A vision...

The flowers in the field

White, tiny, covering the ground

Blanketing the dry, cracked soil

Protecting it in beauty.

The sky, clear and blue

No trace of clouds

She dances there

In the middle

Spinning around, arms spread wide

Breathing deeply and laughing loudly

Her head is tilted back so she is facing the sky

She giggles and hums

What could she possibly be enjoying?

Is it the act of dancing?

What music does she hear?

The only sound that can be heard is her laughter.

Is it the sun?

The warming of her face?

Is it the flowers?

But she's dancing over them.

It is the song playing in her soul.

"Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;

let all the trees of the forest sing for joy."

She sings her own song

No knowledge of what words will come out next.

She sings what she feels

Singing to the Lord, praising His name

Declaring His glory, His majesty, His honor.

Everyday I get a little bit stronger

Love when lyrics explain exactly how I feel. I've been seriously working on getting over a broken heart...and it's true...every day I get a little bit stronger.

Until I get pulled back in...

Woke up late today and I still feel the sting of the pain
But I brushed my teeth anyway
I got dressed through the mess and put a smile on my face
I got a little bit stronger

Riding in the car to work and I'm trying to ignore the hurt
So I turned on the radio, stupid song made me think of you
I listened to it for minute but I changed it
I'm getting a little bit stronger, just a little bit stronger

And I'm done hoping that we could work it out
I'm done with how it feels, spinning my wheels
Letting you drag my heart around
And, oh, I'm done thinking that you could ever change

I know my heart will never be the same
But I'm telling myself I'll be okay
Even on my weakest days
I get a little bit stronger

Doesn't happen overnight but you turn around
And a month's gone by and you realize you haven't cried
I'm not giving you a hour or a second or another minute longer
I'm busy getting stronger

Can we pretend?

All this is based off of this video and song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn6-c223DUU.

I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to a song and felt like, “Wow…this is me.” Or maybe you just sing it with everything you have every time you hear it on the radio.” Music always does that to me. It gets me so often that when I was a sophomore in college, I decided I wanted to host a radio show about the effects music has on people.

Me as a radio host – not so great. The mic would be positioned above my head and somehow while on air it always would manage to smack me in the face and all that button pushing… you don’t even want to know how I did with that, but we did have the most listeners of any show at the radio station. Probably because my mom and all my relatives we’re listening.

I think it’s because our show was an interesting topic. It was called “Not Listening.” I hosted it with my friend Jes and it was all about how we aren’t listening to the music we are hearing. Now I know you must be saying … “Huh?” Well we sing words and frequently we don’t know what words we’re even singing, let alone what we are actually singing about.

For so long I used to sing the song “Miami” by Will Smith and on the chorus I thought he sang “Am me ee mo a Miami.” Well some of you may know my room mate is actually from Miami where there is a large Cuban population so a lot of times Spanish can be more common than English. Some of you also know I’m a pretty proficient Spanish speaker. One day, I was feeling a little slap happy so I walked into my roommate’s room and I bust out into this song. She looks at me like I have three heads and says “What the heck are you singing?” I say, “You know the Will Smith song.” She just goes, “Your stupid…the words are Bienvenidos a Miami.” I have an epiphany…Welcome to Miami is what they are singing. I know the Spanish translation. How often though do we not even know what we are saying when we sing along with a song?

Somehow though, music seems to come down and touch a part of our hearts…I might even be so bold to say it touches a part of our souls. Like when I hear Goo Goo Dolls song Iris or Slide, I just seems to reach into my body and pull on my heart. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. How songs affect us. In particular, we are going to talk about B.o.B. and Hailey William’s song Airplane. This song gets me every time…I’m always singing in the car and it brings up the same emotions within me that the singers are trying to express. Take a look at the first part I think is important:

You get another hand soon after you fold
And when your plans unravel
And they sayin' what would you wish for
If you had one chance

To me, this part is all about how things just don’t go the way you’d have them go. I hear this guying saying, I gave up on one crappy bunch of cards life dealt me just to get another bunch of cards that I can’t deal with. He just seems to be going through trial after trial. I can relate. When my friend committed suicide, the next month another friend confessed to me she was cutting, and then 2 weeks later I went through a really bad break-up. Yeah I get repeatedly being dealt cruddy hands and all the plans I’ve made unraveling right before my eyes. I couldn’t even catch the plans and try to manage them…everything just imploded in front of me.

