It's so wonderful just to be here now

[Open Skies, David Crowder Band]

Well helloooooo Wednesday! It's not even hump day for me because I am going to a conference for first year teachers in Atlantic Beach this weekend and I get Friday off! I am pretty sure we don't have to be there until like 7 and I totally don't need the day off but they offered it so I'm taking it!

Plus all of my roommates will be gone tonight at a free Guster concert at Duke (Guster=luh-ame in my book, so I am not going) and I'll have the house all to myself :) Happy day. Just as long as they don't wake me up when they get in at one!

PLUS there's a SAVE/SADD assembly today in the gym- 9th and 10th during first period, 11th and 12th during second. Since I have all 9th graders first period and second period planning I just have to go be a teacher presence from 10:45-11:10 (plus check in my 11th graders uber fast in homeroom; the little five minute time after first period, and send them off) in the gym. So from 8-10:45 I get SUPER LONG PLANNING! YAY! Normally having a morning planning means you get screwed out of it ALL THE TIME but for once that's not true.
EDIT: Ok, nevermind. It's 8:50 and they just sent everyone back. After they said that they'd hold all 9th and 10th graders until the end of first period. Seriously... idiots. Absolute idiots. Sooo... good thing we have about 30 minutes of the movie left.

Ok. Off of why I am having such a lovely day. I wanted to say this in yesterday's post but absolutely forgot. One reason I was thinking about love and marriage and stuff was because of my students. Over spring break last week their assignment was a 150-word paper on what they want their lives to look like in ten years. They had to address ideal careers (and not just say, "I want to be rich."), whether they had gone to or were in college, where they hope to live, their ideal family set-up, etc.

The papers were fun to read. One really interesting thing I noticed was that the majority of my kids want to be married. The majority of my students are black and most of them, sadly, do fall into the stereotype of being raised by either by a single mother or their grandmother. Yet about 90% said they want to be married. I want that for them, too, and it breaks my heart to know that statistically speaking it will be rare for it to happen. I pondered this and wondered where the breakdown comes- how do they know what they want and yet settle for something so far from it? The numbers are over 90% for females that have a baby in their teens and then never get out of poverty. And you have to assume that most of the 10% that don't stay in poverty are the 18&19 year olds that are already out of school, maybe even married.

The biggest thing that prompted my thoughts about lasting love was what one of my students said. It was something along the lines of, "As for marriage, I am not sure. It seems like too much to ask in today's world to find someone that I could spend the rest of my life with." He put it a little more poignantly than that because he's a pretty decent writer, but my heart kind of broke inside when I read that.

He's an absolutely amazing kid and I am so excited to get the privilege of coming alongside him (and his family) to help spur him onto success post-high school. He's so mature for his age and is surrounded by the silliness that often permeates high school (not to mention foolishness) so maybe here he feels like he could never find someone. Plus, he's a child of divorce so maybe that's why he feels like love can't last a lifetime. I hope he someday will meet a woman who will change that perception.

Nonetheless, I wrote on his paper, "No, it's not too much to ask. It just requires patience." I think one reason that the breakdown of family values happens here is because so many of these kids are from broken homes so they jump too fast and too hard into these relationships begging for someone to love them and validate them. Isn't that what we all want? At the core we have some level of assumption that if even one person can just love us totally and unconditionally then we can rest in knowing we really are special, important, and most of all loved.

In I'm Not Alright, Sanctus Real says:

If weakness is a wound
That no one wants to speak of
Then cool is just how far we have to fall
And I am not immune
I only want to be loved
But I feel safe behind the firewall
Can I lose my need to impress?
If you want the truth
I need to confess
I'm not alright
I'm broken inside- broken inside
And all I go through
It leads me to You
Leads me to You

At the end of the day, that's what it all comes down to- we're desperate to impress, hoping that somehow it will get us that love which heals our broken hearts. Yet the point is that our Maker, the God of all, allows us to feel that deep need because all we go through is meant to send us into His arms. To rest in His love. In this I have peace. For this reason I am patient to wait on love, not overly concerned that I won't find it in this world.

I have experienced agape love- perfect, holy love- from Jesus Christ and in that I can rest. I pray for the same for my students.