Realizing Provision

Happy Get-Your-Life-Together-Day! (Almost).

That “almost” means two things. One: It means that it is not quite “Get-Your-Life-Together-Day” (Aka Saturday) yet. Two: It means that you never actually get your life quite together. (Providing you are like me, which is a rather presumptuous thing to provide. Forgive me.)

Get-Your-Life-Together Saturdays are not usually long enough. I’m considering adding Get-Your-Life-Together Friday nights to my weekends to see if that helps.

My life is not together and it probably will not be tomorrow night either, but there are so many delightful moments all throughout my busy days of teaching Gr. 2. I don’t want to forget them.

Here are a few, in the form of a list of stray thoughts:

• Each student has two numbered pencils that they hand in to be sharpened every afternoon and collect again in the morning. There are also extra, unnumbered pencils that get sharpened with all the rest. When my students are sorting through their pencils in the morning to find the pencils with their numbers, they call the unnumbered pencils “stray pencils.” I think it is kind of precious.

• One of my students told me he has 14 kittens, and asked me if I want one or two. Yes, yes, I do. I want all the kittens and puppies my little students offer me with their hopeful faces.

• Whenever I leave my students in my classroom alone, an airport intercom voice comes on in my head and says, “Do not leave your students unattended.” Perhaps this is the reason I leave my classroom as little as possible. My students must have caught on to this because several of them were shocked to find out recently that teachers use the bathroom at school, too.

• Some of my students have trouble controlling their laughter, and I feel as though I have no right to be too stern with them for it. You see, I know someone (kind of up-close and personally) who has had her own share of similar struggles. The teacher and the students of the Gr. 2 classroom are learning together on this one.

• They wrote adjectives to describe themselves. Some of his adjectives may seem contradictory, but I’m pretty sure this particular child can be all these things.

May you get your life together in the ways you can, and may the Everlasting Arms catch all the pieces you can’t quite get together.