So then the next emotion this guy brings up makes sense:

I could use a dream or a genie or a wish
To go back to a place much simpler than this

I could take all that messed up stuff going on in my life and really use a dream coming true. Or a magic genie to grant me one wish. Or to go back to a time where I didn’t have any drama…you know the time when I was cruising the streets on my Big Wheel. I can relate. Sometimes I do feel like that. Sometimes I do wish I could just slip out of all the drama, pain, and suffering. I wish I could just find a shooting star, make a wish, and poof my life is better.

So from there though – I think we can go two directions in life. The direction that the song suggests…or the direction that I’m going to propose.

The song suggests:

Can we pretend that airplanes
In the night sky
Are like shooting stars
I could really use a wish right now

Well if we can’t really have a wish on a real shooting start (because you know those actually work NOT), then why not fake like an airplane is a shooting star and make the wish. That way I can kind of cope with the situation at hand. She’s essentially saying, “I’m going to trick myself into thinking this plane is a start, so I can at least make a wish of some sort.”

I can’t knock her. I sing the song just as loud as the next person who loves it AND I actually relate to those lyrics. I want a wish sometimes. I want to escape sometimes. But I think there’s one flaw in that, staying with that feeling of wanting to wish yourself out of a situation.

Pastor Mark talked a few months ago about having hope around Christmas time. He said it’s on thing to be hopeful for the future, but it’s another thing to have your hope attached to something stable…meaning Jesus.

I get swept up in this song and sometimes I forget I actually have hope. I don’t have to make wishes on airplanes.

Where do we have hope? We have hope in:

• HOLY SPIRIT: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13

• BIBLE: For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope
Romans 15:4

• GOD: He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us...
2 Corinthians 1:10

I know that when I wish on an eyelash or a lady bug or a shooting star that nothing is going to happen. It’s not. We don’t have to waste our time making wishes to comfort our hopes and dreams, we can actually have hope in God.

So I could see you doing a few things in response.

1. You could try taking your hope in the Holy Spirit…by asking the Holy Spirit to provide you guidance.
2. You could try putting your hope in the Bible….that’s full of truth, lessons to learn from, and encouragement
3. You could put your hope in God who has done great things and works all things together for your good.

preaching can equal change

I spoke 2 weekends ago (maybe 3) at the Barn Vineyard to their youth group.

I didn't think it went particularly well, but not poorly either. I preached about how students could 'rock on' with the abundant life that we are supposed to be living as Christians.

In the last couple of weeks, two teens messaged me and the youth pastor contacted me. All of them contacted me with stories about how they (or his students) are living the abundant life that Jesus came to bring us by doing two practical things that I talked about 1) forgiving others and 2) not gossiping.

I don't think I've ever seen the impact of my sharing before, but I went to visit this group last night and they are changed. One kid worked with God to have the root of bitterness removed from his heart and he even LOOKS different. He was smiling last night...maybe even beaming. There was a little more wholeness in the group. It was awesome.

Pretty Good Thoughts

Redpoint Magazine is the online youth pastor magazine for the Vineyard.

I read it a lot.

I liked this article today. It has to do with how the Holy Spirit is restoring confidence in God among youth. Cool.

http://www.redpointmag.com/2011/05/13/how-the-holy-spirit-is-restoring-god-confidence-among-youth/

"We're not worthy."

Today we’re going to talk about worthiness. The worthiness of God versus our own unworthiness.

Sometimes I like to think I’m good at stuff. Sometimes I even like to think I’m really good at stuff. God’s gifted me with a lot. I got a brain. A special one that sometimes feeds into my gigantic ego. In high school, I didn’t study and got all A’s. I barely tried and graduated second out of 550 kids. Yeah, sometimes I think I’m the bomb. Then when it comes to my classroom, I am not half bad either. I get raving reports from the principals when they observe and for all the kicking and screaming my students do, they like me. They know they are learning a ton and that I’m good at what I do. So I’m, you know, I’m pretty worthy...

Well when I put myself up next to God though, things come out a little bit differently. Check out Psalm 145. Psalm 145 is David, this kicking king’s praises (or according to Mr. Webster, David’s warm approval) of God. The book of Psalms is unique in the way that it is God’s Word to believers and it also the believers’ words back to him. You can read the Psalms as God’s word to you and learn about him and his ways AND you can pray and worship him the way he intends by praying them back to Him. The more you read and learn about God’s character, the more you’ll find it easy to worship him.

Take a closer look at verses 3,4, and 5. David is acknowledging how great the Lord’s works are. How people (one generation) will commend Him for His great deeds. Well, I’m teaching in North Philly. That’s pretty great. People commend me all the time for what I’m doing. Then there’s David, the guy actually writing this- he stepped out in faith and courage stood up for Israel by defeating that Philistine Goliath. He was this fantastic king who led a great army to many victories. So yeah—People commended David for what he did, too. Maybe David and I aren’t half bad.

Then we move on to verses 7, 8, and 9. I’m kind of those things, but now I’m stetching it. I bet David would be too. God is slow to anger. We move on about who God is and I’m done. There is absolutely no way I match up to any of this. I am so incredibly not like God. No matter how hard I try, I am not faithful to all my promises. I just can’t do any of that stuff to the extent God does it.

Think about in Wayne's World when Wayne and Garth meet Alice Cooper. It’s because of the posture Wayne and Garth take towards Alice Cooper. Now I’m not saying Alice Cooper is worthy of praise, but if we think of this as a type of model of worthiness versus unworthiness. Wayne and Garth realize they are teeny, tiny in comparison to Alice Cooper. I mean they need back stage passes to get into his dressing room. Everyone’s dying to get backstage to talk to Alice. He’s full of incredible information. He’s like a rock god. And then there’s Wayne and Garth – nobody’s. They were lucky to get backstage passes and be permitted to enter into the presence of Alice Copper. Not only that – Alice Cooper invited them to stay and join him. Bam- Wayne and Garth drop to the floor to acknowledge their unworthiness. They’ve compared themselves to Alice Cooper and realized this is the guy to be worshipped. They even say, we are scum. They know the chasm or great divide between themselves and Alice Cooper. Now that was just an analogy, but think about Wayne and Garth’s response to their god…or we might better term him…an idol.

Now stepping aside from Alice Cooper and moving onto our God, the true God worthy of all praise. When I compare the character of me and of God in Psalm 145. Bam – It’s clear I’m not worthy of any earthly praise, but this God-dude is worthy of it all. God is totally worth worshipping. I am humbled by the fact that no one is going to remember how I taught or what I taught 20 years from now. My focus is not on being remembered or being worthy of other peoples praise. My focus is on giving credit where credit is due. To the God who created me to do His work. I am humbled by how much time I waste thinking about how I can get other people to notice me when I could be getting other people to see God…someone actually worthy of serious worship.

the gift of youth ministry

youth ministry is a frustration sometimes when you want students to understand the love and sacrifice of God and they just say, "that's nice, but i'm going to do my own thing."

the gift though...when a student comes back after going away for awhile and says, "this Jesus stuff is real. i'm sold out for it."

Kingdom wins. they are my favorite.

nobody wants a deb at the party

nobody like debbie downer. she's no fun. she actually sucks the fun out of the room.

my goal after all that's been going on: don't be a deb.

Thank you to The Supremes.

Dude! I love this song. All the lyrics are totally legit...thank you to The Supremes for putting lyrics to everything I feel!

Why do you keep a coming around
Playing with my heart?
Why don't you get out of my life
And let me make a new start?
Let me get over you
The way you've gotten over me

Set me free, why don't cha babe
Let me be, why don't cha babe
'Cause you don't really love me
You just keep me hangin' on
Now you don't really want me
You just keep me hangin' on

You say although we broke up
You still wanna be just friends
But how can we still be friends
When seeing you only breaks my heart again
And there ain't nothing I can do about it

You claim you still care for me
But your heart and soul needs to be free
Now that you've got your freedom
You wanna still hold on to me
You don't want me for yourself
So let me find somebody else Hey!

Why don't you be a man about it
And set me free
Now you don't care a thing about me
You're just using me
Go on, get out, get out of my life
And let me sleep at night
'Cause you don't really love me
You just keep me hangin' on...

Why teach?

I've been having to answer this question a lot lately: What is my teaching philosophy?

My dream is to see the achievement gap close in my lifetime and I teach with that mindset everyday. The achievement gap is real and it is one of the most (if not the most) pressing social issues America faces today. Teaching in a high needs classroom well is one of the most direct ways that I can make a positive impact towards closing the achievement gap. When I became a teacher, I committed to the relentless pursuit of excellence in teaching (i.e. high quality instruction). This commitment is one of the most important qualities of an outstanding educator.

Teachers are classroom leaders. Their role is to lead students to academic success. What is easy to casually write in an essay is much harder to enact in a classroom. I think that teachers can lead students to academic success by first understanding what their students bring to the table (and they bring a lot). It would be ignorant to assume that I am the only one in the classroom with knowledge because I have been assigned the role as teacher. Each student brings a wealth of knowledge from his or her personal experiences and it is important as a teacher to tap into that wealth of knowledge. Knowing what your students know is only part of teaching. The next essential step in leading a classroom to academic success is motivating the class to desire academic success. In my classroom, we do this through goal setting. We have a large classroom goal for the year and students have individual goals for the year. As the year progresses, we reflect on our progress towards our goals and we recommit to achieving academic success regularly.

I think that a major part of my teaching philosophy is to model what I expect from my students. If I expect excellence, I must then model it. This requires me to be prepared for my lessons, working relentlessly, transparent in my mistakes, full of integrity, and open with my own goals and reflections of my goals. What may seem like lofty goals have been actualized in my classroom. My students have scored an average of 80% or above on assessments, which indicates a mastery of the subject.

In addition, I deeply desire that students leave my classroom with more opportunities than they had before. Part of those opportunities is excellence in academics, which I discussed before, but there are other facets to increasing opportunities for my students. I think that it is important to paint pictures of where students can take their education, so we focus on possible careers that are applicable to their lives. I also think that it is important to come alongside students as a mentor-like figure and offer guidance not only about future careers, but present jobs, possible internships, conflict resolution, and higher education. I am committed to my students achieving success beyond my classroom.

Blogging about it? How apropos.

Well, my last post involved risk taking. God put the challenge down to me...and I posted it in the cyber world, which mildly was an attempt to make myself accountable to be a risk taker.

I took the risk. I got rejected.

And so, I don't know how I feel about this risk-taking business once again. Questions are plentiful. Trust is wavering and being renewed simultaneously. Hope is a distant feeling.

Jeremiah 29:11-14

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

Time to crack open Jeremiah. This is the book that's going to guide my restoration.

risk taking

I have always considered myself a person who takes risks. I make choices that give my mother stomach ulcers from worry because she always assesses the risk as too big. I am the first to volunteer to jump out of plane. Or possibly even more risky, work in North Philly with teenagers. I immediately on joining the rugby team in college and somehow survived living in Russia.

This weekend there was revelation: I am not a risk taker when it comes to my heart. I don't have great concern about physical risks, but emotional ones, now that is a different story.

God spoke this weekend. It was clear. The wall has to come down. Now, will I take the risk?

chains

my heart is free. there are no chains on me.

we hear the sound of revival coming.

so i got a tattoo in january that says unchained. it was to indicate that my heart is free and i am not chained to anything, but rather free in Jesus. i have noticed though...i'm still pretty chained. i was hanging with a very good friend last night when i realized how chained i really am, but how deeply i desire to be free.

it's like i can see freedom on the horizon. i dance most days towards that horizon, but occasionally i trip and fall. my chains get too heavy to carry. so i just lay there. the inertia almost seems to great. i'm chained. locked into all that Jesus wants to free me from.

what is it about one day over another? one day i'm dancing in freedom and then next i'm a slave to people.

but the beautiful and most challenging part of all this is that i can choose my freedom. there are 27 million people who are slaves that can't get free. i fight for their freedom. i pray for their freedom. but i remain chained. it's beautiful that in Jesus we get freedom. even as i write, i feel a cry rising up inside me screaming for my own freedom. today i choose to be free. Thank You Lord for that gift. In Your power, bring it to those 27 million people enslaved around the world because of human trafficking.

www.love146.org

why my iphone provides everything i need as opposed to a boyfriend

Requirements:

1. Balance checkbook - thank you mint.com
2. Rock star skills - ipod
3. Sense of humor - constant access to youtube
4. Good communicator - texting and phone capabilities
5. Leads me - GPS navigation
6. Do the dishes - okay...my iPhone can't do the dishes

a new start

recently inspired by a friend, i've decided to reattempt blogging. mostly, this attempt is based on my desire to jumpstart book writing again.

first, i had to delete all the old stuff. weird to read my first teaching experiences 3 years ago. oh, how everything has changed.

random thought of the day:

my church has recently been doing something called 'leap of faith.' part of the idea is that we pray for one big dream for ourself...in the hopes (and expectation) that God will answer it. i've slowly been realizing why it's called a 'leap' because i feel a huge risk of disappointment if this prayer goes unanswered because i've focused more prayer on it that anything EVER. what if it's unanswered? what do i do then? will it changed everything i've ever had faith for?