Lord give us your eyes, right here in our own city

Dear friends, 
I've written this post before. Except that I haven't. The message is the same.  I've put this off. Because I've said it before. Because you might be tired of my subbing stories. Because I am breaking a rule of good blogging and posting without a picture. But the message is still burning in my heart and I want to say it again, because maybe you missed it the first time. 

Sometimes we think that to see the poor and oppressed and to refocus on what really matters we need to travel far away. To a foreign land. But dears, right here, in the cities, especially in the old car capitals of Michigan, you can find the hopeless. Satan may be using pride and entitlement to complicate and confuse the issues, but the kids in inner city messes need to be loved too. Remember them in your prayers, remember those who fight daily to make learning happen there. 

As the school year winds down, and I think of my dear friend who has spent day after exhausting day teaching these creations of God, I praise the Lord for her work and wonder how to make myself, and my kids and even you remember this ignored population in prayer this summer. They are not reading cute blogs or dreaming of a summer at their cabin up north. A hurricane or earthquake has not destroyed their home. Still, destruction of the soul and of the home is taking place. If your heart is hard toward this population or you have forgotten. Go visit the halls of these inner city schools next year. Hear stories and let your heart break. They are your neighbors. Love them. Until then I hope to stir you the only way I know how...with stories.  

I want to call her cute. This 15 year-old sweet girl. I subbed in her class for all of December and am happy to see her again. She does her work, never complains, and her laugh falls out light, with little prompting. The boys love her. Too much I think. She moves her bulge easily compared to my pregnant thirty-something friends. She doesn't waddle. But I can't call a 15-year-old pregnant girl, cute, even if she is.

"Complete worksheet #1. Then worksheet #2. Don't write on #2 but put your answers on the back of #1. Then complete the assigned problems in the book." I would repeat these directions, also written on the board 15 times each period.

I walk around the room, hoping my nearness will bring focus, reminding them of the chance to eat lunch with their teacher tomorrow if they don't finish. My presence is as effective as crayon on a plastic cup. Here, being an adult is not enough to get respect.

I want to usher the sweet girl out to the hallway and ask what her plans are. Will she keep the baby? Who will raise it? Did she considered adoption? Who is helping her? As a sub who sees her less than a dozen times a year, I say nothing. There is no opportunity.

Some of the boys are getting loud and haven't done a problem in over 5 minutes. I walk toward their desks hoping a verbal jab will be enough to silence them. The red head, undaunted by my tactics, points at his friends. "He raped his little sister."

They all laugh, waiting for my reaction. The accused laughs loudest and says, "No, no, no, it wasn't like that." They enjoy the shock in my eyes that I cannot hide. I tell them their conversation is inappropriate and more talk like that and they will be out of the classroom and in the principal's office. It stops the conversation. But is that enough? Do I really just stop the conversation and consider it over? Were they serious or just messing with this white girl who isn't wise in the way of the streets? Did any student who heard this conversation react inwardly with anger?

Later in the day, I sigh as I pass out the 15th pencil of the day. These kids can't keep track of pencils, or notebooks or even math books. And it is never their fault. Someone stole my math book they tell me. My sister took my notebook. Personal responsibility is almost as rare as a brocolli eater in this school. Hoping to make learning happen these kids are handed free health care, free breakfast, free lunch, and free pencils. Make them take responsibility a newbie thinks. But so many of them would quit, and the stats on dropouts would skyrocket and the crime rate might go up and the school--the state would take it over for failing. So they hand out freebies and hope some learning will happen. The cycle of educational enablement is baffling and complicated and the opening to make it stop will wreck everything for years before fixing a single thing if fixing is possible.

Subbing at that school is hard. But I need to go there. So do you. At home, the state of my own sins and shortcomings and struggles and efforts to raise my girls well consumes me and I forget about others. My world is small and filled with people like me. I am so thankful my friend keeps calling me to sub, pulling me into a world where I am helpless to do anything but pray. The best teachers can't teach kids who have no desire to learn and no one at home telling them they have to. In that place, I have no personal strengths, no ideas for how to help, I can only turn it over to the One who can.

To read other lessons God taught me while subbing, click here.

Gymnastics Grown Faith

Today's God Bump is a repost from an old family blog. I've left the post alone, as though it was written today. At the time though, it had been months of heartache as my daughter begged to compete in gymnastics. Unable to afford the competitive team prices, and unsure if so much time at the gym was wise, we had said no. Bird was still taking recreation level classes just once a week. 

Sunday at 7:30 am won't find any of us in bed. Generally, I treasure Sunday mornings for their leisure. Bird will probably wake up 6 am this Sunday. We are off to a gymnastics meet. If you've followed for long, you know how much Bird has dreamed about this day.


I've struggled since the beginning of last summer with gymnastics. Clearly my oldest is smitten, bitten by the uninvited bug of gymnastic passion. The sport is pricey and dangerous. But what sport, done intensively, doesn't have a long list of risks? If her ambition was modeling, I would worry and fret about that. I can't stomach the fees or letting gymnastics destroy two or three family dinners a week, not yet. I can't let a sport take my girl away at such a young age. Yet, anyone who studies any sport or art to the point of recognizable success gives many things up, how do you choose when?  I still don't know, but for now, God changed the course I thought we were on, at least temporarily.

I watched Bird all fall and ached. Her flipping, balancing, upside-down passion didn't wane. There were many nights of tears. Bird wondered why God wouldn't let her compete--she had Olympic dreams. She knew He could change her parents hearts and provide the money. She knew multiple girls whose parents let them compete. Every night, since this summer, Bird ended prayer time with a request that God would let her compete. I listened and winced --doubting there was any competition in her future. Sometimes in my daydreams I would get a job so she could compete, or money would come from somewhere and I could hand her, her dream. But even if the money came, I wasn't convinced that so much time away from us (6-12 hours a week) was healthy.


And then there were stories I'd stumble upon in magazines, about girls who quit gymnastics only to worry about the lack of time working out and turn to eating disorders as an answer. I never found answers to my questions, but I found contentment, because regardless of the other issues, the money wasn't there. By December, I think both Bird and I had peace. God was in control. Even if she never competed, this passion and skill had a purpose we couldn't see.


In March, I stopped the coach to let him know Bird loved his class. He's a good teacher and I wanted to encourage him. He's thoughtful too, passing down his daughter's used grips (for bar) so we wouldn't need to buy new ones. Coach responded with, "Maybe Bird would like to do a fun meet?" Fun meets are what kids do in the early stages of competition. They perform routines, get judged but there isn't a state-wide ranking and coaches can be right next to them, helping them stay calm and remember the moves. Generally only kids enrolled in the pre-team competitive programs participated.

Bird heard Coach and started springing up and down while her eyes welled up with happy tears. Hesitant and uncertain, I asked questions. He thought she could learn the routines during her regular training hours. Perhaps she could participate in one meet without much extra cost to us. Almost crying myself, I said thank you and that we would check with my husband.


To my surprise, husband gave a green light. Was it wise to let her compete in one meet? Would it just make her more upset in the long haul? The momentum was too strong now, Hadley believed God had answered her prayers. There was no turning back.

Weeks went by. Hadley learned no routines, but she was planning on this meet. Questions were flying through my mind. I finally stopped Coach, asking him about his plans and timidly expressed my hope that this meet wouldn't be an emotional disaster. He explained the unanticipated difficulty of finding time to instruct Bird one on one with nine other girls in the class. But his plan far exceeded any of my imagined solutions. Bird has now received over five hours of free one-on-one or one on two private instruction time.


I feel indebted to the two coaches who have helped her. I don't really understand why we are receiving so much generosity. Sometimes I go to dark places wondering about alterior motives, but then I remember a big God who heard a little girl and a big God who heard a mother plead with him to make her daughter's faith real, and I know this is one step on the journey. And in truth, I am in no way obligated to this gym, though I do sing their praises regularly.


So think of us Sunday. Pray for us. I will be sitting in the audience, tensing my back and forgetting to breath when the hardest parts of a routine happen. This faith wave leaves me unable to plan or anticipate, grateful to know a God who can provide glorious riches beyond what we can imagine.

It's been two years since that meet. It was the only meet Bird ever participated in. She moved her passion and Olympic dreams to soccer, her dad's favorite sport. For this step in building my daughter's faith, I am grateful. 

Tell Her When He Answers Your Prayers

Do you ever pray for little things? Little meaning things you don't need-- you just want. And you want to ask God because he knows every hair on your head, every day in your life. Good weather for a picnic, a new dress for a special occasion,  a new kind of pot for the kitchen. I pray little prayers, but since I don't need them, I  forget I prayed them. Until one day the thing I prayed about shows up. And sometimes the thing does that, just shows up in a it-has-to-God way (rather than me acquiring it through ignoring budget guidelines). 

Those little prayers that get answered in a it-has-to-God way are powerful faith builders. We need to teach our kids to pray little prayers. We must share our little prayers with our kids, to teach them that God cares about more than health, difficult circumstances, and poor people in far away countries. He cares about you. And me. And them. And our unessential desires. Not that we expect God to give us everything we want, but that we can tell him about things we want and trust him to provide or erase the desire from our hearts. Consider Matthew 7: 9-11: 

⁹ “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹ If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

My Little Prayer
I grew up allergic to dogs and cats. When I hit the need-a-pet stage of childhood, we tried fish and a few lizards, but always they disappointed. I would hold a plastic bracelet over the goldfish bowl, begging those golden fins to jump through it. I knew they could jump since the last one jumped out of the bowl and died. They never learned. 

The lizard lost his appeal the day I captured him by his tail. Tucked in the place of in the brain where images will not erase is a video of a detached lizard tail, still wiggling and changing from green to brown a few times. I thought I had killed him.  

My pet dreams were finally filled in a small cockatiel named Bing. He ate with me, showered with me, chewed on my pencil while I did homework, flew to me when I whistled. He was pet therapy for the difficult middle school years. 

When I got married, my husband surprised me with cockatiel. Duncan was fun and could whistle the Baby Elephant Dance and the Andy Griffth song. I loved Duncan, but when the second girl came, caring for him was a bit of a burden. We had to give him away when we moved across the country from Iowa to Montana and into family housing at a the univerisity so my husband could get his masters. 

My kids grew. We moved from Montana to Michigan. My girls reached the I-need-a-pet stage. I still adored parrots and avoided the pet stores so as not to be too tempted. It had been seven years since we gave up Duncan. I had not met a single parrot owner in Montana or Michigan. But I had prayed a few times, knowing that a real parrot was not in the budget, that if God wanted to have a bird, someone would just give us one. Sometimes I browsed the Internet looking at parrot rescue groups but none were nearby. 

In August we got new neighbors and, well,  I will let you read my daughter's version, in her letter to a her pen pal, 

You know how we got the guinea pigs but not how we got Buster the bird. Well the way we met him was while cleaning the guinea pig cage outside. We heard, "Come here," from  the window and we thought it was our neighbor so we walked to the window. It turned out that the bird had said it and not long after that- about Christmas time- the neighbors offered him to us. My mom said we could have him because she grew up with birds and she loved them. She said she had been praying for a free bird ever since we had to get rid of our bird because we were moving. And here it was- God answered our prayers- the perfect gift! Buster's hatch day is March 15. He turned 6. Not too long ago, when I wrote about it in my journal at school, the person next to me read it and made a birthday card! I didn't really know her that well, but it made me feel good to know that other people were thinking of my bird and I took it happily.

My little prayer, that God answered, is part of the faith building of my daughter. And she is sharing the testimony of how God cares with her friends.  A triple blessing.  
Now, meet my little prayer, Buster:

Linking up today at Getting Down With Jesus. 

Playground drama: Sub Lesson #4

Welcome to part 4, the last in a series of posts on what God has taught me so far through substitute teaching. Today's lesson relates most directly to the focus of the blog: raising girls. 

Getting paid to spy on my girls and their friends is a bonus of subbing at their school. School policy prevents me from subbing in their classrooms, but I can sub as a lunch aide and get paid to wander around the playground, watch what my girls actually eat, take note of who is bossy all while making sure everyone is safe. Sounds glamorous, doesn't it?

Recent jobs as the office secretary and the school lunch aide taught me why my 9-year-old sometimes collapses into a puddle of tears or yells, "You just don't understand."

The playground is a treacherous world for budding mini-women. At my girls' schools, there are at least 75 kids in each grade. Teachers, who know personalities and manipulative habits well, are on lunch break and not present. So the kids run, scream, play, and tear down each others' emotions. Constantly, they are testing each other with an unspoken question: How important am I to you? And the answer is derived from perceptions, based on whether or not the BFF of the day wants to play with her, wants to play what she wants to play, and if the BFF acts excited to do both. If the BFF wants to play something else or wants to include a girl who changes the rules of the game too much, the little girl feels unimportant, left out, or angry.

Here's where the parents, safe from the drama in their cubicles and homes, play a role. Parents, operating only on the stories from their daughter's mouth, instruct their daughter that certain kids should be avoided. "They have family problems" or "They are not nice." Sometimes these are true statements. Sometimes this parental advice is based on faulty information. Generally though the parental advice stops with the one liner. The little girl takes that parental advice and throws it at other girls to hurt her or just to put an end to the girl drama so the game of tag can resume.

Once this ugly game starts, other little girls are drawn to the drama. Feeling full of their own kindness, they start acting as messengers between the different angry/hurt girls. The messenger girls usually run between both sides but actually think only one girl is justified. And the story spirals down into the puddle of tears or angry outbursts we hear at home.  Because by the time the they reach home, they've been holding all this hurt inside for hours.

Such stories are daily occurrences for some girls starting in the fourth grade. Third graders play these emotional games a bit too, but they are less brutal and less frequent.

As a mom, the most obvious solution, especially if you believe your daughter is telling the truth, is to find the common thread in the stories. Often there is one girl that is the center of the drama, and so you advise your daughter to avoid her or wish that girl would leave the school.  Avoiding a girl at elementary school is harder than most moms imagine. On the playground, it is not uncommon for the avoided girl to follow your daughter around and ask her why she isn't her friend any more. And when your daughter says it is because she is mean, the mean girl will send endless messengers begging your daughter to be her friend again. Or worse, the mean girl will get a group around her and start rumors about your daughter and follow her around the playground taunting her. Again, the puddles and outbursts are the signs you witness at home.

Now consider the mean girl, the one multiple parents have advised their daughters to avoid. She showed up in the office the other day while I was subbing. Sobbing. No one likes her she said. No one wants to play with her.

"Why?" the too-curious substitute secretary asks.
"They say I am a bad influence."
Now what, nosy substitute secretary? Now what do you say?
"Why would they say that?"
"Because I can't control my anger."
She's a perceptive little girl. I wonder what her story is. What has happened to her? What people skills has she been taught? Has anyone helped manager her anger? My brain was interrupted by a loud outburst of sobs and declarations of
"Why am I even alive? What is my purpose?"
Whoa little 4th grader. You are too young for such big questions. Let me hug you and pull you aside and tell you about a source of hope and love.
The principal heard the outbursts and the little girl was whisked from the waiting chairs into the office.
But that little girl, she's on my prayer list now.
And I don't know what to tell my daughter about her now.

Moms, daily, pray for your girl, pray for her friends. The drama on the playground is intense. And every situation is unique, and every girl involved, no matter how mean, is a child created by God. Pray first. Pray long. Teach your daughter to do the same. Action may be necessary but remove your momma bear claws long enough to pray.

Follow these links to read previous posts in this series

Part 1: Subbing and my identity in Christ

Part 2: Do something you can't do well

Part 3: Opening my eyes to the world around me

Opening my eyes to the world around me: Sub Lesson #3

Welcome to part 3 of Lessons from Substitute Teaching: How a Job Helped Me Lose My Selfishness. If you missed part of the series, click here for part 1 on My identity in Christ and here for part 2 on Do Something You Can't Do Well. 


Joe's shirt was dirty, always. And he sat in the back corner, doing his work, quiet. The kind of kid a sub adores. When he finished, he drew. Graffiti art. Always in black and white. He was good at drawing. It was obviously therapy. As the day progressed he would start telling me stories. With all the excitement a third grade could muster he would tell stories. My girls tell stories  in the same breathless way about soccer, pets, funny things their dad does. This boy told me stories about new put-downs he learned from a sibling, fight moves from an uncle, headlocks and swear words. To my girls, I respond with excitement. To Joe, I had to ask him not to talk about those things because they were not kind.

On Friday, he picks up a backpack from the office. It is full of food that he can prepare himself--a way to make certain the boy can eat all weekend. The end of the day is the worst. Tony who sits in the opposite corner of the room, tries to make Joe angry. Having behaved himself all day, Joe has no self control left, he is an easy target. Joe moves rapidly into a world beyond reason. It is full of rage and anger. Almost too late, I realize that if both boys remain in the room there will be a fight. Quick movement and words  prevent fist throwing, still, I lose Joe. He grabs Tony's hat, throws it on the floor and grinds it into a pile of shoe dirt, then he runs out of the classroom.

There were two teachers, only I was a sub, in that computer lab full of kids when I looked up and saw a hormone driven boy, the kind who is laughably small and hasn't grown into his arrogance yet, squeezing a girl close to him. Her name was Grace. And with foolish confidence the boy stared down Grace's shirt and then took his hand and reached in to hold Grace's breasts as she giggled. I put an end to the situation and sent the boy away with a follow-up note for the principal about the willing girl. I didn't want to send them to the office together.

As a mom, I've worked hard to construct the daily world of my girls. Protecting them while they are young and while I can still teach them about Christ and what it means to follow him is important. Someday they will venture forth without my protection and it is my job to get them ready. I monitor and discuss friends, clothes, books they read, progress on schoolwork and chores and the attitudes they have when they do them. Daily we learn together about everything from nutrition to manners to the meaning of thwart and hold it all up against God's standards. And because I have dwelt in this place of construction for so long, I can be self-focused or at best family-focused.

I know about the high unemployment in my city, about the crime, the drop out rates, and the general feeling of hopelessness that residents breath. But I am too busy in the world I construct to notice. And while constructing sometimes I linger in a place of pity, wishing I had a part time job or a better this or a different that.

Subbing is changing my selfishnes. I have new gratitude for the hope of Christ I can daily access, and for the freedom I have to spend my time on my family. Subbing has created a God-given heartache. Every time I sub, I meet kids, shining with the light of potential, who are making bad choices and getting dimmer. What happened to Joe that his rage is so powerful and that things he gets excited about are so evil? What happened to Grace that she is willing to let a mousy boy touch her in the middle of a classroom? Who is caring for these kids? Who is teaching them beyond the school walls? Who is constructing the world they experience? Who is praying for them? I don't know.  Maybe no one. So I do the only thing I can, expand my prayer list. The kids and the teachers in these local schools are now on my list. I know that no amount of money is going to fix the education of these kids. They need the hope of Christ. And I need a great love for the world around me.

...then the technology ball came crashing into us.

Sometimes I get images stuck in my head. Lately they are colored drawing images, like cartoons. Good ones. Like the image of a seed opening up to let the first leaves emerge as I make New Year's Resolutions. Or scary ones. Like the image of a wrecking ball headed straight toward my house. It appeared there 4 days ago, when Bird started begging for an email address.

It was last fall, in September, during Bird's first travel soccer tournament that a similar image of destruction started to haunt me. Up until that point, I had felt insulated from the world. The way other families functioned and parented really did not affect me. And after that tournament I kept imaging a meteor labeled THE WORLD crashing into my house.

Here's what happened. Friday night before the tournament began, the girls on the team went swimming. Then they hung out in the hall with their Nintendo DS game systems. Problem 1: Bird was the only girl without a bikini. Problem 2: Bird was the only girl without a Nintendo DS. Problem 3: Bird's parents were the only ones who thought a girl with 3 soccer games the next day should return to the room before 10 pm.

For the first time, my daughter was distraught at how "weird" the rules of her parents were. She cried and complained. And the meteor started haunting me. I knew this wasn't the end of this story. The meteor was made up of much more than bikinis, game systems, and curfews. I imagined in growing in size in the next several years. Only God knew what other material the world would us to add to its size.

Now, for the wrecking ball of technology. We have technology. Cable TV. Internet. Even an iPad. We enjoy it and have long loved You Tube for the ways it entertains us. I make a reference to an old TV show or song or commercial. The girls don't know what I am talking about. So we watch it on YouTube. YouTube is the reason my girls love Chilly Willy the penguin, "Food, Glorious Food" from the musical Oliver and the old Tootsie pop commercial where the owl bits the pop and can't lick to its center. But the girls aren't old enough to need a cell phone. And we don't have a game system, of any kind. Technology is still something I choose to let the girls use, on my terms.

Game Systems. Texting. Facebook. Cable TV. I can tell you the good and the bad about them all. But getting Bird an email....it feels like opening a door into an unpredictable world: a world I cannot control. But really, that is what I am supposed to do. I am raising Bird so that little by little she can face the world and fly on her own, without mom controlling the circumstances, and hopefully fly straight into the arms of Jesus.

Why my mind is operating with cartoon images of destruction is unclear. But lately as I pray through all this, and ask other more "advanced" parents how they handle technology,  a muscle man with tights and a cape comes and stops both the wrecking ball and the meteor. His shirt has four big letters across it. P_R_A_Y.  So the images have stopped being images of destruction. But they serve as a reminder for the powerful forces that will vie for my girls' thoughts. And they remind me to PRAY. Because Christ had overcome the world (John 16:33).

And while I know some of these technology interactions are inevitable in today's teenage world, I know that I have to teach Bird about how to use it all safely and wisely. Check back tomorrow to see what I did about her desire for an email account....