No, not any of the J.W.'s we know, but an unborn baby.
Please pray for an unborn baby and his parents. The baby, J, was recently diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Google that for more information. It's a very bad heart defect and J will have to have his first surgery within the first week of being born. He's the first baby for J & C who are sibling and siblin-in-law of a close friend of ours. We're sending this out there to have as many people praying for comfort, strength, and if God wills, a miracle.
what inspired the early morning introspection, I don't know.
I was just thinking this morning about myself and friends and suddenly I began to think that I have a fear of rejection--based on past experience and thus irrational fears at times.
When I was younger, I tried to be friends with various school persons and wasn't accepted--somehow I was too smart or wasn't cool enough--wasn't preppy enough. I'm still grateful to God that I had my wonderful group of friends from church! (Love you Lady!)
In college, I started to overcome a shyness that developed as a teenager because of great college friends from my freshman year on. I didn't get close to everyone, but they helped me overcome a lot of things. It was possible to be me and to laugh with others at myself than have people laugh at me while I was hurt.
I'm not a natural idea-giver and go-getter at talking to people or calling them up because I've had bad experiences with this before, and I really do have this shyness--which means it's hard to maintain some of my friendships that have developed because I'm scared to do much. I'm so scared of things falling away over time that I don't do anything because I fear being hurt.
It also doesn't help that I discovered there isn't a perfect friendship except the one we have with Our Father Savior Encourager. I discovered this shortly after being married last year when I was intentionally excluded from a rather big thing...and when I tried in my bumbling way to express this hurt, I was given excuses and general pats on the back, but no direct apologies. It made me an outsider to a wonderful group of people. There I was again, feeling rejected and all the past stumbling blocks to me making an effort to be a part og a group came back. because I realized they didn't know me very well at all, nor I them. and now I feel this as I only get occasional news. I just have to pick up my phone and call...but I feel like I can't...and I'm afraid to.
I MUST ADMIT that part of the feeling that I can't is I also have this natural bent of wanting things to be "fair" and all parties to put in equal effort at things. But I realized this morning that maybe the effort has been equal because I've done little. Vicious cycle. and now, on top of this rather personal...and it's funny how I feel selfish after these kind of posts of "I...I...I"...I'm going to type out a prayer request.
You scored as A college textbook. You're an authority on something, you just know it. Everyone else does, too, but that doesn't mean they like you. Since you think very highly of everything you say, you charge a pretty penny to entertain your listeners. Those forced to pay do so grudgingly and try to defray the costs of learning from you by selling portions of their access to your charms to others. As a result of this speedy dissemination of your knowledge, you constantly add to your repertoire--and then hike your price. Despite your usefullness, which is rarely in doubt, nobody likes you. They find you didactic, boring and irrelevant--but still necessary.
Your Literary Personality created with QuizFarm.com |
Well, Just thought I'd let people know I'm alive and well. With the exception of the rare time I overdo fat/sugar/caffeine, I've been feeling much better.
School is still going well, although I've hated having to be gone as much already. I feel guilty about leaving my students without their teacher.
The frustrations of a teacher have begun as the first six week period wraps up. I have this one class where I can only get a third of the students to turn their homework in on time. I just finished grading the last test i gave...most grades are A, C, or F and there's a correlation to # of missing papers. It amazes me how so many won't ask for help...how they don't use precious time at school to do their math homework when the math teacher is right there to help. What's happened to people? Were "regular" students like this when I was a teenager? It's the rarity to have students who care....
and I've been wondering how much their previous math teachers have made them do certain things...like adding and subracting negative integers, decimals, and fractions. How are so many of them having trouble with ORDER OF OPERATIONS!!!!???? In the efforts to not have students fall behind, are teachers assigning less work? I guess I should sit and come up with a couple of pages of just working with numbers. It scares me that a lot of people are "leaving it to the calculators" But as i tell the deaf ears of my students--if you don't understand it, how are you going to catch mistakes from the calculator because of typos?
*sigh*
Well, time for dinner.
Thank you for all your prayers and concern. I (Mom) am back to almost 100%, unfortunately gaining back the 20 lbs I lost. (Dad)i s still on crutches, but got some encouragement today. He was told that there had been significant healing in the past month. A month ago he went for a second opionion to the Orthopedic Dr in Gunni and found out a screw holding the talus of his fibia together had broken and the bone had split open. He was prescribed a electric bone stimulator. it is only as big as a cell phone and has electrodes that he wears 7 days, 24 hrs.
but it's a 3-day weekend!!!!
Well, in my constant sleep-deprived state this week (how is eight hours not enough????) I realize I forgot to share a funny moment from school last week.
I gave a test to my kids on Thursday. In 2nd period, I have this girl who took another boy's pencil case and pencil and eraser away from him and refused to give them back by fake "zoning out" and pretending not to hear him, and then me when I told her to give them back. So he took her pen and something a little bit later and than repeated the zoning out stunt on her. She got irritated and started poking him in the shoulder over and over again. Next thing I know, I hear a "Leave me along you stupid ugly wench" from behind me...
Oh, it gets better.
After I stare over in total shock, I hear a few kids ask "What's a wench?"
and even better...
I say "It's a girl. Shakespeare used it to mean a girl."
"So what's a boy called"
other student: "a Wiccan."
the rest of us: "hunh?"
Apparently he though Boy1 had called Girl a "witch" and boy witches are apparently called "wiccans" after sidestepping that one fairly quickly, I than said wench is a word with certain connotative meanings.
That confused them. So in my stumbling state of recovering, I explain that it's a word that has a real meaning and a slang meaning
Girl1: "like screw?"
Say I " yes girl1, like screw. wench also meant a certain type of girl and I don't want to hear that word used in my classroom again."
The End.