Three opportunities for empathy and humility

February 17, 2022

Maria Colossians 3, Humility, Patience , , 1 Comment

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience…..Colossians 3:12 ESV

Being an effective teacher requires exercising compassionate patience with one’s students. It’s easy to forget what it is like to be unskilled at something, to be a beginner.  What comes easily or naturally to us may not feel that way to our learners.

When I started teaching French to kids, I caught myself far too often using an irritated or impatient tone of voice. I’m afraid that my body language communicated: ‘I’ve already explained that numerous times.  You must not be paying attention!’

God did not leave me too long in that ‘superior-to-inferior’ posture, but creatively started teaching me empathy.

It happened like this.  One year, Mike asked me what I wanted for my birthday.  Wes and I had been batting a tennis ball over a neighborhood net during the spring.  So, I mentioned to Mike: “I’d love some tennis lessons for my birthday!” 

I anticipated that with three lessons, I would have developed basic tennis skills. Instead, these classes simply humbled me.

The tennis pro at our neighborhood club could not have been more gentle, thorough and patient. The problem was me. I could understand his instructions.  His words made sense in the abstract.  But my brain could NOT make sense of his verbal directions in a way to make my body move to match what he was describing.  I felt completely stupid, mentally deficient.

‘How hard can beginning tennis be?’ I thought. ‘And what is wrong with me, that I can’t connect body movements to his words?’

All of a sudden, I made the connection to my classroom.  ‘So, THIS is how some of my French students must feel.  It’s clear to me, but not to them. They feel stupid.’

That aha moment changed my teaching approach and I rapidly grew more compassionate.  But I still fell into being impatient with their slow progress. ‘If only they would pay more attention!’

Humility lesson # 2 arrived in June 2018. For the first time since studying Russian back in the ‘70s, I started learning a new language. What was different this time was that I was still teaching French to middle-schoolers.  All of a sudden, I FELT how slowly I needed a Spanish speaker to go.  I FELT how much repetition I needed before something in Spanish wired itself into my brain.  Nor could not control the process.  My brain directed my acquisition.  All I could do was try to understand the sense of spoken and written Spanish.

When school picked up again in August, I greeted my students with far more patience. I also eliminated some of my methods.  Now, I knew first hand that correcting their written or spoken French was no help. Someone has to be ready to receive any correction.  I waited until someone asked a question about a word or way to say something. I also started sharing with them my daily experiences learning Spanish.  They seemed to warm to my being a student just like them.

I applauded their progress more often with real warmth. I stopped forcing anyone to say something in French until they wanted to.  Madame Cochrane was much more human and humbler as a language learner herself. With Spanish, I felt the same frustration they did when they would mix up two French words that sounded similar.  This was a regular occurrence for me.

Often I lamented the previous 26 years of teaching French without myself learning a different language.  What a waste!

God be praised that today as I teach ESL to local Hispanics and French to two of my grandkids, I am a humbler and more empathetic teacher.

Since January 1, 2022, the Lord has now added an extra course in humility. Inspired by my daughter-in-law Anne who teaches 4–6-year-old children how to draw, I have set for myself the goal of drawing in a way that someone can identify the object! For years, teaching French and using a white board I just excused my poor stick figure illustrations, resorting to ‘Je ne suis pas artiste!’

But this past November, hearing how Anne teaches little ones to draw and seeing our youngest granddaughter’s work, I decided that maybe I could learn to draw.  So, I resolved to spend 15-20 minutes several times a week practicing. I figured that I would have to be at least better at the end of 2022 than when I started.

This new motor skill is once again feeding my empathy and patience muscles. I have not been quick to pick up this new way of moving my hand and seeing. Although we are more than half way through February, I am committed to sticking with my goal.

I know that for Anne, drawing comes easily.  She also is a natural encourager. When I’ve sent her a photo of something I’ve attempted and feel almost embarrassed, she applauds my efforts. Baby steps ARE progress.

Maybe our Father wants us to appreciate the many different gifts distributed among us.  Until I ventured out into something new, I took credit for my skills and thought that there was something wrong with others who weren’t like me. Until I tried those tennis lessons, something totally foreign to me, I had no sense of how difficult something might seem to someone not endowed with the same ability.

Do we expect everyone to think like us, to view situations the same way as we do or even do things in like manner?  Apparently so, for how often do we find other people frustrating!

In his wise providence, as John Piper has written, our God ’plans to permit’ all these circumstances with frustrating people. Why?  I think it’s to shape us into the men and women who not only bear with each other with loving patience, but also can praise Him for his perfect design and creativity shown in the variety of people.

Are you up to the task?

