Running On Empty

Posted on October 9, 2014 by Lynn

imagesFX3JUEJ0Everyone goes through it at some point.  The gas gauge needle is pointing towards the “E” and in some cars the light starts to flash or there’s a little beep that is supposed to remind you that your car is close to being empty of gas and if you don’t pull into a gas station soon the car will sputter and die from lack of gas.

It’s a great analogy about our spiritual lives, except we don’t have little warning lights or “beeps” that go on to remind ourselves that we’re running on empty.  Instead, we start to sputter and cough and before we realize what’s happening, we’re stopped.  Stopped dead in our tracks.

It may require a boost to get us going again.  A boost like a crisis that requires us to refocus and redirect our lives back to God.  It may be an actual death in the family, where we are reminded of the frailty of life and we need to re-evaluate our own lives.  It may be a mountain-top experience like a retreat or a conference that re-charges our batteries and keeps us going, for a little while at least.

I’ve noticed that when I stall out spiritually a good boost does help for awhile but it’s a short-term solution to the real problem.  Just like a car that needs daily upkeep to keep its engine running smoothly to avoid breaking down, I need to spend time daily recharging MY spiritual batteries by spending time talking to God and spending time in His Word.  If I don’t, it won’t be long before I will be running on empty and worse, completely stalled out and in need of a boost or a good push to get me going again.

A good push?  Just like a car dead in the middle of the road, a couple of well-meaning good Samaritans may come along to help push that vehicle off to the side of the road and may even stay with you while you wait for a tow truck.  Without their help, you’d be stuck there.  It’s amazing how that analogy works with spiritual stalling out too.  I don’t always have the will power myself to get out of the slump on my own.  That’s when I need a good “push” to get rolling again.

I have several friends who always seem to be available with a smile and a hug.  They check up to see if my spiritual gauge is starting to point down.  When I need a boost they get me back on track.  They always know what to say and pray to get me recharged!

Are you running on empty?  Maybe you need a boost or maybe a good push so you don’t stall out.  Look for ways to recharge those spiritual batteries but don’t forget that daily maintenance is necessary for optimal performance.

 

 

 

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Selective Hearing

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Lynn

As every parent with a teenager knows, with the territory comes some challenges.  In today’s tech age, just getting a teen’s attention at times can be virtually (pardon the pun) impossible.  Now my parents never had that techy-type problem with my brother and I.  We had selective hearing.  We could easily ignore their calls to come wash dishes or take the garbage out.  What we didn’t like to hear (or do), we would ignore.  We never missed dinner or dessert calls.  Selective hearing…it had its advantages.

Today’s teens are different though.  With iPods plugged into their ears most of the time, they honestly cannot hear you when you call them for anything.  We have an intercom in our house, installed by previous owners who were tired of yelling up the stairs for their teens to come down for dinner or chores.  I forgot that we had it when my teens lived at home and so after my voice was hoarse from calling to them upstairs, my husband tried the intercom.  The volume was set at maximum and I nearly fell over backwards from the blast of his voice reverberating around the house.  Did my kids hear him?  No.

I’m sure that years from now, a scientific study will discover that hearing loss in the next generation can be accredited to prolonged iPod usage, and gaming headphones.

I have discovered however, that today’s teen has no trouble hearing the tiny “ting” of a text message coming in on their cell phone.  They can’t hear their mother screech at them to empty the dishwasher, but the “ting” of a text has them scrambling to find their phone.  Selective hearing.

Another thing about this generation of teens is their inability to communicate vocally.  My daughter actually texts faster than she talks.  Again, there will be another study in the future that claims that texting has caused the next generation to have the inability to speak.  Tongues may one day become another vestigial organ.  At least it will be a quiet generation I guess.

