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)

 

 

 

Posted in Inspiration & Devotion, Proverbs 16:9 - Journey Thoughts | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

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

Terry Fox – A Great Canadian

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Lynn

I was a young bride and studying at the University of Calgary on my way to finishing my education degree.  My husband was going back and forth from Calgary to Comox, B.C. to visit with his mother who was battling cancer.  We did not know that cancer would affect us so much then or later when his mother lost her battle in 1981, my mother would lose her battle with the same disease in 1990, and I would be diagnosed with breast cancer eleven years later.  To say that cancer has touched this family would be a drastic understatement.  It is no surprise then that one of the people I admire the most is Terry Fox.

Terry Fox is considered one of Canada’s greatest heroes of the 20th Century.  Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1958, and raised in Port Coquitlam, B.C., Terry lost his right leg at age twenty to cancer.  Instead of wallowing in self-pity and remorse, the young athlete decided to run from coast to coast in order to raise awareness and money for cancer research.  He began by dipping his leg in the Atlantic Ocean at St. John’s, Newfoundland on April 12, 1980, with the goal of dipping it again in the Pacific Ocean at Vancouver, British Columbia several months later.  He ran an average of forty – two kilometres a day, a unique running style evident in a hop-skip approach that took tremendous effort and stamina to maintain the grueling pace.  No one had ever done anything similar to the task Fox was undertaking.

At first there was little media attention for the young runner, and his “Marathon of Hope”  but slowly and surely word of the courageous young man began to spread.  It began as idle curiosity and then spread to admiration across Canada.  Communities welcomed him and others began to prepare for his arrival.  It was like a national cheer or wave starting at the east coast and spreading to the west.

I remember watching the news reports and catching the “wave” with millions of other Canadians who cheered on his progress.  Terry and I were the same age and I marveled at his determination and strength.  Then on September 1, 1980 just north-east of Thunder Bay, Ontario after 143 days, running 5,373 km. (3,339 miles) through Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario, Terry was forced to abandon his run.  Cancer had spread to his lung.

I remember the interview he gave so vividly as I watched the news on T.V. that day.  His voice was hoarse, arms crossed over his chest as he lay on a stretcher, tears in his eyes; he promised he would return to the run as soon as he was able to.  Terry had raised $1.7 million dollars for cancer research during his run.

Unfortunately Terry died on June 28, 1981 at the age of 22, one month before his 23rd birthday, but not before becoming the youngest person ever to be awarded the Order of Canada.

Two-and-a-half months after his death, the first Terry Fox Run was held on Sept. 13, 1981.  More than 300,000 Canadians took part in the event at 760 sites across Canada.  The run raised $3.5 million.  Since then the amount raised in over 30 years of Terry Fox Runs is well over $600 million!

Fox’s heroism inspired other Canadians to similar feats in the name of charitable causes.  Steve Fonyo, another runner who had a leg amputated to cancer retraced the same route as Fox and completed the run in the name of cancer research.  Rick Hansen, a paraplegic athlete, made his own trek around the world in his wheelchair to raise funds for spinal cord injury research.

In 1982, British singer/songwriter, Rod Stewart, wrote the song “Never Give Up On a Dream” as a tribute to Terry’s Marathon of Hope and proceeds from the song went towards cancer research.

Terry’s goal was to persuade every Canadian to donate one dollar for cancer research.  Now the run has become a global event with over two million people running world-wide in organized Terry Fox Runs.

I’m not a runner, I’m a writer, but if I can help raise awareness through this blog, I will have done my part.  I encourage my readers to click on this link and generously donate to the Terry Fox Foundation  today.

Posted in Canadiana, Inspiration & Devotion | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments