The Reservoir

Nothing fires me up more than complaining.  I know because I'm the king of complaining.  This blog of mine sometimes is one bug rant.  Usually I ponder over something way past my pay grade, end up reminiscing about my life (especially my life before Christ) and then I bring hope into the passage with something spiritual.  It's my pattern.  Every blogger probably has one.  Maybe mine is more evident, but it's there.

So back to complaining.  My wife would say I still complain.  Lately it's been about spending quality time with my wife.  She's busy cutting and slicing in the kitchen while I (sometimes) end up doing random chores when I feel like I've been provided with enough energy.  My wife has plenty.  Either that or she knows that when she sits, her body is going to hibernate.  There was a movie lately with the ever-hateable Sarah Jessica Parker called, "I don't know how she does it."  The trailer shows some professional office worker married to Greg Kinnear and looks to impress women by understanding what they go through as they juggle careers, marriage and kids.  And all the while looking like a shrunken head of her former self.  My wife does that and more.  No movie could represent that.

My other complaints have been about my older daughter.  She's pretty much perfect.  I love her to death and all I want to do is hug her.  She's going on a college visit/practice/stay over tomorrow on her own.  She has her Google directions printed and all her forms signed.  She's worried about missing exits and getting there late.  I know I should have probably taken the day off and driven her up there.  Her dad in shining armor.  I also know it's probably best I send her on her own.  Slowly letting go.  Cutting the chord one by using a dull butter knife.

Other complaints.  Small digs here and there without sometimes knowing it.  We probably all do this in some form or capacity.  Living in Houston I felt it was my right to complain.  Traffic, bad sports teams, Mexican people who weren't born here, Hispanics who held it against me that I didn't speak Spanish, rednecks, etc, etc etc.  Once deep in my own filthy life and spewing it for all who would listen, my Mom's husband told me basically to shut up.  He was probably the first person in a long line of people who probably who had enough of me.

Then I became a teacher.  I didn't know complaints until I became a teacher.  I had fun and new things to complain about.  Not enough planning time, loud kids, principals, district policy, bad parents, good parents, hip hop, fellow teachers, broken copiers and not having a substitute when it's your day to have Art class.  Teaching was not just an outlet for bouts of creativity, but it was a reservoir of negativity if you were willing to find it.

But that's another blog.  The demons of my first five years, my last five years before Christ are a strange trip indeed.  Those stories are push their way through whenever I face a challenging kid, a bad afternoon or when I speak to an old colleague.  Sometimes I feel that my last five years teaching, my first five years after making a decision to follow Christ, was somehow going to wipe away my past teaching sins.  I know this is a futile attempt at perfection (and a big fear of failure that's always been there with me, hand in hand like a demented demon just ready to pounce when my confidence gets too high).  I know I cannot exempt the screaming I've done, the overtly aggressive hand-gestures and the days I phoned in a lesson.

And work isn't the only thing I've tried to fix (instead of letting Him in more, like I had anything to do with my own salvation other than to make a choice).  My bad parenting of Cruz has me sighing each time I come home.  His daily behavior log is becoming something I dread opening.  When I was a kid, my Dad collected Time-Life books on everything from wars to nature.  The pictures were always life-like, and the ones with sharks or insects always creeped me out.  I would peek before opening the page so I wouldn't be scared.  That's how I feel when I go to open his behavior log.  He has good days and I don't believe him.  I check for the good stamps and wonder if he somehow stole the teacher's stamp pad.

So it was without a sense of irony when Wednesday we had a district-wide professional development day. All morning I was between creativity, joking (not sarcastic ribs at the presenters like I've done countless times before) and loving the day that God had given me.  By the time the day was over, I was almost in tears, wondering what the hell happened to such a great day.  I don't know when it became to change.  Was it the men who were callously reading the sports page during a keynote address (like I have done in the past,?  I used to do this in high school!), or the people leaving early?  Perhaps it was my own fatigue, or the stress of our own carpool driver?  Once we arrived home, about an hour away from going to church for Bible study, I think I had uttered profanities at my wife, almost refused to go and wanted to sell my kids on e-bay.  It happens just that fast.

Maybe my former life wants to have another go-round with me.  One more bachelor party for old times sake.  Maybe it never leaves us.  I hear stories about radical transformations from sin to salvation.  That is surely not my story.  Mine is going a different path.  Slow.  God doesn't want me moping about my 33 or so years when I wanted to do things my way, but he's not going to just whisk it away either.  What fun would that be?  In the meantime, I'm going to keep praying, keep stepping and avoid the complainers.  I feel embarrassed for them.  I was once them and I just want to hug them.  Their God-man in shining armor.

Mary Moments

I've got Mary on my mind.  

In Sunday School class we spoke of the "Mary moment', when realizing that she was chosen to carry the birth of God's son in her virgin womb.  The lesson focused on her reaction to God and how humble, awed and blessed she was.  The kids spoke of moving with their parents to Ohio, meeting new friends and inviting them out to church.  I think sometimes on the surface that their hang-ups and fears were nothing compared to what I was dealing with as a sixth grader, but peer pressure and the nomadic lifestyle of my parents actually has much in common with them.  Life stories mesh like that, and every incident of my life is attributed to something I am still learning about--life as a father, being a teacher, being a Christ follower.