I will admit that over the years I have selective hearing.  Yep.  Especially when God is calling me.  I have fine-tuned my ability to hear God’s Voice when He’s asking me to do something (that I like to do), or if He’s saying something (about me) that I like to hear.  It’s funny how fast I can jump to attention when I am getting my pride stroked, or I’m involved in something I just LOVE to do.  But watch me ignore God’s Voice when He asks me to do something I DON’T like or if He’s disciplining me.  Wow.

Sometimes I wonder if God is hoarse trying to get my attention sometimes!  God does speak, but it’s not okay for me to choose to listen to only those things I want to hear.  Selective hearing then becomes disobedience, plain and simple.

Do you suffer from selective hearing when it comes to listening and then responding to God?  Or perhaps you’re more like a teenager, too distracted with technology and being “plugged in” you simply can’t hear anything?

“So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did.  That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’  So I declared on oath in my anger, They shall never enter my rest.’ ”  See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.”  (Hebrews 3:7-12)

 

 

 

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Teacher, you never smile…

Posted on September 23, 2014 by Lynn

It’s been a hectic few weeks settling into a classroom routine again.  I will admit that my biggest professional challenge is just learning the technology that now accompanies our 21st century learning environment.  Students of all ages are using computers, tablets, smart phones and the like in their classrooms and I am WAY behind the times when it comes to utilizing technology in the classroom.  As I told the techies in my school, “I know enough about computers to be dangerous!”  After their countless trips to train me and try to undo my computer crashes and glitches, they now believe what I say.

Will I ever get it right?  *sigh*

I’ve been in a classroom long enough to notice the signs of stress, not in my students per se, although they certainly stress out, but in my colleagues and my friends who teach.  There are days that weigh heavily on me and I just feel overwhelmed but something I promised myself I would do is SMILE…a lot.

It happened WAY back when I was the director of my own preschool.  Not only did I have the responsibility of being the owner and operator of the preschool I also taught the four year old classes every day.  I loved being in the classroom but after a particularly stressful week I was reading a storybook to one little guy who looked up at me and said, “Teacher, you never smile…”

His matter-of-fact statement shocked me.  I had fallen victim to a common malady amongst teachers: letting our feelings/stress show on our faces.  Oh my!  I hugged the little boy and apologized and immediately put a big smile on my face.  I didn’t feel like smiling but I smiled because my students needed to see their teacher smile.  I did it for the kids!

Teachers, we spend a lot of time preparing our classrooms and lesson planning and organizing fieldtrips etc. etc. etc. but the easiest thing you can do for your students is give them a smile everyday!

Case in point.

I have been teaching a vocabulary, grammar and spelling unit to my junior high students.  Admittedly the content is dry.  It’s hard to motivate students to find anything remotely “smile-worthy” about conjunctions, adverbs and pronouns so I applaud Weird Al for helping me out this year with his video: Word Crimes.  At least my introductory lesson was fun when I shared that video with the class!  Yesterday we were trying to wrap our heads around yet another grammatical term and one boy pulled out his iPhone-there’s that new technology again 🙂 and asked “Siri” what the definition of that term was.  For those of you who are even more technologically disadvantaged than me: Siri is that little Miss Know-it-all that comes with your smart phone that acts as the voice of all the internet wisdom of the world.  Hahahahaha!  Definitely being sarcastic here.

Anyway, I immediately put the kibosh on using Siri to look up definitions…I’m still “old school” and think my students should use a good ‘ole fashioned dictionary in book form even.  So I said, “I ban Siri from this classroom!”  I was probably frowning when I said it.  A student piped up immediately, “Are you Siri…ous?”

Okay…I smiled… then I laughed…belly-laughed even.  The rest of the class laughed with me and we had a good, but unexpected introduction to the humour of using puns.

One young man commented that it was one of the best language arts classes he had attended all year.  I had to agree.

So remember to smile Teacher, and I even recommend laughing out loud in the class.  Some days it’s hard to laugh, hard to smile but do it anyway.  Smile for the kids!  It will make their day and it will make your day too!

 

Posted in Family Life, Proverbs 16:9 - Journey Thoughts, Teach on, Teacher! | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments