Farewell to a school

Well I certainly wouldn’t be the same person I am today without that school.  It was, in fact, the organization that brought me to know the man I would marry and the subsequent life and family we would build together.

I found it online, while surfing the web on my cousin’s laptop in our rented duplex in Highland Park St. Paul, after learning that my teaching contract in a small town of Minnesota was not renewed for the following year.  I found the job posting, applied, and found myself interviewing with a Nancy and a Jim, and soon boarding a plane early one Friday May morning.  I bought a matching pair of earrings and a necklace in honor of the occasion.

I met many names and faces that weekend, all intertwined with the common denominator of the school.  That school.  Sigh… that precious school.  I sat in the back of a roomful of seniors, but learned that I was not to be a fly on the wall in that unique school.  The teacher explained to the students that I was interviewing and deciding if this was the school for me.  They asked me questions, likely more than one, but the only one I remember was the question, “Why do we study history?”  I stumble-bumbled through my put-on-the-spot response, but my answer was close enough to what they hoped to hear.  Because we know – we all know, don’t we? – that to understand the present, we MUST understand the past.

I flew home, reviewing my thoughts with my family that next day – Mother’s Day, in fact.  Sorry, Mom—what a day to learn that your baby girl was going to move across the country for a school.  For that school.  But the weekend had showed me an organization that was out of the norm, like no school experience I had encountered before.  Teachers were mentors.  Students were engaged.  I wouldn’t have to teach to the party line as a government teacher.  I could make an effort to help my students to understand more of their faith in Christ and what that might mean to them as they pursued their education.

I moved.  I was all in.  Whatever fit in the Grand Am made the journey to my first little, cozy, sketchy apartment in Denver.  I was alone and at times very lonely.  But, the school.

The first day I came to realize that they had given me the best room in the whole school – who knows why… but I had floor to ceiling windows that looked out to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.  Sunlight flooding into the room of desks and shelves and the floor pillows in the corner from a bygone era.  I also came to realize that this school had no money, ever.  So none of us really did, which is also the beauty of it.  The staff who graced the walls and seats and halls of that school were there for the journey, there for the students, there for the transformation and the experiment of caring.  Caring for each soul and doing our darndest to help them to know that they were cared for.

Day one of staff training I prayed with Connie.  I PRAYED with a colleague?  I was in shock, coming from the public school setting.  I was welcomed immediately into the life of the school.  Dear friendships were formed.  Michael and Carolyn and I were all new… so we sat together on a blanket at the first picnic where old friends were catching up, and we met Michael’s wife and daughters and that was the beginning of friendships that were near and will always be dear.  In fact, more than a hearty bunch of those colleagues grew to be my close friends and mentors.

I look back on those early years with such sweetness, but remembering the heartache that was shared as tragedy upon tragedy came upon the school community.  A beloved art teacher, though unknown to me, had died and his loss had uncovered the depth to which he had been loved and the breadth of his influence on the staff and students who had known him.  A car accident took the life of a dear student of mine, whose smile and laughter and good-natured quips were painfully missing from the halls of the school for the rest of that year.  To grieve alongside my students, whose grief was overwhelming them is a memory I can’t forget.  And then the loss of dear Ginny.  How can we go on, Lord?  Life is not fair.  There seemed to be more than an appropriate dose of pain, hardship, grief, in those years, at that school.

I had no choice, no other choice but to lean on the Lord who saves.  I cried into my pillow, cried out into the night more times than I know in those years.  “If it is not for You, this isn’t worth it!” I would cry out.  This was life at the school, this relational school, where we cared, where I cared, where I loved.

I remember the fear on Adam’s face when he thought he’d have to sing in my voice class.  Adam!  The young man who loved the spotlight, loved to crack us all up, loved any and every chance to play tricks on the teacher, or be partners in mischief with Kip.  I had that one chance to play to his fears of singing a solo onstage, though I know that if it would’ve come to it, he would’ve shown us all up.  I miss Adam.

Without the school I wouldn’t have met Kim.  Or Angela.  Or Rachael.  Or Phil.  But mostly Nick.  My man… I met my husband, shook his manly, paint-spattered hand, at the ticket table of his sister’s musical performance at that school.  I melted inside right away, though of course my exterior perhaps was trying oh so hard to give off an “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” vibe that Joshua Harris could applaud.  I saw him at sporting events, then at church, then at Bible study, and then our first date.  Our first public event was to chaperone the school’s spring formal.  We drove up together and arrived at the event at the same time as Branden who saw us together and grinned and I am SURE had some smarmy comment aimed at Miss Larson.

