Thankful & Blessed.

As November suddenly draws to a close, 

I cannot help but to think of how many ways I am thankful and blessed.

I am blessed that six months from today I will be marrying my love, 

my friend, and my biggest encourager. 

Credit to Nick Benson Photography

There is no denying that these past near four years have been incredibly difficult. Just thinking through all the distance, all the goodbyes, all the rough patches, misunderstandings, terribly lonely days and nights makes my heart hurt. Date nights will ceaselessly be my favorite. I cannot wait for a time when they are not through a computer screen or phone. His voice for two hours and ten minutes is better than nearly anything. Seeing his nose crinkle is my favorite picture, even if it is on a screen. 

I cannot believe how quickly these near four years have been and how slow they’ve dragged on at the same time. I am amazed at the memory of opening a large cardboard box on my eighteenth birthday with a dozen ring pops inside. Not even six months in and we knew. We knew our countdown had started. We knew to just wait three years. And so we counted down. Our months together and apart have been filled with countdowns and airports. Exactly six months from now, this chapter will close and we will be on to the next as husband and wife. I will live with him and wake up the very first permanent morning and know that we did it. We won. That this time it's for real. For more than a couple of weeks. For more than a few days or a long weekend. 

I cannot even begin to imagine what that will look like, what our life will change and spin into. But my goodness, I can sure daydream. I cannot believe that our life together, our next chapter, is only a blink away.

I am thankful for experiencing daily life with twenty-four little stories. 

I am so sad realizing that I will have to say goodbye to my students soon. I am fearful. What did they learn from me? What did I teach them? I mean really teach them. Not just content, but did I impact their lives? Will they remember me? It is so bittersweet to be leaving a piece of my heart in room 214. It is so exciting to know how much they taught me, to know how everything I learned and experienced in that room has shaped me into the teacher that I am now. The thought of them and their little hearts and brains excites me for my someday-classroom. Where, yes, I will still have to leave them. But it will be different. It's so painful and joyful to know that you've invested so much temporary raw emotion and energy and experience into a room full of exhausting, loving, amazing kiddos. 

And in the end, I'm sure grateful that they have taught me more than I ever expected. 

They taught me patience and cautiousness, security and boldness, timidity when necessary and how to be a friend. They taught me that not every student that comes into my classroom will be blessed the same way I have been growing up and that with each step into my classroom, their little faces will carry countless stories, backgrounds, memories, emotions and lives. 

And that it is my job, to take everything they bring to me, everything they come to be knowing and being and to teach them. However that looks for each of their little unique faces and hearts and minds. 

I am thankful for home. 

Every time I think I have this concept, this idea of home figured out I'm thrown for a loop. I wish I could explain everything going on in my heart and in my head over this. Regardless of the confusion, I am thankful for family, for chasing little feet around the house. For the way that dog radiates heat under the covers in the morning or knowing which boards creak outside my bedroom door. I am thankful for the physical roof over my head and all the lessons learnt inside of it with the family of people stampeding in and out of it; biological or otherwise. 

“You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place. Like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.”— Azar Nafisi

Despite how I'm feeling, despite reminiscing in the past or wanting to hurry towards the future, I am truly and deeply thankful and blessed this holiday season and on. 

It takes a village.

Tonight I was sitting in bed, (at 8pm on a Friday night...cheers to a full day of field-trip-fun with some amazing third graders). I finally settled an exhausted body, but a busy mind and stirring heart refused to follow suit.

I've been thinking recently about all the things I do not just in life in general, but more specifically in my teaching. Things that I have gleaned from other people. Chants and sayings I remember my own first and third grade teachers using to call us back to attention, that I now use daily in 'my' classroom. That I think of them each time I do it. Memories. Arguments turned meaningful lessons and times of forgiveness and acceptance I now hold so closely to my heart. To my growth. Daily routines I took for granted. Ways of saying things, doing things, living life, sharing. Lessons I've learned the hard way. I have noticeably began to sift these into everyday conversations with my littles, molded into words and ways their little minds can hopefully comprehend. Maybe not today, but in hopes it will stay there. Just as I have tucked away some of the same faded memories and lessons.

Be respectful. 

Stealing is not something we do. 

Listen to others. 

Those are hurtful words. 

No one likes when you repeatedly poke their shoulder to get their attention. 

Tantrums will get you no where quickly and everywhere with long talks and exhausted, but patient teachers. 

What do you think honestly means? 

Stop taking things for granted. 

I care about you. 

I care for you. 

You get what you get and you don't get upset. 

The world doesn't like liars, 

no matter how much it tends to accept them through shady alleys and dirty back doors. 

The reason you have a consequence for that action is because I care, no matter how difficult that is for your mind and heart to comprehend today. You'll get it some day.

Your scribbles and colors are pieces of art and that scratch-paper note you slipped onto my desk when no one was looking is worth more than the world's finest diamonds to me. 

Fair is not necessarily equal.

I believe you. 

I believe you until you break my trust, then we will work from there.

I believe in you. 

I am proud of you, of your work, of all your accomplishments big and small. 

At the ripe age of twenty-two I am suddenly jolted by how much of my routine, teaching and daily life in general has been impacted and soaked up from other memorable characters is whatever journey this is turning out to be. Lessons disguised as challenges, fears, stubborn refusals. Naive arguments with someone who holds my best interest but from which I simply and plainly saw a bright and bold "no" fifteen years ago, five years ago, two months ago, or two days ago.

There's a beloved expression I've heard tossed around about child-rearing, one that can equally parallel teaching. 

"It takes a village."

I have never been more sure that you are not just impacted by one person, but by the village and magnitude of people and stories and lessons that follow you around for life. And in turn, every single action that I do in the eyes of my students is part of the village-size impact they will take away from this stage of their lives, 

from me.

Every single day I see the amount of people that come in contact with my students in the near eight hours they are in school, myself included. Then, I think about all the other people they come in contact with. People I do not see. Lessons or punishments behind closed doors. Neglected words, painful words, positive words. Empty rooms, picture-perfect family dinners. People beyond my control. People I don't know. People I won't ever even meet. Parents, grandparents, friends, friends' parents, cashiers, neighbors, family members they only see on the weekend, siblings, step-parents, strangers. 

And suddenly,

I am aware that I cannot control the lessons they learn from those people; 

neither good nor bad. 

I am aware that that thought breaks my heart. Knowing that the little hearts that I have come to care so much about, are impacted either good, bad, or impartially to people and memories that slide across their little paths every single day. But more so, knowing the impact I have, the piece of the village I am. The portion that I do get to make an impact on. What a responsibility. What a wonderful, daunting, powerful, challenging, and terrifying task I have set out for me. Even if it is just a part of the puzzle, even if I am just a single citizen amongst a village of lessons and challenges. 

Good and bad. 

"I am so blessed to be a member of that village, their village." 

Because at twenty-two, 

I'm finally recognizing the village that trails behind me every single day. 

The village of people I carry with me as I step into that classroom each day.

And I am blessed.

Restless.

Lately, things have been increasingly difficult.

I am continuously ready to move on to life together with my husband. As tongue-in-cheek as it feels to admit, it is making it increasingly difficult to keep my vow of “remaining in the present, even though the future looks so good” like the faulty human that I am. This is causing for some mixed feelings of the now and the then for me. Like some kind of awkward and painful limbo. I feel like I am somehow finally ready mentally and emotionally to move on to the next chapter of my life. That it's taken me so long to feel ready to move on. And inside my head I'm thinking, "Okay, I'm finally ready. Let's go right now."

Maybe not from the familiar to the unfamiliar, 

but from the comfortable to the adventure, 

the part that does not involve seeing my best friend every day to the part in our story that does, 

from the old to the new chapter, 

to the one so heavily involving him in the daily 

and mundane activities 

from the one where I don’t hear his voice for two weeks. 

There is a serious amount of disequilibrium inside of me, inside of my head and my heart.
One that I must simply work through or suck up for the next seven months. Both choices which are proving very difficult for me lately.

I love my present life. I love the people around me and the places I get to go. Do not get me wrong. 

I love everything about the experience and the place I am in now, both the physical and metaphorical. But I am so incredibly torn. So one foot on one side of the line and one foot on the other.

Maybe growing up isn’t so bad after all. Even if it means not know how you feel being where you are and where you're going daily. This life is painful and terrifying. But it is good.
Always good.

Even through the discomfort.

Fears and perfect love.

I sat in the small, dimly lit room containing roughly ten of my peers during my senior seminar class this week. Exhausted and defeated, deflated and slightly rejected. By myself, my doubts, my fears. Without even knowing it, too. Soon enough, my professor was telling us to take out the same paper we covered each week and start the hour of our time with writing, just as we did every week. I followed directions just as I expect my own students to do and mindlessly took out my pen.