Sixth grade was a ride.  I guess my biggest fear was acceptance, so I over compensated with lots of humor, sarcasm and silly antics to grab everyone's attention.  I was overweight too,  and my confidence in myself stemmed from the relationships I had with people.  Not deep, personal poetic relationships, but making sure I was hanging with the cool crowd, the good looking girls and preppy white boys.  Academics came fairly easy, too easy at times.  I made just enough to get a high B, but not too much effort for A's.  I could goof off all through class and still pass the test.  I'm sure my teachers wanted to wring my neck.

I moved frequently as well, so anytime I enrolled in a new school I had to traverse the waters of the lunch room, hoping not to sit at the wrong table.  I avoided the eyes of the aggressive kids who looked like they wanted to fight.  Playing football made my social life easier in junior high during these moves.  I played football just to get friends.  Effort really didn't factor in the decision.  There really wasn't much of a sense of pride.  Eventually it became a chore once I got into high school.

So my sixth graders speak of their "Mary moments."  Many of them have been Christ followers since they can remember.  I can't say that I didn't know Jesus.  I knew him from the oil painting of him that my grandmother hung above the kitchen table (right next to the plaque that read, "Golf is like sex, you just have to be good at it to enjoy it.") and the countless other depictions of a suffering Jesus in every salon, relatives house or viejita I ever knew.  I knew him from the cross he hung on at church where I would snicker at the priest's Cuban accent and hair piece.  I loved the choir when they said "hallelujer" and seeing the pretty mexicana girls. Then it was back to home, the Oilers and the guilt of grandma's tortillas.  

These sixth graders of mine have resilience and confidence.  I believe that's the best thing about having God in your life.  You smile, you laugh like it's your business to laugh, and you don't succumb to the world around you.  One of our girls has been with us since fourth grade.  A wallflower, a performer, a singer, awkward too.  One of my "Mary moments" was wondering if Del and I, me specifically, had what it took to "lead" a Sunday school class.  We had this group of loud kids so much different than the ones we teach at our schools.  Our school kids come in moody, medicated, worried and with no confidence in their ability.  We had people who wanted to eat lunch after church.  We had football games to watch.  We had, we had.  

But that's the "Mary moment" right there.  Even though we talked about how Mary was blessed to serve, the angel who appeared before her had to explain to her the will of God and her place in the scheme of things.  Mary was troubled at first, visibly shaken.  I can see our sixth graders being told that they are going to move to a new city, or a new school.  Perhaps even having to group with a kid who has made fun of the fact that they were a wallflower, a performer, an awkward girl in a sea of nick-tween models.  But, there's less talk now of bullying, and mean teachers, and more talk of success.  And when she or her classmates want to break out into song to answer a question from the Bible, we let them just because.  

I have nothing compared to Mary.  My path has been wickedly twisted lately.  Lots of indecision and loss of confidence.  Lots of sighs and second guesses.  Luckily I don't have too much time to over think my bad decisions because Monday calls, my kids need a bath and my cat needs to be petted.  

Death by Funk

There was a moment this weekend amid the food, cooking, preparing and stressing that I slowed down to appreciate the smallest events.  It was the pause on the phone with a family member, the in-character stories you tell one another with the proper voice inflection and mannerisms of the person that never will learn they are being characterized.  It was the look of a best friend just after disciplining your kid, the spilling of a beer on a table, spray butter and dogs that steal cookies out of a little girls' hand.

Then there is school, where I found myself saying the phrase, "I will shut this down," with the insistence of a man who may have bit off more than he can chew.  I have a "split" class this year, which is a combination of fourth and fifth graders.  While I am able to teach them some of their subjects one on one, the afternoons are a failed attempt at classroom management and independent education.  

One part of my weekend was to properly spread icing on cupcakes.  I realized chocolate icing spreads much better than vanilla, but I also realized that no matter how careful you are with something, you're libel to make some mess.  

Family.

It was the look of my exhausted wife, the enthusiasm of my younger daughter who had just turned four (and then asks if she was turning five on the next day), the tantrum of a son who cannot share the spotlight.  It's the shy kid who doesn't participate and the oldest kid whose eagerness drowns those around him.  

It was the look of a man who is fighting the demons inside him.  What makes a man want the comfort of drugs?  Romans chapter 8 talks a lot about the grumblings and yearnings of the spirit.  I could see such yearnings in that face this past weekend.  It stunned me.  

At church I sometimes see the remnants of pain.  A bandage where a limb once writhed.  A sigh of a past miscarriage (I could handle the joy of a small heartbeat alongside you, beating with your every step.  How could I go on once that heartbeat stopped?  Only a mother truly knows.)  The soulful rendition of "Amazing Grace."  Do we cry in the comfort of our pews because it was us once?  Or do we cry knowing it could easily happen again?  

Mowing the grass on a chilly night.  Those little clumps of grass that wont mulch enough, mocking your steps with little hills of stubbornness.  The grass that blows on the concrete that wont blow away no matter how close the nozzle gets to it.  

And I even left that mower sitting outside.  Such is my mind.  I think I drove past three destinations in just four days.  Sometimes I am driving to work when I'm supposed to get ice.  Other times the music transports myself into a back road that turns into a short cut of confusion.  My uncle died behind the wheel.  Theories are he fell asleep, and there is plenty of evidence and family stories of just that fact.  I'd like to think he was peacefully singing along with the Isley Brothers into the wrong lane.  Perhaps if they find me in such a manner, the coroner will announce, "Death by Funk."

Where is this blog going?  Perhaps I should shut this thing down with the insistence of a man who has bitten off more than he can chew.  The questions will always come.  God loves them, so I keep asking.  Maybe I can write them down long enough to perhaps find an answer.