Amy Loves Books

a real sign from a church in downtown decatur, georgia

After a late breakfast, and a beautiful afternoon catching a matinee of Garden State with my best friend, I came home feeling generous and offered to take my children to the movies. Unfortunately, they wanted to see Baby Geniuses 2.

I looked it up in my trusted resource, Entertainment Weekly, and saw that it was given a grade of "C". A "C" is not bad. I think The Last Samurai got a "C" rating. I agreed to go see the movie.

All I can say, is that those Entertainment Weekly people must have been smoking some Superbaby crack. It was the worst movie I have ever seen. Seriously. The Rainbow Brite movie was a cinematic masterpiece compared to this.

But, of course, my kids loved it.

And on an only slightly unrelated note, they had this display in the lobby. I find it frightening to consider how much my son looks like he could actually be the spawn of Chucky and his bride.

I come home from school every day and smoke one clove cigarette on the back porch while I tell my husband my latest stories:
The day I spent my planning period in the social worker’s offices because one of my students is five months pregnant, having dizzy spells, and has had no prenatal care.
The eleventh grader who came after school to tell me that they could not read.
The kid that is in my class despite the fact that he failed every single class in eighth grade (including P.E.), because there is a rule that you can not attend middle school after you turn sixteen.

I tell myself that the stress-relief benefit of my afternoon clove far outweighs any damage it might do. I sit outside with my feet on the edge of my husband’s chair and tell him stories. He shakes his head and laughs. I laugh too. I am surprised by these stories. I am surprised that I make it through the craziness of each day. I am surprised at this life I have ended up living - the barely over five-foot, English-geek, hippie-at-heart teacher in a room full of (much bigger) students that (for the most part) have issues with authority.

I tell about the gigantic man that guards my hallway. I don’t know his name, the other teachers just call him “Coach”. I call him my bouncer. He is HUGE, about six feet tall, bald, and built like a linebacker. I use the fact that he is stationed to guard the hallways right outside my door to my advantage when students are defiant.

“You can either move to a new seat, or I can call in Coach to persuade you to move”, I say. It works like a charm. On Friday, one of my tenth graders was using a cell phone in class. I asked him to turn it over and he refused. “You can turn it over on your own, or I can get Coach to persuade you to turn it over”, I said. “Which coach?”, he asked. "The big one”, I answered.

A hush came over my classroom. “You mean Cornbread?" the student said with a mixture of fear and awe. I had never heard Coach’s nickname before, but I decided to go with it.

“Oh yes”, I said solemnly.“Cornbread”. He handed the phone over to me.

So, I am tired. I have lots of students - five classes of almost thirty. I have a huge crate of papers that need to be graded and recorded.

And I have stories. Everyday, I have new stories. I sit in my room during last period planning and wonder what I was thinking when I decided to teach in such a challenging setting. Then, school gets out, and kids come by my room to talk or ask for help. I go home, and tell my husband my stories, and find myself laughing at the absurdity of my daily life.

I realize that I am falling in love with these kids.

Still, I am constantly challenged - even as - in my heart - I know that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. I am so, so grateful to those of you have been praying for my classes. It helps, more than you know or I can explain.

my husband has had the same best friend since childhood. when they were seniors in high school, chip saw an ad in the atlanta newspaper that said the circus was hiring. as a joke, he showed it to his friend.

but christopher called the number. instead of going to college right away, he joined the circus and learned to eat fire.

last week, at the open house cookout for the coffee house ministry, christopher came and performed. a representative from the religious life department at emory was there. she commented to my husband that ours was the only ministry event she had ever attended that featured a heavily tattooed fire-eater that had to leave early to put his two-year-old to bed.


i also offer, for your listening/viewing pleasure (??), the pseudo punk rock attempt at a promotional video for the bread website. it is so bad, it has been dubbed:

the ghastly video

(my husband is the guy without a guitar)

I need suggestions of movies that deal with protest/civil disobedience. The protest does not have to be against the government. They can be rated R, because I will give a list for students to choose from.

So far, I have Ghandi, Malcolm X, and Amistad. I know there are tons more, but I am drawing a blank.

Many, many thanks!

My mother hated it when I read Catcher in the Rye. I went around with quotes written on my folders. “I know you think I’m a phony”, she would say (she would accuse). I would shrug, go into my room, and write poetry about living in a glass house. Yes. I thought she was a phony.

I used to argue with my mother all the time. I always chose my words carefully, tried to push her over the edge I imagined must exist. I wanted to break her, to find her. She and I would be yelling at each other; I would be consumed by the argument and desperate, and then the telephone would ring. She would not even pause before she answered. “Oh hello!”, she would say, her back turned to me, with a perfect, (phony) cheerful voice. “We are just wonderful ; how are you ?” My chest would tighten, and I would go into my room, lock the door, and hit my head against the metal leg of my bed frame until I felt calm.

My worst memory of elementary school is of being on the bus, sitting alone and reading a Betsy and Tacy book. For some reason I have never been able to comprehend, the most popular girl in class (Leann) walked up to me. I looked up from my book and she glared at me and spoke with complete contempt. “You think you’re hot snot on a silver platter, but you’re really cold buggers on a paper plate”. Then, she snorted and spat, at close range, in my face. I was completely shaken and horrified. When I got home, I ran to my mother and fell apart. I told her what had happened and expected her to defend me, to sympathize with me.

Instead, my mother told me to stop crying. “I think someone is a little green around the gills,” she said. I was confused. My mother elaborated, “I think you are just jealous of Leann”. I cried myself to sleep that night. I was sad because of Leann, but I was heartbroken because I wanted my mother. I wanted to be mothered.

I have spent years looking for my mother. As a child, I tried to find her by running away, crying, and wishing that something tragic would happen that would result in her having to take care of me. As an adolescent, I tried to find her by yelling and pushing. Lately, I have started trying to find her by trying to see who she was before she was a mother. I ask her questions and try to piece together how she became the person I knew. She does not like these conversations and questions.

I want to love my mother. I want to know her.

A few months ago, she found me going through boxes of old photographs. I had pulled out pictures of her. She was angry. Why did I want them? I told her that I just wanted to copy some pictures of my grandmother, but that I would bring them back.

I lied. I took the pictures because I found what I have always wanted: her.

I am in love with one of the pictures I found. My mother only loves a few things, and the beach is one of them. In this picture, my mother is standing at the seaside with my grandmother. My mother grew up in Ohio, and this photograph was taken the first time she saw the ocean.