April 19, 2020

Maria 2 Corinthians 12, Confidence, God's Infinity, Matthew 5, Neediness, Prayer, Work , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Due to this pandemic-shift in my weekly routine I have more time.  One activity I have taken on is teaching 3 of my grandchildren beginning Spanish, via Zoom.  Two live in Florida and one in North Carolina.  Now, you have to know that I am only an intermediate-level Spanish speaker.  I’ve been working on acquiring Spanish, not yet two years. Being fluent in French has helped. God also has given me years of assisting kids acquire a language.

I do not FEEL up to this new task. But it’s not my limited Spanish that unsettles me, it’s my fear of not ‘being ENOUGH’ as a language teacher. I have doubts about creating and engaging my 3 students competently enough to hold their attention so that they both learn and enjoy Spanish.

This feeling of ‘not enoughness’, of not being UP TO the task is not new.  I struggled with that same sense of inadequacy during the 27 years I taught French.  I cannot remember one day when I ever approached my classes feeling confident in myself OR competent.  In fact, I had a love-hate relationship with this career.  On the days when a lesson would go well, I rejoiced and felt energized.  But a previous day’s success never translated into the expectation that tomorrow would deliver the same outcome.

I know I am not alone.  A pastor friend of ours ALWAYS asks Mike and me to pray fervently for the preparation and delivery of his occasional sermons.  Like me, he evidently struggles with doubts and fears about being ‘up to the task’, as do many others I can think of.

What about parents raising kids?  Do they ever have confidence in their ability to nurture, discipline and teach their children?  I don’t know a single mom who does! I never did, that’s for sure.

Mike, my husband, rarely feels self-confident.  During our 6 years in Western North Carolina, he would ask me to pray for EVERY radio script he researched, wrote and recorded, for EVERY article he composed for World magazine, for EVERY Sunday school class he taught, as well as for EVERY session meeting in which he took part.  Here in Huntsville, he continues to ask for and I know he depends on my prayers to our good God on his behalf.

One of our sons who is an Army lawyer texts us to pray for each court appearance and airborne jump he makes. We also pray for the weekly work, travel and parenting needs of our other son and his wife. They regularly share the tasks that face them that keep them ‘needy’.

So, I ask you, is self-confidence wrong or is it the norm?  Could it be there is something weirdly weak about me and the people I’ve mentioned?

Tabletalk, the devotional monthly magazine published by Ligonier ministries, reassured me this week that not feeling UP to it, to the assigned task, is normal.  Pastor David Strain wrote in his March 21-22 weekend devotional (page 57 of the March 2020 issue):

…..the infinite God…only (is) enough. (This doctrine of God’s infinity) reminds the anxiety-riddled introvert: “You are right to feel your limits so keenly. But you are wrong to think you should be up to the tasks before you.  You were never meant to be enough.  You were meant to live depending on Me. Only I am enough! My grace is sufficient for you, and My grace is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9).”

What a relief!  No wonder I don’t feel up to teaching the kids Spanish.  I’m not supposed to.  That uncertainty, that fear is a gift from our good Father. He created us to be needy, right from our conception.

I love 2 of the looser translations of Matthew 5:3 where Jesus proclaims the poor in spirit to be blessed.

Contemporary English Version: God blesses those people who depend only on him. They belong to the kingdom of heaven!

God’s Word© Translation: Blessed are those who recognize they are spiritually helpless. The kingdom of heaven belongs to them.

Is there no room for confidence in the Christian life?  You know the answer to that!  We put our confidence not in ourselves but in the One who is infinite, powerful, good, wise and sovereign over every one of us whom He created: whether rock, butterfly or human being.  What a relief NOT to depend on Maria!

Those infernal lies that seem like my thoughts

October 3, 2018

Maria 1 Samuel 3, 1Thessalonians 5, Complaining, Covetousness, Prayer, Satan, Spiritual Warfare, Trusting God , , , , , 1 Comment

Mike and I have been talking about the number of lies we entertain in our thoughts. We usually assume they are true. In fact, they innocuously blend in with our other ruminations in a way that makes us actually believe they ARE our thoughts (and therefore true!).

I’m an expert at detecting these lies in Mike. They are easy to spot should he happen to speak one out loud –  these inner verdicts on reality. (analyze THAT Latin word! verus =true, dictum = statement).

I now understand this satanic tactic, a favorite of the ‘father of lies’.  He tends to whisper or suggest ideas and conclusions that feel SO much like our own. We think we are the source of the thoughts. There’s no warning sign or danger alert that they might be from someone other than us.

