving, and loves us so much, that no matter how many times we mess up, he’s there to help us learn from it and get past it. I am so grateful that God gives us his grace.

This past week I finally made the committment to put my all in The Patio. I am so excited to be involved in something that can (and I believe will) make such a huge difference in a community like Reedy Fork. I am striving to give it my all without the fear of failure. Knowing how passionate everyone is about this vision helps me to get over that fear. God is so faithful and I am glad that he is showing me there is nothing to fear when it comes to trusting him.

Man it’s been forever since I’ve written! Hopefully I’ll do a much better job keeping up with this in the future, starting today. I can’t get over how much God has been showing himself to me lately. It’s amazing how faithful he is when we truly run to him and ask him for guidance and to show us his will, not ours. This past week and a half or so has been great, and has only made me want to run after him harder and faster. For a while after Mexico I was feeling like God wasn’t there and I couldn’t figure out why. During that week in Mexico and a little bit after I was going through a lot and God was showing me how and why I need to turn to him always. And when I did, finally, listen to him and put all my trust in him, I never felt closer to him. He got me through that time in my life and it was an amazing way for him to show me his grace and mercy. But then it all got stagnant. And I didn’t understand why, where I should be going next in my walk with him. And there were so many other times before in my life that this happened, and I would run to other things to fulfill that gap in my life, whether that be family, friends, boyfriend, whatever. Well this time I decided not again. I would continue to seek God and his will for me no matter how hard it was or how often it seemed like he just wasn’t there. And I can’t tell you how glad I am I made that decision. Throughout this past week God his blessed me in so many ways. And in little ways too, not even these huge things. And it could have been so easy to write it off as “luck” or due to my hard work or whatever. But I know that’s not at all what it is. It seems we all have a way of doing that. When it’s something huge, then it must be God. But when it’s something as small as really hitting it off with new coworkers, then that was really just our personalities and it was all luck it worked out that way. I’m starting to see that God is all over the little things just as much as he is the big things. It’s all part of his plan, and if it wasn’t for the little things we wouldn’t be able to see the big picture. I just hope we all keep that in mind and realize how important it is to thank God for everything he throws in our path, good or bad, and know that he has a plan and he is faithful.

Ok, I know this is getting long, but I just have one more thing to share that I am really excited about. Some of you know details about my little sister, others not so much. So I’ll be quick. My sister got pregnant when she was in high school and I now have the most adorable niece ever! But my sister has had some really hard times and has been going back and forth for many years on whether to live her life for God or not. Sometimes she’ll talk to me about it, but most of the time she gets frustrated or feels like I don’t understand cause my life is “easier” than hers. She got married last year, and they have had a lot of problems and she’s not sure if they’ll stay together or not. Also she just had a miscarriage which adds to everything. Ok. So last night we went out dancing and had a lot of fun. When we got home we were laying in bed talking (which I miss the most since us moving out of the house). Then she just started to tell me all of these things about her life and her relationship with God and how much she wanted to follow him but didn’t know where to start and just a lot of stuff. And I was able to use what I went through in Mexico and after and how God showed himself to me to show her that God will break all of us down to get us to follow him. It was great. She hasn’t talked to me like that since high school! I was so excited and I could just feel God working and speaking to her and really calling her to him. So please, pray for my sister. Pray that she is able to be strong and get close to God and really give her life to him. And pray that God continues to give me opportunities to talk to her about him and be there for her. Thanks guys!

Wow. I hate putting together furniture. It’s one of those things where it sucks the whole time you’re doing it, but strangely satisfying when you’re done. Especially if it doesn’t immediately fall apart! Today Steph and I, along with her sister Corinne, went to Target to pick up a few things. They had this really great entertainment stand at a reasonable price, so I bought it for the new place. We brought it home and immediately started to put it together. Ok, so when these people make these “easy to assemble” pieces, it should really be easy to assemble! Stephanie and I have put together so many pieces of furniture since moving in, and you’d think we’d be pros by now. We thought we were pros by now! Anyway, this stand got the best of us, and we were pretty irritated by the time we were done. It looks amazing though, and I’m pretty happy with it now!

Said all of that to say this: you can definitely learn some stuff about yourself just by putting a piece of furniture together. There were so many moments where I should have just repacked it and returned it. Or just beat the thing with a hammer (and trust me, I wanted to!). But didn’t, just kept right on trucking. Now for me, that’s a great accomplishment! And a surprising one. I definitely found out I have a lot more control of my impatience and frustrations than I originally thought. And all that hard work (it seriously took like 2 hours!) paid off. It made me think about all the times I get frustrated with God and so impatient for him to talk to me, reveal himself, do SOMETHING! And I just give up. Turn away, fill that void with people, TV, books, work, whatever. And yet I still feel like something’s missing. Lately I have been wanting God to reveal himself to me, or let me know so blatently (sp?) that he is here and he cares. I know he is and I know he does, I just want to feel it. But maybe I just need to stick it out, and let God know that I’m here, and I care. Cause maybe there’s something great around the corner he’s getting me ready for. And if I don’t stick it out, I won’t ever know or be prepared for that. Like my entertainment stand. If I didn’t stick it out, my poor TV would still be sitting on the floor!