She is standing at the edge of the water, wrapped in the arms of my grandmother. They are both wearing dresses, but their feet are bare and sinking slightly in the wet sand. The wind is blowing their hair as they smile and look at my grandfather, who is holding the camera. My favorite thing about this picture is the way that my mother is leaning back into her mother’s embrace and grasping one of my grandmother’s arms with both of her hands. When I look at this picture, I find her. There is nothing phony at all.

To quote Holden: "it's so pretty, it almost kills you".


In Love


" She had a stare that stretched to infinity. She was, in that moment, not my mother but something separate from me. I looked at what I had never seen as anything but Mom and saw the soft powdery skin of her face - powdery without makeup-soft without help. Her eyebrows and eyes were a set-piece together. “Ocean Eyes,” my father called her when he wanted one of her chocolate-covered cherries, which she kept hidden in the liquor cabinet as her private treat. And now I understood the name. I had thought it was because they were blue, but now I saw that they were bottomless in a way that I found frightening. I had an instinct then, not a developed thought, and it was that..., before the dewy mist hovering over the grass evaporated and the mother inside her woke as it did every morning, I should take a photograph with my new camera. "

Alice Sebold - The Lovely Bones

Part of my job as a ninth grade teacher includes having "advocacy" sessions with a small group of kids. During these sessions, I am suuposed to try to help them come up with a plan to meet their goals. One of my students writes poetry, so I sat down with her and showed her how to make a blog. She has started posting. I know she would love encouragement.

grace

it's a bird. it's a plane.

I won’t forget when Peter Pan came to my house - took my hand.
I said I was a boy. I’m glad he didn’t check.
I learned to fly, I learned to fight,
I lived a whole life in one night.
We saved each other’s lives out on the pirate deck.
Dar Williams - “When I Was A Boy”

When I was a child, Peter Pan was one of my heroes. I loved Peter. My brother and I had Peter Pan costumes to wear, but I refused to play unless I could be Peter. I put on the too- small-for-me Peter costume, and Jonathan wore the blue dress that drug on the ground behind him and hung off of his shoulders. I hated my dress because I hated Wendy. I just did not understand her. She had been invited to stay in Neverland, and she turned it down.

This was impossible for me to relate to; I would have never rejected the chance to live in a the hollow tree with fairies, and mermaids, and lost boys.

I resisted growing up. I did not want to curl my hair, or wear a padded bra, or read Seventeen magazine. Little girls had been hard enough to relate to; teenage girls were actually frightening. I did not want to be one. I refused certain essentials of the early 1980’s because they seemed weird and felt uncomfortable: hair spray, eye shadow, big hoop earrings, high heels. I was confused by the frenzy Duran Duran induced in my classmates. Their songs were about nothing. “The Reflex is an only child he’s waiting in the park”. What did that mean? I had a hard time relating to the things that were supposed to be important to teenage girls.

My classmates passed around V.C. Andrews books, and I hoped that reading them might help me fit in - but I was freaked out by the fact that they contained sex scenes. I had been traumatized by the underlined parts of Judy Blume's novel,Forever, in middle school and I did not want to read any more sex parts. I would hand the novels to one of my classmates and ask her to tell me where those sections ended. For a while, she obliged; but then, as a joke, she handed me back the book with a passage marked for me to begin reading that was not the end of the scene. We were sitting on the bleachers in gym class. It was stuffy, and it smelled like sweaty boys and socks. I only read three, small words before I stopped, but they were enough to make me feel like I needed to throw up. Hot, wet, and sticky. The combination sounded awful. Repulsive. Despite the suspense and mystery of the plot, I threw the book, along with my brown paper bag lunch, in the trash can on the way out of the gymnasium. It was in my twenties before I could look at powdered donuts and not think of rat poison; I still can't eat them. The V.C. Andrews novels were my first attempt at reading books from the adult section of the bookstore. I had hoped that they might be a way to be just a little bit like the other girls. Instead, they made it even more difficult to sleep and breathe.

My birthday is in October. A few months into my ninth grade year, I turned fourteen and asked for a dollhouse. Around this time, I stopped eating. I was a small, skinny child to begin with. My weight dropped into the eighties and my parents were worried.

I was not anorexic in the traditional sense. I did not care about weight; I never watched the scale or exercised. I did not reject food that I wanted to eat. I was not self-disciplined. I simply was not hungry. The thought of eating made me feel sick to my stomach. If I had been hungry, I would have eaten, but I was not hungry; I was scared to eat.

My parents took me to the doctor and he ran a battery of tests. When the results came back indicating that I was normal, I was referred to a therapist. I spent a year in therapy. When my therapist listened to me, what he heard was terror. I was afraid of growing up. There were too many things that seemed to get lost along the way.

My therapist taught me how to breathe. Literally. He gave me an exercise where I sat in a chair with my eyes closed, and took deep breaths, and repeated a word that made me feel calm. I had to do this for thirty minutes each day. It was a way of training my body not to panic. When I was in class, or on the bus, I could close my eyes, and repeat my word, and my lungs would remember to breathe; my heart would be conditioned to beat more slowly.

I did not want to leave the nursery, and days of make-believe, and picture books, and night lights. I did not want to stop swinging from ropes, imagining I was flying. I never wanted to shut my window to the possibility of wonder. Eventually, I grew up. But I put up a good fight, and I held on to some things. I still wave at my shadow on the sidewalk.

This is why I cried when I saw my wings in the booth at the art festival. They remind me of what I never wanted to lose. This is why I insist on sitting on a swing under a tree when they get worn, and why they have to be worn at night. They help me remember the things I fought so hard to keep.

Second star to the right. And straight on till morning.

My writing time has taken a hit over the past few days because it is orientation week at Emory. When we got married, Chip and I dreamed of running a campus ministry in the form of a coffee house. It took years of waiting for doors to open, but the vision is now a reality. Bread Coffee House is completely free and serves coffee, cinnamon rolls (daily), lunch, and dinner (once a week on both meals). It is open as a place for students to relax, study, have conversations, and ask questions. "After hours" there are small group Bible studies and a Sunday morning church service and brunch.

This week, the coffee house is open every day, and there is will be a cookout featuring two bands and a friend of Chip's who eats fire (a trick he learned while traveling with the circus). In the meantime, I am on full-time parenting duty, but I will try to post something every other day or so, as I don't want to get out of the habit of daily writing.