"This week we are going to write on our fears."

I heard her level voice say quietly just over the silence of the white noise of the radiator and the other ten exhausted student teachers in the tiny conference room. 

Immediately, my mind snapped to attention and my heart spooked like a racehorse shot from a gate. I stared at the blank white walls, at the other twenty-somethings in the room, at my blank paper and at the pen in my hand. I knew what I was supposed to do. I was given the directions. And I most certainly have more than enough fears to write about, but my heart and my mind screeched for me to stop. To not share. To not open my mouth and my heart, to not dare move that pen for one second onto the paper. To keep my fear comfortably yet so intoxicatingly shut up inside of me. Looking around at everyone else in the room as they wrote furiously in the allotted time, I shifted my eyes from the pen in my hand to the blank paper in my lap and connected them hesitantly and vulnerably. 

"I am fearful that..." I wrote. 

"I am fearful that I am not enough." I finished.

And like an opened box filled with helium balloons my fears floated out from inside of me, from where I had been storing them tightly away. My eyes immediately shifted around the room to make sure no one else's eyes could mysteriously read over the top of the angle that my paper was being held. My paranoid heart lurched back with the reality of my fears, now written on the paper in my lap

"I am fearful that I am not enough. That I am not doing enough, being enough, teaching enough, helping enough, for my students. I am fearful that their misunderstandings are always my fault and that their failures are the direct result of my teaching or poor teaching.

I am fearful that I am not good enough,

not quick enough,

not skilled enough,

not enough."

I finished furiously scribbling on my paper as my professor's voice hummed on in the background like a forgotten television in the corner of a busy family's living room. Something about putting down our pencils and talking out. Something about who would be willing to share their fears. People are me, my peers who I had been with for almost four years now started sharing what they had written. To my surprise I was not the only one with fears, with the same type of fears about myself, about being good enough, being enough, or could I even do this? "Once you start caring about your students in your fears, you are truly a teacher." My professors voice echoed through my thoughts. "Once you start thinking of them in the foreground of your concerns, of your thoughts and of your teaching, you are there. You are making yourself better for them. You are a teacher." 

Maybe that means I am a teacher. Or that I am heavily on my way to becoming one. After all, isn't that what this education is for? All this hard work? All these hours working in the field? These lesson plans and assignments? But it's more than that. It's the feelings. The passion I feel. The way I feel when I can help one of my kiddos, or when they choose to come to me for help. The way I feel after I have to have a 'stern talkin' to' with them and they apologize and mean it, or the way they are so eager to share an irrelevant story with me first thing in the morning before they have even set down their bags.

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." 1 John 4:18. 

I like the way The Message translates part of this verse. "There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear." I love what I do, I love what I'm becoming, what I am continuously learning how to do. I certainly still have a lot of learning. But maybe I should focus more on loving what I'm doing, which in-turn comes across as loving my kiddos, loving why I'm doing it and why I am called to do so. In our class, we have been talking about that this isn't just some regular education course, this is our calling. We didn't simply decide one day, "hey locking ourselves in a room full of high-energy students who constantly demand our love, instruction and attention for eight hours of the day every day, sounds like a great idea." No. What are you, crazy? Who thinks that stuff?

We, I decide this because God called me to it, He made me for it.

Because I am capable of the love, not crippled by the fear.

Tick..tick..boom.

This past week was one for the books...

You know those times in the phases of your seasons of life when everything is going so smoothly;

too smoothly. 

And you're half waiting for the inevitable explosion, the conclusive eruption of the soft and steady, in with the chaos and confusion. The latter came in like a lion this past week. After the phase of soft and steady. All at once, and gradually.

My mind and heart spun like a web of doubt into the future of my choices; my tried and true story of what I've always thought turned into questions of if I can do it, why am I doing it, what if I can't do it. Life and voice across the continent was quiet. Home continued to slowly become a vague and confusing term meaning both something physical and emotionally and metaphorical, juggling far too many people and concepts and places connected to that term. Too afraid to leave any of them behind in the fury of change and shifting chapters, too afraid to leave behind pieces of me in places I'm uncertain of when I will return to. I have this capability, of magnifying every little problem into something twelve thousand times worse. Maybe we all do that. Or at least I hope that I'm not the only one. I also am a pro at pushing people away and lashing out when all of this happens, people closest to me love when this happens, I swear. It's taken a little while for the dust to settle. To return to sane mind (mostly) and somewhat of a sane spirit.

It's taken awhile in all this change and movement, to remember that even though I will change, that this is inevitable, and leave and move on in life, the places I have dubbed home will still remain, the people within them will still be there or somewhere to relive these moments again. A place called home at any point can be made accessible again and better yet, home will reshape itself into some place different.

We will have a little abode to call our own. 

My lovely fiance long-distance-‘house’-hunted (after we looked online) and we’ve settled on a lovely townhome style set-up in a familiar complex. He toured it and deemed it “homey” and a “nice couples living place” while I await a video. My heart is full and awaiting the day when we walk through the doors as newlyweds, exhausted and exhilarated, ready to start this adventure God has blessed us with.

A day when I get to put this print I got almost a year ago now just as we were first engaged, on our wall and chant this motto wherever we may be planted in the future; both physically and everything else. I cannot wait for a life and a home. I cannot wait for the first terrifying and exhausting two weeks of our life together, which holds a wedding, a honeymoon, a first flight with my husband and moving into our first home together. But until then, I remember to treasure the present to the best of my ability. I continue to grow on my own, to learn how to be the best wife and friend I can potentially be, to learn everyday how to not only love someone else but to love myself, to cherish the seconds of alone time and dreams of the future that hangs just far enough to see but not close enough to touch just yet. For today, I grow where I am planted. For right now, I am planted here. My roots may not be set in the place that I am in, but temporary ones are. They won’t be broken when I leave this place, but I will shed them like skin and leave them here, with the changes I will take everything this place and these people and this person I am here have taught me. I cannot believe how soon that will be. And that is both terrifying and exhilarating to me. It is something I am processing and will continue to do so for the next seven months until that plane flight with my husband sitting next to me happens.

Even still, I will continue to shed the skin of home and carry it with me. Attached, but not so much. Connected, but differently. Reshaped into my own home, a new home. A new chapter. Among all the other stresses of life, having this constantly in the foreground of my heart and my brain overwhelms me.

This week, I was a ticking time bomb, ashamed to admit that I was unable to get all my scattered thoughts and daily stresses under control.

So I stand before you, a human. I am not perfect. But that is no excuse to hurt myself or other people around me. I'm working on it. Flaws are not pretty, but they are capable of growing pretty things, meaningful lessons

with a little water and sunlight

and a whole lotta grace.

Growth. 
It's happening. Not always without a little pain, though.

In which I learn that I am an introvert.

I had a conversation with someone a couple days ago who has only known me a short while. We were talking about introverts and extroverts, and she was severely mistaken about which of those I was. I mentioned offhand mid-way through our conversation, {like I already expected her to know that, because I do, duh} "Oh I am such an introvert." She was taken aback at my statement and wasn't sure whether to laugh it off or show the confusion I already noticed. She responded with a "Really!?!? I would never have guessed." I was surprised that they were so surprised I admitted to being such a thing. Maybe a few years back, I wouldn't have admitted to being so. 

Because I think, a few years back I had no clue what this even meant. 

I had to learn that I was an introvert. 

Strange, right? 

The very definition of introvert means "to turn inward, or in upon oneself." But I have learned that being an introvert vs. being an extrovert is all about where you recharge, how you recharge. I get my energy from being by myself and I drain my energy from being around people. I need that time of solitude. No really, I physically need that time. I think being in a teaching position where all eyes are on me kind of confuses people, like the conversation I previously talked about. I don't mind public speaking. I don't love it of course, but I'm not as shy around new people as I used to be. And maybe some people who initially meet me would mistake me for an extrovert, I don't know. I've sort of grown into the societal expectations centered around this adult-life stuff. 

Which in flashing neon signs, screams;

"Be an extrovert, then you'll succeed at everything and everyone will like you." 

This makes me sad. I will shake your hand and strike up pleasant and proper conversation even if I don't know you. It is not that I cannot hold a polite conversation with you. I have proper social skills. I can interact in a group of people. I know how to collaborate and work together and I don't mind speaking to a group of people. I certainly am capable of teaching a classroom full of twenty-five students. But I guess I had this person fooled. They were incorrect, I am not extroverted in the slightest.

It's true; 

I am an introvert. 

Interestingly enough,
this topic has actually appeared in several conversation I've had in the last few weeks. 

Being an introvert is severely and commonly mistaken. And until I started really learning about myself, I didn't know what it meant either. 'Introverted' does not mean that I hate people or are not a 'people-person.' I love people. I love meeting people and hearing their stories and learning about them. I teach. I love teaching. I have grown accustom to actually loving being in front of the room with twenty-five pairs of little eyes on me. In fact, I would say I'm pretty comfortable in that position now. But when I am in that position for eight hours a day, when I am constantly with people, answering questions, talking to people, making conversation, being social, fulfilling certain expectations, being surrounded in a working environment with people, or even caring on meaningless conversations, the quickest thing I want to do when I get back from a day like that is sit alone. No talking. Doing something mindless. No answering questions. Just me. Alone. No one to heart or talk to.

Just...recharge.
I need that.

I've never truly understood the way that I operate before. Which, to be honest, sounds a little strange. I think these past three years have been a whole lot of learning about myself, about growth, and about self-awareness. I am an introvert. I admit it. There is nothing wrong with it. I am physically, mentally, and emotionally drained by other people. My brain and my body function differently than an extrovert. I need solitude. I need quiet.

I need that time. 

And maybe the most important thing about learning this is the last part; 

learning that I need that time. 

That it's okay to need that time. 

That this is how I live my life and how I go on living my life. 

How I stay healthy and sane and how I truly recharge. 

Susan Cain has a pretty awesome TED Talk about introverts. An introverted ex-lawyer.

"Before I became a writer, I practiced corporate law for seven years, representing clients like JP Morgan and General Electric, and then worked as a negotiations consultant, training all kinds of people, from hedge fund managers to TV producers to college students negotiating their first salaries. My clients have included Merrill Lynch, Shearman & Sterling, One Hundred Women in Hedge Funds, and many more. I went to Princeton University and Harvard Law School. From all this you might guess that I’m a hardcore, wonderfully self-confident, pound-the-table kind of person, when in fact I’m just the opposite. I prefer listening to talking, reading to socializing, and cozy chats to group settings. I like to think before I speak (softly). And somehow I know that everything I’ve ever accomplished, in love and in work, I owe to these traits, annoying though they may sometimes be."

I also do think the world underestimates introverts a little bit. Maybe the universe and the people in it, the people who are not introverts, don't know how to truly handle introverts. Maybe there is too much pressure on going out and not enough on the concept of re-charging, whatever that may look like to different people; be it introverts or extroverts. Maybe more people should figure out what they are, how they recharge. Maybe it would make the world more productive, like Susan Cain lets on. I don't really have the answers to these wonderings. But I do know that people should know how they function, that the human brain and body is an amazing and complicated thing, and that all of the above fascinate me not just in general, but in a very personal way.

And I know that learning that I am introvert has been incredibly beneficial to my everyday living.

Unfortunately, just like my conversation, 

not everyone you meet is aware of this rather large personality trait. 

And when you do figure it out, it's not a bad thing. There is nothing wrong with you. 

This is how your brain functions. 

Embrace it and learn about it.

80s in October.

It is officially October. And while it was 85 degrees here today and the past few days, I will continue with....."it's October?" 

Not much to report, so here is my last week via Instagram.

1. Apple picking - My first time (since an itty-bitty kiddo at least!). Spent time with a friend my birthday weekend. It was nice to get away and soak in the sun...and mountain climb some trees? We were fierce to get those suckers and came back with more apples than we knew what to do with!

2. Family birthday visits - It's nice to share something with my mom. (My dad could care less) and my horse couldn't be more distracted. Bunch 'a goobers, my family.

3. Ferociously shoving vitamins down my throat - Being in an elementary school is germy to say the least and combined with the constant weird weather changes, no one is safe! Trying my hardest to stay healthy as full-time teaching approaches and I will need my energy and stamina.

4. Spending as much time as time allows with my monster - It's hard to not think about May and all the good, but sad that it will bring with it. My schedule is out of control, but I know I have to make time for him.

Speaking of out of control schedule and making time...

5. Exhibit A; Out of control schedule - This semester will consist of being in school/teaching and when that isn't happening, planning to teach. Must...learn....balance....stay....sane....for next three months...

6. Exhibit B; Making time for the important - Today I missed home and our apartment decided to stay in for church. I curled back up in bed and listening to some podcasts from the church I recently started attending with my best friend and loving in the summer. It's sometimes frustrating to not feel a church-fit out at school, but it was nice to feel semi-connected back to home for the morning.

Happy October! 

Hopefully it will start feeling like it soon. Although, somewhere inside of me, I am convinced this is the universe's way of getting me used to "autumn" in the South and 90s in November...Oooof...