Here’s my most current example. I was experiencing a difficult time with some 7th-grade boys last week. They were distracting French class.  I started fantasizing about how pleasant it would be to teach adults who CHOOSE to learn French (or English) with me. (first mistake – discontent followed by coveting. How?  by imagining something other than what God has given me).  Within a few hours I was thinking:

  • Maybe I’m too old to be teaching middle schoolers.
  • Maybe this should be my last year.

I actually articulated those thoughts and conclusions 3 different times over the weekend.

Result?  I slid into a sulky, grumpy mood by Monday morning.

But God!

I actually WROTE down in my journal, “Father – HELP me!  Give me fresh ways and ideas to deal with these kids. Help my un-desire.”

And to my surprise, within 5 minutes of recording that need, a memory from several years ago arrived ‘front and center’.  At that particular time, I had written a pastor friend, asking him to pray during a VERY painful early year at my current school.  He immediately wrote back to encourage me.

He had exhorted me to keep in mind that one or more of these kids I was teaching might one day become a missionary in a French-speaking part of the world.  All because I had persisted in teaching students French.

Through this very memory, God infused my being with strength!  The hope-giving reminder of why I must continue teaching French vacuumed away the discouragement in a flash.  “I MUST persist,” I concluded.

What followed next was even more powerful.  Suddenly I saw that my feelings and thoughts of no longer belonging in the classroom were not MY notions, but planted FALSE ideas by my enemy, the devil.

That realization grew as I saw more clearly just why this ‘liar from old’ would not want me equipping someone to speak French.  Someone who might one day explain to a French speaker just who Christ was and what He has done.

So, I am reminded, how blind we are when it comes to spotting lies – in ourselves.  Therefore, brothers and sisters, we must help each other by engaging with others. We should:

  • CONFIDE our discouragement with brothers and sisters in Christ and ask them to pray!
  • ASK MORE THAN surface questions when we see others; press a bit deeper when we detect anxiety or heaviness in someone’s face and voice. We can offer to listen and pray.

We don’t know how close someone might be to throwing in the towel.  Discouragement is a real life-drainer.

1 Thessalonians 5:11 Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

The Gift of Humiliation?

December 9, 2017

Maria Deuteronomy 31, God's Righteousness, Pain, Persecution, Righteousness, Sanctification, Trials, Trusting God, Work , , , , , 6 Comments

“I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then I must watch my reaction to it.”  Father Richard Rohr

That line bites!  Asking God?  for humiliation?  daily?  How is that wise or even safe?

But what if….

  • my justification for how I act/think needs correcting?
  • I think too highly of myself in some area(s)?
  • the only way God can get my attention is if someone I HAVE to heed points out a mistake, a failing, some negligence in duty, a SIN, a way I’ve hurt him?

The recent painful conversation with my boss three weeks ago certainly has given me much about which to think, pray and discuss with a few friends and family.  And I’ve sought God’s counsel through what He daily reveals in reading and chewing on His Word.

Last Monday, a parent of a former student dropped off some French newspapers she had collected for me in July on her and her daughter’s inaugural trip to Paris.  She had ‘re-discovered them in a corner’ and was just now, in December, bringing them by my classroom.  She included a long, handwritten letter where she detailed all the ways I had supported and counseled and guided her daughter during the 3 years I had her as an advisee and French student.  The timing could not have been better.  I saw that in this very school where I’ve encountered so much painful indirect criticism and chastisement (parent to principal to me)  I AM making a difference in some lives.  Maybe not with the particular student whose parent said I wasn’t supporting to her daughter’s satisfaction, but with others.  Thank you, Father!

Furthermore, my desire to improve how I teach French lives on.

So this morning I thought – What if…this BIG and PAINFUL thing is NOT meant by God as an indication that I should leave my current school but is actually just one of His good gifts of correction, designed to make me more like one of Jesus’ little sisters whom He is molding through many trials?

I’m not the only one suffering through a hardship.  Many brothers and sisters currently or soon will face the challenge of discerning God’s will.  These weighty decisions feel like a foggy business, with no clear step-by-step process to follow.  Some of you are grappling with decisions about business direction, moving house, changing jobs, whether to say something important to a loved one, what to do about aging parents, health treatments or any number of other issues.

I heard or read, and it resonates as so true that:  MORE important than knowing the right decision IS knowing the right person – the One, True God and Father of our Lord Jesus the Christ and giver of His divine Spirit.  This triune God IS the One who continuously shows steadfast love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness because that is who HE is!

So, do I dare pray Richard Rohr’s outrageous request and look for the humiliation vitamin to heal and strengthen me? (and you and I thought to pray for patience was a dangerous business!)  Well, if we believe God’s Word that the more we grow in holiness, the more we see Him and the more joyful we become, then why not?

Let’s look to God for a reassuring word from Deuteronomy 31:8:

It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.