A Beautiful Coffee House/Church



Why we are here:


Every student that visits decorates a CD:


This summer, Chic Fil A donated old tables to the coffee house and artistic students made collages and covered them with sealant:

I grew up sitting in circles, listening to the passionate conversations of college students. Before I could talk, I heard them discussing God. Sitting on steps, or porch swings, or in the grass; with bare feet and guitars and styrofoam cups of coffee or Kool-aid; they discussed philosophy, justice, peace, politics, hope, Grace, and Jesus. While they talked, they held me on their hips. I fell asleep with my head on their knees, and their words were the bridge that connected me to dreams.

As soon as I began to speak, I was included in their circle. They believed in the wisdom of children; they listened to what I had to say. They engaged with me and asked me questions. They were not like most adults, eager to escape the conversation of children. They settled in and took me seriously. I loved it. I could sit and talk for hours. For the first four years of my life, I did not know any children. I never learned to play. Talking was my form of recreation.

When the era of the flower children passed, I found myself surrounded by classmates who were too busy playing to talk, and adults who were too important to listen. I began to crave conversation. The children I met in elementary school did not speak my language. They wanted to talk about David Cassidy, and Grease. They found importance in the color of Donny Osmond's socks and John Travolta's dancing. They were interested in roller skates and the Bee Gees. I felt lost in their words, and I became a quiet child who sat up against trees on the playground and read books under the table in class.

I made my first real friend in middle school. Her name was Betsy, and she read philosophy books and had a mother that believed in the healing powers of crystals. Betsy and I were talkers and writers. I was so happy to finally have someone who wanted to talk about more than boys, bands, and television. When she moved to Starkville right before we entered ninth grade, I stopped eating and was placed in therapy. Therapy was good for me. I loved it. It was a whole hour of talking. It was my favorite part of the week.

As a teenager, I did not get crushes on pretty boys or athletes. I was attracted to boys with depth. I wanted to talk with them, to find someone who would be able to discuss things with compassion and intelligence. I fell in love with Holden Caufield because he wanted to talk with the prostitute rather than have sex with her. I was in love with Morrissey because he wrote about a three day debate and the questions at the back of your mind. Will the world end in the daytime? I wanted to meet someone like that; someone that had things to say - someone that would talk with me about the questions I hide at the back of my mind.

As I got older, it became slightly easier to find people who wanted to talk; but friends I can really sit and discuss things in depth with are rare. I do not do well in groups or social situations. I am awful at mingling. I do not like small talk. Meaningful, one-on-one conversation is the key to my heart. I crave it. There is nothing I would rather do thank sit, and talk, and listen.

I love coffee and wine. I like cigarettes, but I only smoke if I am with someone I enjoy talking to. I like these things, because they go well with conversations. When I am with you, I want to find myself not wanting to leave. I want to linger with you on my porch, or at a restaurant table. I want to find myself looking for ways to prolong the conversation. I want to refill your wine glass, say yes to the waiter warming up my coffee, light another cigarette. I want to hear your stories. I want to talk about everything. I want you to challenge me to think. I want to find you this way, and know you, and be grateful that you exist.

Before I knew how to talk, I listened. This is how I learned to speak: by bearing witness to the way that people connected as they sat and talked for hours, grappled with the big questions, and tried to make sense of their own stories.

This was the church as I knew it. I long to return to relationships like these. When I find them, they are precious to me. I am grateful for my brilliant, lovely friends who sit and talk with refilled wine glasses and third and fourth cups of coffee. Being with you is a gift. You remind me of what is real and of value.

I am thankful that you exist and that I have found you. Always.

lily - why do you wear your hair flat like that?
me - i don't like it in my face.
lily - i think it makes you look like a sort of bald man.
me - well, i think i look nice.
lily - that's just because you are not looking in a mirror.

On the first day of school, he put a huge heart shaped note in my lunch. I came home and he asked if I got the note. I said I had, and smiled - but I was a little hesitant. “Was it too big?”, he asked.

I told him that I loved the note, but it was just that I ate in the English office with all of the other teachers and it was, well, large. “Maybe you could be a little bit discreet”, I suggested. But I love the notes. I need the notes after my third block class.

The next day, he sent Jammin’ in Jamaica Barbie with “I love you and I am proud of you.” written up and down her legs - and a tree tattoo on her back. She was hidden under my sandwich, tucked into my napkin as if it were a sleeping bag. Since then, I have found notes written on (among other things) a cork, a scrap of cloth, and a square of foil.

I don’t write about my husband very much. It is because I don’t feel like I can do him justice. I don’t have the words to explain moments like these:

As a rule, I did not enjoy science class. I hated everything about science, with one exception; I loved the hypothesis. When we learned the steps to the scientific method, I watched classmates struggle over hypothesis creation. Not me. I attached to the hypothesis like a long lost friend. All it took to captivate me was the teacher’s simple explanation that a hypothesis is an “if/then” statement. I was hooked. I was enchanted. If you do x, then y will result.

If .
Then.
Perfect.

I was in love with the promise of the hypothesis. In many ways, I think I have spent my life chasing the idea of if/then. I am always looking for the right formula. If I can just find x, or achieve y, or become z, then everything will be perfect. The problem will be solved. Things will make sense.

I rolled the words if and then around in my mind like a string of rosary beads. I treated them like a prayer, and was confused by the lack of peace they brought.

Despite my aversion to scientific methods, I gravitated towards the hypothesis. Each disappointment strengthened my devotion to if and then. I was not wrong, I only needed to change the variables. If the formula was right, then it would work.

It is no wonder that I was always good at writing hypothesizes. They are not really science after all. They are fiction.

I am learning to stop trying to force the answers, to unlearn the hypothesis. I want to live the questions and accept the mystery. I want to let go of my desire to cling to the illusion that I can solve things.

Surrender does not come easily to me. I am an if/then girl.

I want the fiction that I can control, not the truth that I need to trust.

At some point in elementary school, we learned about being colorblind. I don’t remember the context of the lesson, but it involved some sort of sour tasting chemical that only a small percentage of the population can taste, and a test like this to see if anyone was colorblind. What I do remember, is that I wanted to be colorblind.

I am not sure what it was about colorblindness that appealed to me. Partially, I think I liked the thought that the colors I saw were not the same as the colors other people saw. I found it fascinating that “blue” could be different for me than it was for the rest of the class. I was drawn to the idea of seeing things from another perspective, of experiencing something as elemental as color differently. But I was not colorblind; my perception was not altered.

I did not grow up in an openly racist home. Still, I grew up separated from people who were not like me. I lived in a white neighborhood; most of my classes consisted of all white kids. The classes that were racially mixed segregated themselves. In every situation, we segregated ourselves.

In kindergarten, I had a classmate who wore her hair in tiny braids; each one fastened to her head with its own barrette. I was in awe of her hair. All those braids, all those pink bunnies, and red poodles, and yellow ducks on her barrettes. I wanted hair like that. I came home and told my mother about it. I asked her if she could put a bunch of barrettes in my hair. She laughed at the request. My hair could not do that - end of discussion.

Race was not discussed in my house. We drove through the minority section of town and my parents told us to lock the car doors. They never said why we should lock them. We just knew - we were different than them, and this difference somehow equated to need to lock doors. I grew up with a sense of separation, difference, and a sense that people were not welcome to cross the invisible lines that marked off sections of the cafeteria and bleachers. We had our places, they had theirs - whatever that meant.

I am aware that race is a difficult and complicated issue. Still, I hope that it does not have to be that way. About six months ago, we left our mostly white suburb and moved into a largely minority section of the city of Atlanta. After much prayer and discussion, my husband and I decided to enroll our children in the local school system - a system that is almost completely segregated. We decided to send our kids to Victory Charter School. We have been nervous about this decision. My children are the only white children in their classes; I think they are the only white children in the entire school. I did not want this to be a problem, but I was aware that it might be.

We decided not to try to talk to the kids about race before school started. I hoped they could just go in and not even have it occur to them that there was a difference.

We chose the charter school because it is run by Christians. Almost all of the teachers are also in ministry. My husband and I talked about it before school started. “There is no Jew or Greek”, we would say. “We are all one in Christ”. But we grew up with this verse as a hollow text. There was Jew or Greek; we were not all one. We wondered if things could be different. We wondered if we were being bad parents to put our children in a situation where they might be ostracized. My parents sat us down and had a long talk. They said that my kids would be attacked and made fun of. They said that Chip and I were being idealistic, and sacrificing our children in the process. “If it is bad, we will take them out”, I said. “We just want to try”.

At the open house, we entered the gymnasium and sat with all the other parents and children. We were nervous. We had waited to buy uniforms for the kids. An administrator got up to welcome us. This is what she said:

“We know that in all things. there is a time. A time to sow, and a time to harvest. This is our time to harvest. You are not here by accident. You are each here by divine appointment. We must press on, we must keep our eyes on the prize and lifted heavenward. Know this. In all things we are more than conquerers, for we have been called by Him who Loves us.”

Chip and I sat there, with crazy smiles on our faces. Yeah. we were doing something everyone said was stupid and reckless: putting our kids in a public school - putting our kids in an urban public school. But we were just going to do it anyway, and see what happened. In the car on the way home, I turned to him. “We are there by divine appointment and are more than conquerers”. He nodded, and we bought uniforms.

My kids have been in school for two weeks, and they love it. They have not said a word about being different. They already have best friends. My son says the new school is “ten thousand times better” than his previous school. My daughter sings African songs in the car.

At dinner, my son commented that the kids in his class think his hair is neat. “Mine too”, my daughter said. “My friends say my hair is soft”. I pictured my kids at school, making new friends and touching each other's heads with love and acceptance. I had to bite my cheek to keep from crying. “That is so beautiful”, I said.

I am grateful for this type of kindness. I am grateful for the teachers and students that have opened their arms and hearts to my children. I am grateful that my kids don’t notice that they are different. I am grateful that their classmates have given them a blessing - instead of making fun of the fact that they look different, they reach out and touch each other with gentle, open hands.

My children have a chance to become colorblind. This gives me hope.

Press On. There is a time.

The things that divide can fall apart. We can learn new ways to see.

and the world my students live in:

(this is a praise song)

I have my grandmother Katy's eyes: moss green eyes that change with the time of day, shifting to match my dress or mood. My eyes are not a light, easy shade of green; they are the color of fallen leaves, or branches reflected on the surface of a lake. Katy called them cat eyes, and she was proud of them. They were her best feature. I am the only grandchild who inherited these eyes.

Katy was one of six girls. She was named after her mother, a good Catholic who never recovered after giving birth to her youngest daughter. Her husband was an alcoholic. It was the depression; they were poor. My great-grandmother gave birth to six girls in a little over six years. My father once asked how his grandmother died and his uncle replied: "You know Tommy, I believe Mary Katherine just wore out".

The women on my father's side of the family just wear out. I am the only female among them that graduated from high school. I come from a family familiar with food stamps, warm beer, and the cheapest brand of cigarettes. I have lost second and third cousins to DFACS. This is my legacy and inheritance: an instinct to survive, no matter what it takes.

When she wore out and died, my great-grandmother left behind six young girls to fend for themselves in a small rural town in Kentucky. Their father had no job, no money, no house. Their father was like a stereotype from a movie: the town drunk - except it was real, and the only adult that could have taken care of them was useless. No director yelled "cut" at the end of the day, a touching Allison Krauss song did not play softly in the background. The girls grew up sleeping in abandoned cars and open cornfields. Two died in childhood.

For a few years, my grandmother attended school sporadically. She started smoking as a child. She made dolls out of corn husks. She wandered. She married at sixteen. She was determined to survive.

On the first day of third grade, the teacher asked Katy to write the word "cat" on the chalkboard. My grandmother walked up to the board and held the chalk in her hand. She had no mother, no functioning father. She rarely ate breakfast, and she had been sleeping in parked cars. Somehow, she got herself to school. But she could not write the word "cat".

"Mary Katherine", her teacher said. "I can't believe you are in the third grade and you can’t write 'cat'".

My grandmother's eyes grew as dark and as hard as stones. She put the chalk down and stared down the teacher: "I'm not in the third grade anymore." Just like that. She walked out of the classroom and never looked back - a third-grade drop out.

Shortly after this episode, Katy decided to leave town. She talked a driver into letting her ride the bus to the house of an uncle she had heard about. Her uncle had just gotten married, and he lived on a farm. The bus driver agreed, and Katy rode into the darkness until the driver stopped at the end of a dirt road. It was the middle of the night. He told her that her uncle lived about eight miles down the dirt road, but that she needed to walk, because it was no longer on his route. And so, in the early hours of the morning, my grandmother arrived on the doorstep of her Uncle Lester’s house, uninvited and unannounced. She was eight years old. Lester opened the door and Katy told him that she needed a place to stay. His young wife nodded, and they let my grandmother come inside.

My mother always told me that I inherited more than Katy's eyes. She never really meant this as a compliment.

I took it as one anyway.

In making my lesson plans for next week, I need to appeal to the wisdom of my readers about two subjects.

First - Lord of the Rings
My confession: I have never read them or seen the movies (I only saw the first one and did not like it). I am teaching my kids about archetypes and the hero journey . I am requiring my students to make a hero journey map of a character in popular film. They can choose to map Neo (The Matrix), Simba (The Lion King), or Frodo (LOTR). I was going to let them use Luke Skywalker, but none of my students have seen Star Wars. Scary.

Would anyone care to fill me in on the events that correspond to the steps of Frodo's hero journey?

Second - I am teaching the theme of civil disobedience to my tenth graders next week in a unit where we compare how a message translates across genres. We are reading Antigone for our play (required), and Thoreau for non-fiction. I have covered short-stories, but I need a poem (poems) or, alternately, song lyrics with the theme of civil disobedience. I am drawing a blank. It has to be clean enough to distribute in a public school.

Feel free to email if you don't want to post in the comments.

Many thanks,
amy

roar and i have instituted a weekly saturday breakfast date. today, after we ate, she took me to paris on ponce . i found a key.

once, it opened a post office box in grand central station.



isn't it pretty?

the hurricane story

Every August, the Tallahassee Democrat ran a front page article urging residents to brace themselves for hurricanes. In school, we were shown ominous movies that documented the destructive force of tropical storms. The movies usually followed one family who, foolishly, decided to ignore evacuation orders and weather the storm. Afterwards, our teacher would stand and repeat the warning: Never sit out a hurricane; the storm is stronger than you are. Evacuate. Always evacuate.

On Labor Day, 1985, Hurricane Elena hit ground at St. George Island. Tallahassee was directly in the path of the storm, and the hurricane, and tornados she spawned, downed trees and destroyed houses all across my hometown. School was delayed an entire week. Roads were closed, and we lost power and water for days.

Ironically, I have good memories of this week - of being stranded with no electricity or way to leave the neighborhood. To me, the hurricane was an adventure. I spent the week with my best friend, Gwen, and we climbed over the trunks of fallen trees, and invented games and stories to amuse ourselves.

I met Gwen the first week of high school , and for two years, she was my best friend. We talked on the phone for hours every day. Gwen was a brilliant, beautiful writer. Our friendship passed from palm to palm in the form of folded notes. Each class period that we were apart, we would write three or four pages of notes, filling each other up with words.

Gwen and I met in the ninth grade, and we bought scented Swatch watches and listened to Wham and A-ha and Corey Hart - but only for a very short time. Pretty soon, we found The Cure, Bau Haus, The Smiths, and The Dead Kennedys. Gwen dyed her red hair black and got a mowhawk; she started reading Sylvia Plath and Anne Rice. She cut herself with a straight razor. She smoked pot, which lead to acid, which lead to Ecstasy. When I spent the night, she would make me promise that if she died, I would make sure her diaries got published. I promised. She was serious. So was I.

Gwen’s parents met in college in the late sixties; they had both joined a cult, and their marriage was arranged by one of the elders of the church. Despite the fact that they did not know each other very well, they obeyed the command to marry. The cult believed that marriage and procreation were religious duties, and within a few months, Gwen’s mother was pregnant. Five months later, Gwen’s father had a religious breakdown. He admitted to his wife that he was a homosexual. He left the marriage, and he left the church. This is how my friend Gwen came into the world: born to a young, single mother; conceived in obligation, not love. She was a reminder of betrayal - regret in the form of a child.

My friend’s mom never really recovered. When I met Gwen, her mom was still searching for what had been lost. They moved all the time, and had their electricity turned off before almost every payday. Her mom was in and out of bad relationships. Most nights, she did not come home. In some ways, it was thrill to spend the night at Gwen’s - because there was never any adult to tell us what we could or could not do; but there also was never any food, and it was dark, and so many things stayed packed in boxes.

Labor day weekend 1985, Gwen’s mother had a new boyfriend and went out of town - so Gwen spent the weekend with me. We did not really believe that the hurricane would reach us, but it did. My parents woke us in the middle of the night and ordered us into the hallway. It was terrifying, like being caught under the wheels of a giant locomotive. The house shook from the force of the wind and the rain, and we the hallway was hot and dark. My father held a flashlight and a battery-powered radio that was tuned to the National Weather Station. We listened to reports of tornados, and we prayed that our house would be spared.

Eventually, the winds quieted, and then stopped completely. “This is the eye of the storm”, my father told us. We all walked outside in our bare feet and pajamas. The sky was the color of coal, and the air was unnaturally still. There were no cicadas or frogs. No birds. No stars. In the neighbor's yard, we saw the heavy shadow of a fallen tree trunk. We did not speak. I remember thinking that all around me, there was this horrible storm - and that the calm was not peaceful or comforting. I wondered if we should have evacuated.

The next morning, we heard the extent of the damage. School was closed. Gwen and I went outside, where it was light, and carefully rationed songs on my portable tape player. Once the batteries went dead, we would be cut off from our music. In between songs, we invented a game. We would think of a musician we admired - like Morrissey, or Robert Smith - and we would try to name what kind of food they would be. What sort of candy bar, or soft drink, captured their essence? The game stretched on for days, even after our batteries had gone dead and we were without music. We made lists. What kind of meat? What kind of chip? What kind of bread?

Gwen’s mother was gone for four days. She never called to check on her daughter.

Eventually, electricity was restored and Gwen’s mom came to pick her up. The next weekend, I went to her house, and Gwen and I, still giddy from our hurricane game, wrote all of our strange food choices on the little grocery list that her mother hung on the wall - but never actually used. A week later, I called Gwen and she told me that I had to come over. Her mother had purchased every item on our mock grocery list. That weekend, I stayed at Gwen’s house and we feasted on Zero bars, shrimp, IBC root beer, pumpernickel bread, and creamy deluxe frosting - our favorite musicians made edible.

I never minded that my friend was a mess. I understood Gwen; I loved her. Teachers and counselors would pull me aside and ask about the scars on her arms and legs. I always defended her. Eventually, they sent her to an alternative school. I tied to get sent there too - but the guidance counselors turned me down.

In the end, it was my fault that our friendship ended. I had my own scars and invisible ways of cutting myself. I was the one that failed. I always doubt myself; I find it easy to convince myself that people want me to go away. I tend to assume that people who know me would like to trade me in for something better. It was in this mindset that it occurred to me that Gwen never called me on the phone. I always did the calling. We talked every single day, but when I thought about it, I could not recall a single time when she had called me first. I began to worry.

What if she did not really want to be my friend? A true friend would make an effort to call me first - at least sometimes. I decided to test her. That afternoon, I did not call. I waited for the phone to ring, but it never did. Days went by. She never called. At first I was sad, and I wanted to call her; I held the phone in my hands and longed to hear her voice. Then, I got angry, and forced myself to stop feeling. Heart to stone. Just like that.

Our friendship ended without a word - a phone that simply stopped ringing. No argument, no explanation. It was an evacuation route that I decided to take. I told myself I was smart and safe this way.

A year later, I saw Gwen at a party and we talked. She told me about overdosing, and crawling in the back seat of a car to wait to die. She told me about losing her virginity. It had been with a boy she had been secretly in love with for years. He had broken up with his girlfriend, and taken her out. They went to the land co-op and got drunk and stoned together. Then, in a field of tall grass, under a full moon and cloudless canopy of stars, she had sex for the first time. She said it was wonderful. Perfect. It was not awkward or weird; it was like something out of a movie. She fell asleep happy, feeling safe, beautiful, and loved.

A few hours later, she woke up thirsty and disoriented. She heard a sound like rustling and sat up in the damp grass. About a hundred feet away, in the moonlight, she saw the boy she had fallen asleep with on the platform of the community pavilion. He was having sex with his ex-girlfriend. Gwen said that she wanted to scream, or cry. She wanted to make a scene - but she realized he was her only ride home - so she laid back down, and pretended to sleep until morning. She told me this story and a part of me broke. I wanted to put my arms around her and cry. I wanted to tell her that I would find the asshole and kick his face in for her. She should not have been alone when something so horrible happened. I wanted to tell her that I never should have stopped calling her.

Instead, I did nothing. I said something stupid - like, “Gosh, that is terrible”. I could not even look in her eyes. We never spoke again.

To this day, I regret that I let her go - that I ran away. I wish I had been braver, stronger, and more able to give. If I could go back to the middle of that Labor Day night, I would stand outside in the eerie calm of the storm and tell Gwen that I promised. I would tell her that, no matter what, I would ignore the public safety messages and my addictive urge to evacuate, and take her hand, and sit out the storms. Always.

But I can’t go back, or undo, or make it better. I can only hope that she found the kind of Grace that I was too small to give.

A poem I started writing about a month ago, but abandoned, because I write horrible poetry.

First.

I want to buy a pair of kick-ass cowboy boots,
secondhand,
at the Salvation Army.

Gravel-scuffed,
and authentic.

Red clay boots:
wall-kicking,
dirt road walking,
tire chasing,
long road boots.

Broken in by someone else,
they’d be just the thing.

Posting the partial poem now, because of what I saw today.

Perfect
(wish i had a ladder)

to everyone that reads my blog, and to those that leave comments or write.

by request, more wing pictures.
my favorite ones:
me

roar

When I went to get my tattoo, I handed the tree design I wanted to the artist. He looked at it for a minute, and then he told me that he thought my tree needed roots. I was hesitant about changing the tree, so he went to draw up a new design for my approval. While I was waiting, I thought about my tree symbol and I realized that he was right - I needed to give my tree roots.

I envy people with lifelong friendships. I wish I could say, “We have been friends since the second grade”. Friendship is difficult for me. I have a hard time trusting.

I tend to love transient people and addicts; I make friends that leave. I am attracted to this leaving-nature. Departures are familiar to me, like old, bitter friends. Whenever I go somewhere, I mentally note where the exit is. The red letter sign makes me feel safe somehow. I am well versed in finding the way out.

I have rituals: I set things on fire. I hit delete. I crush things in the palm of my hand. I break.

Not long ago, I showed my friend a movie that I made when I was in college. In the film, I burn a photograph and it bubbles and melts before being consumed by the flame. My friend commented that the way the picture burned was beautiful. “Haven’t you ever burned pictures?”, I asked.

I have.

I am a burner of memories, a smasher, an eraser. I kick tires. I shake the dust from my sandals. I read The Secret Garden and I am Mary, who finds things - but I am also her hunchback uncle: a garden locker, a key thrower.

Once, I loved someone. I sent him cards and pictures that he hung on his wall, like art. Later, I found out that he never really meant anything that he said to me.

I went over to his house while he was away and I took down all the cards and pictures I had sent. I sat in the middle of his hardwood bedroom floor with a glass of water and a lighter and I piled all the words I had written in fragile tower. I set them on fire. I watched the letters get eaten by the flames, and then I poured water on the burning paper, flooding ash and burnt scraps across the floor. Before I left, I put all of his clothes into black garbage bags and dropped them off at the Mission Thrift Store.

I wanted to take everything back; this was my way of trying to take my heart back.

My leaving nature is the part of me that I fight. It is why I love keys and doors. I want to be a finder, but I also want to be found. I want a door to be opened for me. I want to be invited in. I want to be asked to stay.

When I pass trees, I reach out and press my hand against them. I want to learn what it is like to have branches and roots, to lift open arms out and up with Hope - but also to dig down, into the earth, with Faith. When my branches are laid empty and bare, I want stay rooted and trust the way that trees do.

I am tired of setting things on fire.

This is my prayer: that I will take of my shoes, name the cracked and thirsty ground Holy, and stay.

And so it begins.

I was going over rules and classroom procedures during third period. “I know you have heard this stuff all day”, I said. “So I will just hit the main points - the rules I care about (cell phones and headphones in class) and the ones I don’t care about (eating/drinking in class).” One of my students raised her hand. “We have gone over rules all day”, she said, “but you are the first teacher who seems happy to be here”.

I told her that I seemed that way because I was happy to be there. I meant it. I told them that I always wanted to be a teacher, ever since childhood. I told them that all the years that I stayed home, I missed teaching. August always made me melancholy. I wanted to be in the classroom.

I have a bunch of students - five classes of close to thirty kids. This is a bit overwhelming - lots of names to learn, lots of papers to grade.

I am teaching the principal’s youngest son. Take a moment and let that sink in. Then, pray for me. Please.

Last year, I had a student that gave me all sorts of problems. A few people know the details of what I went through with her - she was openly defiant and told me that she hated me on a daily basis. By the end of the year, she had come around and opened up. Today, she sought me out during the change of classes; she came into my classroom and gave me a hug.

After school, another former student came in to visit me. Last year, she was one of my best ninth grade students. Now, she is four months pregnant. I asked if she would come back second semester and she said yes. No matter what, she was going to finish high school. I told her that she was smart, and that I knew she could do it. Maybe she will be in my tenth grade class next semester. I told her that if she is, after the baby is born, I will help her catch up.

One day in and I already see that this year is going to be a gift that is not always easy to unwrap.