 I have told friends how I sobbed my way through the middle of desolate Nebraska on my way out to Colorado and the teaching job at the school.  I had been thinking of the possibility that I would meet my husband in Colorado, and how complicated that would be, with my family in one state and his in another.  So I cried.  And today as I look back I think of the mercy of God that we are not given a window looking into our future.  I wonder if I would’ve chosen the life that I live and enjoy today?  I certainly wouldn’t have sought out any of the hard times, but where would I be without them?  The mystery of the future is a gift.  And my life now and my husband and family are directly tied to my experiences at the school.

I cannot mention all of the students who lived and loved and taught me how to better teach.  I walked into the classroom (twelve years ago almost to the day!) and was shown my “curriculum” – a student textbook of each of the history classes I was assigned to teach.  And no book at all for government.  Nothing.  Thankfully my college education classes had prepared me for this “worst-case scenario” teaching moment, so I hunkered down and buckled up and started writing and creating and deleting and refining and wondering and trying.  I had very little going on in those days, those early days.  I had moved for the school and for the job, and so I filled my evenings and weekends with lesson planning, sometimes in my one bedroom apartment, sometimes by the community pool until the neighbor men became too friendly, sometimes at the Caribou on Hampden that reminded me of my olden days in Minnesota.  Then I tried out my fresh-faced, new teacher ideas on my willing subjects – my students.  I grew to love them.  The teachers at the school were models to me of relational education at its finest.  They showed up to the events that their students were involved in.  They talked to them before and after school about life and struggles.  The students shared, too.  They allowed us in to their world.

I will miss the school, which has closed its doors after over 20 years of service to the southern suburbs of Denver.  I have plenty that makes me angry about the way in which the recent leadership took hold of the reins and re-created a school in a different model, but that is not the point here.  My anger perhaps stems from a feeling of great loss – that I had been part of a wonderful experiment in education that may not exist for me or for my children again.  I know that I am not the only one who feels this loss today.  But with gratitude I look back on my years at the school and see how tangibly my life is richer because of it.  All of the love to all of my former students and colleagues at JES…

Live to the Hilt - a desire for home.

Here is a story of home.  

A year and a half ago, my family and I moved from the suburbs of Denver and the life that I and we had built there to return to the land of MY birth, Minnesota.  It was a literal dream come true for me.  A job opportunity made it more enticing and time specific, though the timing seems to have been… bad.  Just bad.  Bad, as in, we needed to be separated for 6-8 weeks prior to our child’s open heart surgery because that is when the job came in Minnesota and at that point we were not willing to change a date of surgery or location of surgery or surgeon for plenty of emotion-laden reasons.  So we moved days after Ada was taken off of oxygen following her surgery and 12 day hospital stay. 

And we moved home.  To our new home.  To my old home, as in, to my grandma’s old home, three miles from the house where I was raised.  To my home town.  It was the most logical place, as the house was now vacant and in need of renters, and we had no time or desire to make a wild choice between any of the suburbs of MSP.  I didn’t care.  At that point, the stress level of home and family life was sky high dealing with the preparation for major surgery for Ada and the aftermath of it.  There were no plans for five years down the road.  

As Nick and I were back in Denver for that first Christmas following our move, we had an hour free, sans kiddos and walked around an old King Soopers grocery store, reminiscing about the cheap repackaged eggs we would always scrounge for in our lean years.  “We’ve made a terrible choice!” we exclaimed to one another, referring to our decision to move to MN.  We were joking, of course, and yet… the pain of moving, the pain of loss of normalcy, the pain of building community and friendships that takes YEARS of trying.  It was too much.  And in our old home, we were surrounded by those places and people (and grocery store choices!) that were no longer in our lives.

We knew it would be tough and that it would take time, and yet one can know it in the mind and not actually be prepared to experience it.

Not a few times, I have driven slowly by the home where I grew up.  Looking to see if my apple tree in the back yard is still there (it isn’t).  Wondering if the dusty rose paint in my upstairs bedroom has been updated (surely it must be).  Wanting to just do a slow walk around the house and remember.   I have cried.  And sometimes it catches me off guard.  I don’t want to go back to high school me.  I don’t honestly wish for life to be as it were in the early 2000s when I last lived in Minnesota.  But this year and a half has been a much larger transition and struggle than I ever thought it would be.  When your dream comes true and you discover that actually you aren’t sure you want it…  

When I was a junior, I was given an opportunity to go to college a year early.  My two best friends were offered the same opportunity and jumped at the chance.  I wrestled and wrestled, wishing that God would just TELL me what to do.  I certainly prayed and asked that He would make things clear.  In the end, it came to the decision day, and I didn’t know.  I didn’t “have peace”.  Honestly, I didn’t have peace in either direction, so I just did the thing that was more “normal” – continue with high school one more year as planned.  As in, I gave up a free year of college.  Some would consider that to be a no-brainer decision to take that chance, especially in today’s culture and the sky-rocketing costs of higher education.  But no.  No thunderbolts, no wet ground/ dry fleece.  Just a lot of silence and questions unanswered.

But my life has been forever changed because of that decision, to stay home another year.  The friendships I made when I DID go to college… the opportunities that presented themselves and how that affected my other decisions to work at camp, major in education, teach in Japan, move to Colorado, marry the first guy I met there (J Just kidding, Nick, though you were the hottest and best J ) teach at a one-of-a-kind school, experience Guatemala, and the precious child we lost, then the two we have today… thanks be to God.

Our decisions in life are WEIGHTY.  They have effects.  Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, am I correct?  Some decisions in life are more clearly big deals than others, and we should give them extra time, consideration, prayer.  But I also need to calm myself a little bit these days and remember what I believe.  I believe that in the Word of God, the things that are the main things are so very clear.  And when God doesn’t speak specifically, we do our best to examine how He may be leading and walk in obedience.  But now that that last sentence sounds a good bit churchy, allow me to say this: sometimes you just make a decision and try to do your best to follow the Lord wherever that decision then leads you.  Sometimes in life I have to make a pro and con list on a decision and I discover that both options could work.  Stay in Colorado, move to Minnesota.  Both could’ve worked and there were positives and negatives to each choice.  But we chose one, and here we are, nibbling on snowballs and apple fritters from Herman’s Bakery and reading the Isanti County News.  Doing jealous Facebook feed scans of Colorado friends and their 70 degree January days and vacations in mountain paradise. 

Did we make the wrong choice?  I think - maybe - that is the wrong question.  God cares about us, clearly that is undisputed.  But we used our brains, our intellect, prayed for discernment... and chose something.  We also would've considered "following our hearts", were our hearts not totally and completely wrapped around the well-being of our child in those days of decision.  Perhaps the question to ask is more basic... are we seeking God here?  Are we becoming more like Him?  Are we letting God work in us and through us?  Or are we sidetracked, sidelined, stymied by regret, discouragement, loss, fear?

Jim Elliot, oh Jim Elliot.  I certainly hope this is a real quote of his… in any case, he is rumored to have said, “Wherever you are, be all there.  Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”  Let’s do this thing.  Let's make a home here, because here is where we are.

Happy Heart Month!

February 22, 2017

We are at the end of a month that is meant for increasing awareness for Congenital Heart Disease.  Heart week.  Heart month.  Good ole Valentines’ Day is our patron day of relatability.  Hearts are everywhere, and I have eaten a good many chocolate, peanut-butter filled, and Sweetheart varieties.  We have cute cards and a plethora of notes and goodies now that the Kindergarten party is over and all the sweets are home.  Also, a couple Ninja turtle masks and a heap of temporary tattoos.  Love to see what marketing comes up with as the years go by.  I like it.  I like the intentionality and the love giving that can be involved in the holiday.  But heart month…

The American Heart Association says that 8 out of every 1000 babies are born today with some sort of congenital heart defect- that is almost 1 in 100.  40,000 babies in our country each year are born with a heart defect.  I had one of those babies.  I HAVE one, I should say.  Ada is five now.  She is happy, carefree, loves Paw Patrol along with every other kid I know.  She built a snow fort this weekend in the cul de sac with Daddy and me.  She ran around the park playing football with a brother and a daddy and an uncle and me on Sunday.  She is normal.  But she has a scar that tells of the past five years.

