On Tough Love and Second Chances

Tomorrow is the last day of first quarter at the middle school where I teach, and I am not looking forward to the last-minute grading frenzy before grades must be posted for progress reports. Yes, I am allowing my students to turn in missing assignments up until tomorrow. Yes, the steady stream of crumpled papers featuring forgotten work that has been showing up on my desk all week will become a fire hose of frantically-completed assignments. And then it will all be FINISHED!

The pile of unclaimed no-name papers will be spilled into the wastebasket.
The list of students who haven't made up quizzes will be erased.
The leftover copies of everything since the first day of school will be filed away.

And then it's gonna get real.

Elephants Never Forget

Memory is a funny thing. Sometimes even the most dear moments that you tell yourself you want to treasure always can disappear, buried somewhere underneath the oatmeal you ate for breakfast this morning the TV series you binge-watched on Netflix three weeks ago, and countless conversations that you've had since that moment occurred. There that memory lies for an immeasurable amount of time until it is inexplicably summoned forth by an often unidentifiable trigger, to dominate your thoughts for however long you will indulge it.

Succulent Sunday

This morning I was so thrilled to find that these succulent leaves that I had set on some soil a while ago actually rooted and started growing tiny babies. Each one is smaller than a dime, but is a perfect miniature of the parent plant. Moments where you witness something precious always make you stop and reflect, and this one made me realize that if my heart is exploding with joy over this tiny, tiny plant, how much more does a mother's heart burst with joy for her child? And how much greater still, is the love of our Creator, whose heart is infinitely overflowing with love for us? These tiny succulents that still need to cling to the parent leaf are so small and helpless, and that's what makes me love them all the more. I suppose that's a sliver of a glimpse into how God sees us too.