My Week in Short

Sunday: I dug out the box of photo albums and scrapbooking stuff that was still packed from last Thanksgiving and spent a wonderful afternoon scrapbooking with good friends. I actually got a few pages done and am now only two years behind for 3 of my 4 children. Don't even ask about the family album. Had I known my husband and I would be fruitful and multiply THIS much, I would have never kept separate albums for each child beyond the baby stage.

Monday: After a glorious three week reprieve, I had lunch duty again. A handful of eighth graders, being a fabulous bunch of role models, started a food fight and then gave me attitude when I got thrown into the disciplinarian role. A sixth grader brought a real laser pointer in and I confiscated that as well.

This was not one of my 300 favorite days of 2009 and I even wished I had swine flu so that I could get out of lunch duty for the rest of the week.

Tuesday: The kids in the lunch room were better today. In the hallway, though, a few of the involved, who got a special seating arrangement today, informed Christian that his mom is mean and unfair. This is my first real negative experience in having a child who is also a teacher's kid. I'm angered at these wretched adolescents for dragging my kid into it, but pray that God helps me to love them with HIS love, since I have none of my own to give them.

James also decides to begin punishing me for being gone all the time. He begins to seek out Christian for comfort when he hurts and even goes and tells on me to Christian when my behavior does not line up with James' expectations. He even wants Christian to put him to bed. His plan to punish me works brilliantly. My heart hurts.

Wednesday: I pass one of those eighth graders on the way into chapel in the morning. I smile and cheerfully greet her by name. God's love flows and I see her through His eyes.

I begin to wonder if several of my students ate Stupid for breakfast because we can't even correct a simple math paper together in class without an extensive pause after every problem when I'm bombarded with about fifteen questions, ten of which are repeated questions because NOBODY IS LISTENING, although they appear to be.

After I've had about all any person could possibly handle, I mean to exclaim, "Oh my goodness!" or "God have mercy on us!" but I actually say, "Oh my God."

They obviously didn't hear anything up to this point, but when that came out of my mouth, the class collectively sucked in a breath of air and held it in total silence. I looked up, realizing what had come out of my mouth and said, "Did I just misuse the name of the Lord our God?" With wide eyes they all nodded their heads. "I am so sorry. I did not intend to say that at all. Please forgive me." A few students graciously forgive me while a few take a moment to gloat and rub it in. "Well," I say, "thankfully God forgives ALL sinners, even imperfect teachers like me. I am so grateful to Him for this and for all He has done."

I move on, as I should, confident that I'm covered by grace, and confident that at least a couple parents will hear about this.

Thursday: I help Christian review for a grammar test. He's been spending the evenings hanging out in the kitchen while I do dishes. It's been fun to hear his stories about school, his friends and his teachers. I know I get the edited version. Still I am thankful he has great friends and teachers who care about him.

Friday: Today a student found a worm in his breakfast cereal bar during snack time. It was a living, squirming, meal worm. My clueless genius tried to console him by informing him that some people actually do eat them. Clueless Genius left out the fact that people who eat meal worms do so accidentally or live in third world countries. I see my horrified boy fighting back tears and I have flashbacks to the worm I found in my fish stick school lunch in 8th grade and the purple worm in my cherry tomato in college and the rat hair in my cream of wheat during my first year of teaching and I have overwhelming compassion on him. "At least you didn't eat it," I said, wrapping up the worm bar and throwing it away.