I recently met a woman whose niece was born with a heart defect that sounded similar to Ada’s.  I want to contact that mom, bring her meals, give her hugs, cry, and pray and be there for her.  But also I am remembering that when I was pregnant with Ada and had heard that she had a complex congenital heart defect, I didn’t reach out to the handful of others who were friends of friends or cousins to next-door neighbors, or whatnot.  Ada’s condition was complex enough that I didn’t want to hear from a stranger about how it all went well with their kid.  That wouldn’t guarantee a thing for my baby.  So leave me alone to my grief.

So, isolation.

Not that we weren’t surrounded by a heap of loving family, friends, small group.  That made all the difference.  But I was not encouraged by the words of others telling me that for another child, another situation, there was a positive outcome.  It was all well-meant.  So, looking back, what did I learn?  How can you help a friend or family member whose child is born with a heart defect…. OR, I think this can be more broad of a question… in what ways can you help the mother, the father, the family whose child is hospitalized or undergoing a season with a lot of medical needs?

      1.  Show up.  But show up with food or coffee, please, and don’t stay too long unless they BEG you to.  And if they are Minnesotan, they have to beg you, so make sure that the begging sounds legit.  Oh, and ask first.  I had a friend set up a meal train for us at the hospital, so for a couple of weeks, we didn’t have to think about dinner, and there was no way we were going to leave the hospital early on after Ada’s surgery for something “minor”, like food.  A friend would stop by with a tasty meal and chat for a few minutes, and it was so therapeutic for me to be able to have some of my friends see what we were in the midst of and be better able to understand.  Some of the hand-offs were awkward, as in the hospital there is constant activity with doctors, nurses, meds, cleaning crews, vitals checks, x-rays, blood draws… so though it might’ve been a “good time” for a visit a half hour earlier, that window may have quickly closed by the time the visitor arrives.  So, be flexible.  Hand off some food or beverage (COFFEE), give a hug, and don’t feel bad if you sense you’ll just have to head right back out the door.  The visit wasn’t about you, anyways.

    2  Well, this one wasn’t #1, but sometimes you just need to meet those physical needs first. If there is someone on your heart and you know that their circumstances are so difficult and you want to do something for them, pray.  But here’s the deal: it didn’t mean much to me if people told me they WOULD pray, or that they HAD BEEN praying.  Just do it.  Pray out loud, with the person.  Or, just as beautiful, pray for them when you think of them and DO it.  I have my own personal baggage with people telling me about praying for my daughter, that she would be healed.  And then she wasn’t.  So that’s just what I need to deal with in my own walk with God, but here is the thing: pray for peace.  Pray for skilled doctors and nurses as they assess and treat and make decisions in sometimes stressful situations.  Pray for the family dynamics and for peace and encouragement in the hearts of the care-people – mom, dad, siblings.  Pray for healing and effective operations of course.  But for myself, let’s just say that it didn’t help me to know that- for example- people were praying for the holes in Ada’s heart to close.  It was those very holes that allowed for her heart to circulate blood as it needed to, given her specific heart anatomy. 

     3.  Listen.  This leads out of the prayer category.   Ask your friend how they are doing, and ask at a time or in a way when you can really listen to them.  A friend of mine came to the hospital just to check on me… I walked off the elevator and when I saw her there I started bawling.  We went on a 20 minute walk outside the hospital and she just let me talk and “vent” over my experiences  and that was the greatest gift I needed in that moment.

   4.   Learn.  Seeing the pain of our friends and family can lead us to want to know more about their struggles.  Some of our family members made great efforts to try to learn about Ada’s heart and the specifics of what she was going through and how she had been knit together.  It was therapeutic for Nick and me to be able to talk through some of the particulars of her situation with close friends or family who had learned what they could so that they could more fully understand and relate to our situation.  And not only that, but they could be in a position to support and encourage in our particulars.  This is a way to show love.

   5.     Remember.  It sure feels good to be remembered, doesn’t it?  In life, when we go through stress-filled or traumatic events, they change us.  They are pivotal memories, pivotal moments.  Sickness, surgeries, hospitalizations, health scares – they all leave a mark on our lives.  When those we love remember those times with us, it is huge.  In the last year there have been 2 or 3 times when our friends have reached out to us as their children have been hospitalized or have had health scares, knowing that we have been “there” – or in a similar situation.  It IS a big deal.  But to know that you are not the only one who remembers the trial can be healing.

    6.   Again, food.  Food and coffee, coffee and food.