The Roomie's Bday

About a month ago we celebrated my roommate Sarah's birthday.  We had some friends over for lasagna, salad, and Inside Out birthday cake!  

Officially an Adult

I got my first ever vacuum a few weeks ago which I think officially makes me an adult.  It was so weird for me to buy a vacuum, but it was time.  I'm pretty sure one of the leading factors in my decision of which vacuum to get had to do more with cuteness and color than its actual function but what can I say, I'm an art teacher.  Aesthetics are more important ;)

This Kid

This is Ice.  Ice is one of my Grade 7 students this year who is in my art class and is also in my homeroom class every day.  He is one of those kids that is just always happy, always full of energy and fun.  He is kind to his peers and a great student.  And he makes me smile every day.  He is always up for an adventure, always willing to speak his mind, have fun, and bring life to the classroom.  I am so thankful I get to hang out with him this year.

As you can probably tell from the pictures, Ice is full of energy... and he's super small for his age.   One of his trademarks is getting to every class first - before all the other twenty-two Grade 7 students.  When we meet for flag in the morning he is always there.  And at the end of the day when it's time for homeroom, he is always the first in my classroom - usually by 3 minutes!  Some of the other boys try to beat him but I don't think he has lost once.  Eventually he started playing a trick on them and hiding when he came into my classroom so that when the other boys arrived they thought they had beat him and got all excited... and then Ice popped out of some hiding place to their great disappointment.  Almost every day in homeroom he plays this game - camouflaging himself in a heap of smocks, or curling up in a cabinet.  He has even contemplated hiding in the trash can and asked me to clear off shelves in advance for him to hid in the next day.  It's so funny to see this routine every day - him running in and hiding, the other boys coming in, at first in triumph, but now they know better and just try to figure out where he is that day.  It's truly the little things in life like this that put a smile on my face every day and I'm grateful for Ice and his fun antics :)

A Peek Into the Art Room

Grade 3 and their Starry Night inspired skies

Grade 4 Comparing and Contrasting the 

36 Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai

Grade 1 Drawing Trees in their own style... 

...because "Every Artist Is Unique!"

Grade 1 working on their Textured Pumpkins 

 Grade 2 learning how to mix colors and learning about all the color families!

Having lots of fun, learning lots of art, and filling our worlds with color! :)

More blog posts to come....!

God Always Provides

I just arrived at the airport in Tokyo, Japan waiting for my last flight to Bangkok.   I was just starting to feel a little sad and lonely and breathed a quick prayer to God.  Less than 30 seconds later I arrived at my gate and a man chuckled and said, “I just had to laugh at the Market Basket bag!”  The plastic Market Basket bag was a last minute packing decision that I’ve been toting around from airport to airport.  As Market Basket isn’t the most wide-spread grocery store chain I inquired as to where he was from.  I learned that this guy was from Kittery, Maine and had been gone for 2 months, so to randomly see a Market Basket bag all the way in Tokyo made him laugh.  It's funny how insignificant things like plastic bags can bring people together and be a source of comfort!  He learned I was from Ipswich and mentioned that he and his wife had been down to the Choate Bridge Pub for a burger and gotten some seafood in the area before as well.  This guy in Tokyo had been a mere mile away from my house!  Sometimes the world is so small! 

It wasn’t a long interaction, but it was just what I needed.  Right when I was starting to feel that I was so far away from anyone I knew, God provided this close connection to make me feel at home.  He is so good!!

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An update to this story: This guy was actually on his way back home to Boston -- both of our gates got changed a couple of hours ago so that his old gate that was going to Boston got changed and became my gate going to Bangkok.  He didn't find this out until just now, accounting for the fact that we both spent time in the same waiting area.  This information makes me even more sure that our meeting was an act of God!

Spinning

I was reading The Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp to prepare my heart for the Christmas season.  I read this paragraph, which sparked the following thoughts:

“The earth outside your window is tilted right now at just twenty-three degrees.  ….So the planet’s bulk of six sextillion tons (that’s twenty-one zeros) spins perfectly balanced on an invisible axis, spinning you around at one thousand miles an hour, nine million miles a year.  Hurtling you through space even right now in this sun orbit at nineteen miles per second, 600 million miles a year. You, held in this moment by this unseen belt of gravity and turning these pages slowly while the miracle happens all around you.”

I sat for a while and tried to picture this universe, this earth, tilted in space, tons of tons suspended in mid-air, spinning around itself and spinning around the sun.  While I can picture it and know it’s true, it doesn’t really connect to my day-to-day life.  The earth to me doesn’t seem to be spinning, it seems still.  And from my perspective it’s not tilted, it seems straight.  And most of the time it doesn’t even seem round, it feels pretty flat to me.  My perspective on earth doesn’t always match what I know to be scientifically true.

I know the earth revolves around the sun, but in my day-to-day life I think of the sun revolving around the earth.  I mean, why do we call it a sunrise or a sunset?  The sun doesn’t rise or set.  The sun is constant, stationary.  As the earth spins, the sun appears to go up and down in a day, but really the earth is just constantly turning right. 

From my kitchen window one morning I watched the sunrise.  I could just see the tip of the sun when I started watching; it was bright orange and just peeking over the trees.  And at that part of the day the sun seemed to be rising pretty fast.  Within 5 or 10 minutes it was a full circle above a tall building and shining more clearly and brightly.  While it appeared to me that the sun was rising over the earth, I know that really the earth was just continuing to spin east as it orbited the sun.  I picture the sun going up and down, around and around the earth, when really the sun stays still and we are the ones spinning around and around it.

Sometimes I think we live as if God revolves around us, rather than the other way around.  While in our heads we know that God is most important and that our lives should revolve around him, do we really live that way?   Our lives can seem so big and significant and urgent, and God can seem so small and far off and irrelevant.  From our perspective, we are central, our agenda is most vital, and our needs are the most important. 

While God does love us deeply and does care about the small details of our lives, we are not the center of the universe.  He does not revolve around us to fulfill our every wish and temporary desire like a genie in a bottle.  He is the center.  Our lives should revolve around him.  Our eyes should be fixed on him; our purpose and meaning should come from him.  We should order our lives around what he is doing, not make him fit into what we want to do.   He is the main character in this story.  This whole universe is God’s story, to give him glory, and yet so often our perspectives are skewed to think the story is all about us.

Am I so caught up in my work and my life that I am trying to force God to revolve around my life, rather than making my life revolve around Him?  Are my thoughts on God and focused on what he is doing, or are they on me and focused on what I am doing?  Am I calling Jesus my Lord, my center, my everything on Sunday, but then quickly re-focusing on my to-do list, on clothes and food and work and friends, the minute I step out the church door?  Or maybe my focus lasts for the day but what about Monday morning?  Am I still revolving around God then?  How about Friday night when I’m tired and worn?  Who is the center of my life at that hour?  Do I think I am the main character of the story or am I truly living like it’s all about and for God? 

In this Christmas season, during Advent, am I so caught up with the decorations, and the presents, and the preparations that I am trying to make Christmas revolve around my life, and me, rather than stopping and letting my life revolve around the quiet manger?

It’s so easy to get caught up in the bustle – both of Christmas and of life in general.  We get busy.  We get harried.  Our world spins and our lives spin with it and eventually we feel like we are spinning out of control.  But advent is about waiting.  Slowing.  Expecting.  Christmas is quiet, simple, incredible.  Are we missing the incredibleness of Jesus’ birth because of the extravagance?  Are we slowing our lives down, stopping the spinning, so we can sit quiet before the manger and gaze upon the Lord?  Are we like Mary, sitting at Jesus’ feet, or like Martha, busy with the preparations (Luke 10:38-42)?  Which one is better?  Which one does Jesus desire?  We may think our spinning is for the Lord, but Christ wants us to slow down, to sit at his feet, and let our souls spin quietly in His love.

Let us slow the spinning in our lives, sit still before the manger of the sleeping Savior, and then slowly start to re-spin our lives around Him in the year to come.

Thanksgiving Video

Last year on Thanksgiving day I wrote a blog post.  This year my church wanted to put it together into a video to show during their Thanksgiving Eve service.  I know some of my friends and extended family wanted to see it so I am posting it here, as it is too large to send through email.  Hope it encourages you once again to remember all of the Lord's blessings in your life!

p.s. Sorry the quality is a little bad if you enlarge it.  I had to lower the quality to upload it...

p.p.s Thank you to Dave Sweet for putting this video together!