But I always wanted to be a teacher. And deep down, I know that these are the kids I always wanted to teach.

Thank you to everyone who has prayed for me, and encouraged me, and helped me be brave. I am grateful.

first day of school - two tired girls in the afternoon

chocolate, strongbow cider, cloves, wings, and sparklers
amen.


(me)



pictures by roar

I am prodigiously good at literary criticism. I always have been. If everyone is given one great talent - this is mine: I am brilliant when it comes to interpreting texts.

I love it because I get to make the words mean whatever I want them to mean.

I prefer my writers dead or reclusive. That way, I can believe that they are just as beautiful as I want them to be. I can read as much depth, and subtext, and love into their words as I imagine might exist (if things were not so broken).

I name this fiction "Truth", and I stick it in my pocket like a map or a key.

With a dead or reclusive author, it is safer to believe. They will never say, "It was just a story. It did not mean anything."

I place my faith in the truth I name between the lines. I hold the letters against my heart. I find hope and love in words, and I want to eat them - literally. Sometimes, I hold the spine of a book in my mouth and feel the slight sink of my teeth into the binding. I breathe more deeply in used bookstores. I fall asleep with open pages on my pillow.

They mean the world to me.

True Love. Joy. The delight of my heart.

Always.

hits searching for the gargoyle picture in he past 48 hours:
germany, brazil, denmark, switzerland - and three from america.

to my aunt blanche
who rolled from grass to driveway
into the street one sunday morning.
i was ten.      i had never seen
a human woman hurl her basketball
of a body into the traffic of the world.
Praise to the drivers who stopped in time.
Praise to the faith with which she rose
after some moments then slowly walked
sighing back to her family.
Praise to the arms which understood
little or nothing of what it meant
but welcomed her in without judgment,
accepting it all like children might,
like God.

-Lucille Clifton

The first boy I ever really kissed was tall and thin, with long, dark brown bangs that hung over his eyes. He played the electric guitar. I met him at Lake Aurora Christian Camp, and before the end of the first night’s devotional bonfire, he was holding my hand. We would meet in the picnic table shelter during recreation time. It usually rained. I would sit on the edge of the picnic table, and he would stand in front of me and hold my face between his hands.

This is how I learned how to kiss: trapped in the rhythm of afternoon rain, surrounded by the spanish moss laden branches of live oaks, in between Bible lessons and vespers, sitting on the edge of a picnic table, lost in the cinnamon gum taste of his mouth.

A few months later, we met each other at Disneyworld. I was on a youth group trip to a Christian music festival called Night of Joy. We had not planned to meet, but I ran into him on the ferryboat into the park. It ended up being the best night of my fifteen-year old life. We rode the sky buckets from Fantasyland to Tomorrowland, and we kissed on every single ride. He wrote his name and address on my palm before I left. That night, I did not brush my teeth; I fell asleep with an ink-marked hand pressed against my cheek.

The next summer, I took my best friend to church camp with me. It was 1986. My best friend had long, blond hair, and went by the nickname Buffy. I knew her from a children’s theater school that we both attended in the afternoon. We spent every weekend together, sleeping over, and watching marathons of rented movies (that always included Lady Jane and The Mosquito Coast). Because Buffy was from a wealthy neighborhood, we were forced to attend rival high schools - but other than her lack of physical proximity, she was everything I had ever wanted in a friend.

We wrote thick, folded notes and passed them to each other when we met. I saved her notes and read them later, when I was all alone in class. We borrowed clothes and made mix tapes. We burned song lyrics into our jackets and skirts with bleach-dipped Q tips on the deck outside her kitchen. We held hands and walked around with our arms swinging. We spoke with the coded symbolism of deep friendship. She was prettier than I was, but she would look me in the eyes and say: ”Gilbert Blythe says that you are the smartest girl in school - and being smart is better than being pretty”. She wrote this to me in notes: Being smart is better than being pretty . I loved Buffy. I loved her with all my heart.

That summer at church camp, in the space of less than 36 hours, Buffy accepted Christ, got baptized in the lake, and stole my boyfriend. The baptism came first, and I stood knee-deep in the water and cried while I watched. Afterwards, we embraced and her lake-wet hair soaked my t-shirt. In that moment, I thought that we would be friends forever.

That night, after vespers, I could not find Buffy or my boyfriend. I went down to the lake, to the bench where he had taken me on the first night that we kissed - and I found them both there. They were not expecting me.

I missed my boyfriend, but only a little bit. I really missed Buffy. Seventeen years later, I still miss her. She was not the last person to hurt me like this. Still, with Buffy, I wish it had been different. Most of all, I wish that I had never fallen out of trust.

I forgave Buffy, but it was never the same between us. I tried to find a way to reconcile my joy over her baptism with my bitterness over her betrayal - but I have never fully resolved a way to wrap my heart around both. I don't like thinking about baptism and betrayal together. It gets sad and messy. I wonder what made Buffy decide that a few days of kissing a boy she just met was more important than our friendship. I wonder how she could have sold me out over something so meaningless. It makes me uncomfortable to think about it, because I see myself in Buffy - and I don't want this part of me to be true. I wonder how many times I have betrayed my own baptism in similar ways; how many times have I sold out Jesus. I know the answer: over, and over, and over again.

I wish I could have baptism without betrayal. I wish that, really, this was not the whole point.

At the beginning of this week, I sat through two all-day Learning Focus workshops. The point of these workshops was to teach us to make lesson plans that incorporated learning strategies proven to increase student success. We had an acronym (and acronyms and mnemonic devices are good strategies - just in case you were wondering) to guide our teaching - EATS: Engage, Activate, Teach, Summarize.

Today is the culmination of two weeks of preplanning. I have been subjected to countless meetings and inspirational talks. Most of these talks have been bullshit. There is so much talk with so little truth. Yesterday, I went to an inspirational talk for English teachers, given by an author that I have actually read and enjoy. I was looking forward to her talk. I have read all of her books, and I assumed that she would present an interesting and thoughtful program. I was wrong.

She started off by explaining that she had never really been to the south before. Then, she read excerpts from Huckleberry Finn (with an accent), and proceeded to deliver a two-hour speech that related good teaching to creating “Huckleberry Moments” in the classroom. Presumably, us Southerners can really relate to good ole Huckleberry. Her speech was manipulative in every way; she went so far as to read a poem about her own struggle with cancer, look around the room, point out the people crying, and triumphantly declare that this was a Huckleberry moment. By the end of her talk, she was quoting Gone With the Wind. Her final admonition to us was that we should, “Make our classroom a laboratory of love.” I started thinking about love, about teaching, and about honesty.

Last February, I started practice teaching. I also started blogging. The experiences of teaching and blogging combined and became like keys. I think, for me, blogging was/is a way for me to begin being honest. First, to begin being honest with myself - and then, to begin being honest with others. Honesty does not come naturally to me, but I crave it. Honesty is essential if I want to be a successful teacher. Honesty is the first step to love.

With school starting Monday, I feel unprepared and anxious. In many ways, instead of making me more confident - the last two weeks have made me tired and discouraged. What I have been missing is honesty. I am sick of being told what people think I want to hear, or (even worse), what they think will be helpful. I don’t want to be told to create “Huckleberry moments”, and I don’t want to make little flip charts with scissors and markers. I want simple things: I want to know the names of my students before they walk in the door. I want to write their names on a list. I want to carry the list in my pocket all weekend.

As the week ends, and Monday looms before me, I have created my own little Ticket Out The Door - an idea I got from the nice folks at Learning Strategies. Here is my summarizing strategy to wrap up the past two weeks:

My 3-2-1 Summary Card

3 - Things I Want To Avoid
manipulation
numbness
self promotion

2 - Things I Crave
intelligence
compassion

1 - Wish
That I could get back all the time I lost and that I refuse to lose any more.

Starting Monday, I am going to be in control of my own classroom. Today, I am going to make a collage and frame this summary card along with a few photographs and words that friends have given me. I will keep the collage on my desk next to a rooster.

Fight, Love, Be Honest, Wake Up.

I am going to need the reminding.

ralph meets harry

I spent my entire summer in literary/language theory classes with professors who convinced me that I should never teach "The Canon". Today. I got my required reading list for tenth grade English:

Lord of the Flies
The Girl in Hyacinth Blue
Julius Caesar
Antigone
Pygmalion
The Catcher in the Rye


Go ahead. Laugh.

Julius Caesar and Pygmalion.

nobody else could combine chocolate, john the baptist, and grammar with quite the same effect.

i am glad to know you.

friend.

One of the most beloved dinner-table stories in my family is about my brother and his discovery of “Bible Behavior”. My father was a campus minister - which meant that he had to raise support money for the ministry during college breaks. While the school year was in session, we had church in the living room of the Campus House - but during the summer, my brother and I were dragged across Florida, visiting churches and attending a myriad of VBS programs that featured my father as the guest speaker. We grew up as theological guest stars: the visiting missionary children. We carried our Bibles, and were asked to read verses. Sometimes, I sang a solo as the "special music" part of the worship service. Dropped off in unfamiliar Sunday School classrooms, we felt pressured to live up to an undefined but very palpable expectation.

One downfall of our itinerant Christian education was that we were never in the same place long enough learn Bible stories in a consistent or ordered manner. We may be on Noah one week, and Paul the next. It all got smushed together in a haphazard Biblical mosaic, with many stories repeated, and others left out all together, as we traveled from church to church. One week, Jonathan and I found ourselves in an unfamiliar classroom, hearing the story of Stephen for the first time. When the teacher came to the part about Stephen’s stoning, she asked the class if anyone knew what Stephen had said. The entire class was silent, because nobody had head the story before. Then, my little brother raised his hand. “He said, ‘Forgive Them’”, Jonathan answered. The teacher nodded; once again, our spiritual superiority had been confirmed. I looked on in shocked astonishment. I knew that my brother was supposed to be perfect, but I had no idea that he was an actual Biblical prodigy. Afterwards, I told my parents that Jonathan had known what Stephen had said, even though we had never learned that story before. She asked him how he knew the right answer. My brother replied: “It was easy, I just thought about Bible Behavior.” I thought about this answer; it made sense. Bible Behavior - when in doubt, just think about Bible Behavior.

For a smart child, Bible Behavior is obvious. It involves things like forgiving, and sharing. My brother and I became Bible Behavior experts. It was like a science. We could talk the right talk, we knew the right answers: Love, Pray, Forgive.

Lately, I have had a few people ask me why I rarely talk about my husband on my blog. My reasons are complicated, but a big part of my decision is that my husband is a minister. This carries with it a set of expectations and assumptions, the same set of expectations and assumptions I grew up with as a child. I am expected to know Bible Behavior. I am expected to exhibit Bible Behavior.

To be honest, I am sick to death of Bible Behavior. Most days, I hate it. It is easy to say the right things; it is easy to write them down in an essay - but it is so hard to get them into your heart.

My brother gave up on Bible Behavior; he got hurt one time too many. The last time he visited my parents, he literally spent most of his time asleep on the living room couch. He only woke up to eat. He refuses to connect with anyone. He does not even try. Recently, in a nod to American Beauty, I described him as being “anesthetized”. He is. What scares me, is that as angry as I get about his withdrawal, and as selfish as I think he is - I understand his choice. Almost every day, I am tempted to do the same thing.

As I get ready to start teaching, I feel overwhelmed. As I think about my friends and family, I feel overwhelmed. I am overwhelmed by the challenge and responsibility that comes with each relationship that I allow myself to enter into - whether that be a relationship with a student, a coworker, a child, or a friend. Daily, I will be disappointed, misunderstood, frustrated, and hurt. Daily, I have to choose to forgive. Daily, I have to choose to Love. Daily, I have to choose to give.

I want to walk away. I do not want to be like Stephen at all. I want to run and cover up when the first hint of a pebble gets thrown. I want to give up, protect myself, and not feel a thing. I think about Bible Behavior, and I make excuses as to why it does not have to apply.

Then, I walk in my kitchen and I see my roosters. About a year ago, I started putting roosters in my kitchen. Now, there are three: a huge clock with a rooster, a hand-painted hanging window with roosters, and a large figure of a rooster that stands next to my phone. I bought the roosters as a reminder. I wanted to see them, and be reminded to Wake Up.

As tempted as I am to fall asleep, I need to remember to Wake Up. I need to find a way to get Bible Behavior off of the pages I write, and the words I say, and into my heart where it can do some good. I need to love fully and unconditionally. I need to reach out and touch someone's shoulder or hold their hand - even when I know that my hand will be shrugged off. I need to stay, even when the rocks get thrown. I need to say, “Forgive them.” - and mean it. I need to say, “I love you.”, and mean it. Even more, I need to say, “I still love you” - and mean it.

Bible Behavior is easy to figure out, because it is simple; one command encompasses it all. All that He asks is that I Love.

Before the rooster crows, and I deny Him once again; I need to Wake Up.

I need to start embracing the words I know too well how to write, and too little how to live.