Against the Wind

The gators are definitely coming back. Now that it’s getting cold, they’re less and less active, but we did have some serious gators around this summer. A lot of people who live near water had to deal with nuisance gator problems. And the same fellow, McCrae, a taxidermist, who showed Tara about how he captured gators, and tried to save injured animals when she was a scout many years ago, he’s still the parish nuisance gator guy. He and his wife were on our prayer list one Sunday. So was the boy who had his arm bitten off by a gator while he was playing near a levee. He was lucky to get out alive. That was this summer.

The health of the local gator population is a decent metaphor for my growing strength. I’m finding I am some days quite “awake,” alive to the world’s possibilities and grateful for the chance to enjoy the treats of sight and smell that I’m offered. But it’s never long but the gators are back swimming. I easily get discouraged, and fall into my habitual torpor. All that nasty baggage is still swimming about 90% submerged, and then when I think I’m doing fine with the semester, I’ll have a “gotcha” moment when I get terribly discouraged and upset.

The math courses I teach have way too much content in them…a great explanation for math education is that it is 30 miles wide and 1/2 inch deep. So as I left Pearl River High last Friday, I really felt that I’d failed in a lot of ways. By Sunday I had new ideas for how to approach the last week of the college algebra class, but the high scool is closed this week, so I tried to put into effect a bit of my epiphany at Nunez. I didn’t feel like it was any great success, but at least it was an effort. Maybe I can hone it before next Tuesday.

The courses that I’ve “coordinated” at Slidell High and been paid for were bothersome to me as well. I don’t think I’ve really earned my pay there. So I told my ex colleague, now my boss, that I didn’t think I’d delivered value for the school’s dollar. He’s happy nonetheless, because the high school teacher there is competent, but she doesn’t have the paper credentials. I know there’s a reason for those paper credentials, but it’s really not so that I can get paid to be a “teacher of record,” and do little more than shuffle a few papers about. But it seems I’ll be doing the same nebulous job next semester, and I will if we can get it a bit better defined what I’m supposed to do.

One of the biggest gators in my life is to be faced when I take my trip to Oklahome starting in the morning. How much of the left over flotsam and jetsam of growing up years are we allowed to blame on our parents? Or siblings? Bottom line is, the only way to get past it is to just get past it. I’m a grown up now. My kids are grown ups. It’s time to “man up” and be responsible for the things I can do something about, and let the other stuff go.

Last year we played the Thankful game. I made a parlor type game out of it. Everyone wrote down something they were thankful for, and we read them out and tried to decide who was Thankful for what. Barry was not sure he understood this game. No rules, no winners. Marianne was thankful for being such a beauty that everyone was awed by her presence. I was thankful that sometimes there are no rules! I don’t remember the other, though I do recall some were quite conventional. It’s sort of obligatory to say you’re glad for your health. But when you’re 30 or so, you really take that for granted. I’m thankful that an angel or two has passed this way this past year. I hope to see more.

Proverbs 6:25-29 Warning against adultery, continued….

Do not lust after her beauty in your heart,
Nor let her allure you with her eyelids.
For by means of a harlot
A man is reduced to a crust of bread;
And an adulteress will prey upon his precious life.
Can a man take fire to his bosom,
And his clothes not be burned?
Can one walk on hot coals,
And his feet not be seared?
So is he who goes in to his neighbor’s wife;
Whoever touches her shall not be innocent.