The ball and chain of craving results

February 5, 2017

Maria Attitude, Control, Glorifying God, God's Sovereignty, Habits, Hope, Struggles, Work , , , , , , , 4 Comments

How do you measure your day, your work, your life?  If you’re American, chances are you think only about measurable results.

What’s wrong with that?  Why would you do something if you didn’t desire a specific outcome?

This is the month when New Year’s resolutions are grasped with intensity and then discarded with quiet disappointment. Yet hope seems to re-sprout with each new beginning, whether that of a school year, a budget cycle, calendar year or sports season.

Recently I have discarded my lifelong focus on outcomes.  I had become a slave to working for a specific result.

As a professional French teacher, I long to see students achieve skill AND enjoyment in the language.  Nothing inherently wrong with that.  Except my approach has been to hand over far too much power to my students to grant me the ‘success’ or even the ‘peace’ that I crave.

Yes, ‘crave’.  In fact, I now see a pattern that has emerged in my life. As I approach the end of my 6th decade, I find it easier to see themes and responses to life that I, by my actions, have crafted, either consciously or subconsciously.  Finally, I’m gaining the courage to give myself permission to STOP.

Is anyone else like me, in measuring their day by how well people react?  You might be a kindred sister or brother if you are a doer/performer like a musician, stand-up comedian, speech-giver, writer, film maker or even a skill coach.  Or maybe you’re one of the moms at home who teach their own children and are anxious to see growth.  Or among evangelists sharing the Gospel and discipling new Christian believers.

Despair and insecurity probably haunt more people than I realize.  Will it ever end, this never feeling like we measure up?  And I’m not talking about meeting OTHER people’s standards or expectations;I’m talking about the SELF-imposed high bars?  Let’s be real and call them what they are – prison sentences!

Recently, a ray of real hope broke through this burden I pick up every day illuminating a path of escape to a more fragrant and lighter world.

My daughter-in-law, who battles the home-school version of  ‘you’re not enough’, shared a verbal picture of what another mom explained as her daily task with her children. It was SO simple and SO doable.  Boiled down, the advice is this:

  • Each day, your job is to spread an age-appropriate feast before your children of that, which is true, beautiful and good.  In such a way that they can TASTE and SEE that the Lord is GOOD. (from Psalm 34:8)

Period.  That’s it.  She is not responsible for the OUTPUT, just for the INPUT.

Light-bulb explosion.  Isn’t that also my job as a language teacher?  to provide compelling and interesting and appropriate comprehensible input to my French students?

I am NOT responsible for their output.  That is an impossible assignment.  I can’t control them.  But I CAN control what I feed them.

And is this not also applicable to missionaries, both foreign and domestic, wherever God has assigned them (and us)?  We’ve all heard stories of years of labor before even one convert results.  The heart-warming account below is just one of many such examples. Missionary who thought he had failed.

What really convinced me of the sin of prideful expectations for Maria was a quote from CRU’s last print magazine, dated Sep/Oct 2016.  To wit: “We focus excessively on our output, because we want to be judged according to our effort, not our ability to remain dependent on someone else’s finished work.”

I am seeing this new insight transform my responsibilities.  I neither DO nor CAN control results. But I AM accountable in all my relationships for what I do and say and perform per the strength that God gives.

This lessened burden seems almost too good to be true, but I am proceeding as though it is and trusting our God to keep guiding me in all truth.  To Him be the glory for to Him belongs the power.

Not my strength

October 23, 2016

Maria 2 Corinthians 9, Complaining, God's Promises, Habits, Promises, Uncategorized , , , , , 1 Comment

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships,in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  2 Cor 9: 8-10

It’s been, like, 523 times that I have asked God to give me another job over the past 3 school years and 2 months.  Yet each morning as I walk up the steps to the middle school, I climb the evidence that FOR TODAY, I am in God’s will, here.  That today THIS is His plan for me.  Today my job is to work for Him as a happy, dependent ambassador…and serve my students, colleagues, parents and principal to the best of my ability as I depend on Him.

Often I FEEL that I am not up to motivating and engaging 11-14 year olds through the creative means that are required.  Teenage taste buds for anything that is not ‘fun and different’ have grown dull.  The challenge daunts and fatigues me.  Add to that, faculty meetings where I hear of and witness the creativity of my colleagues who seem to really love these kids in ways I don’t.  Together, these combustible materials fuel that inner narrative that is more excuse than accurate report:

  • I’m too old to relate to this age group
  • I can’t connect with them like my younger colleagues who are late 20s, 30s and even 40s.

But because God has seen fit to fence me in (income needs), I’m compelled to DEAL with the job He has assigned me.

In His kindness, He lightened the load last week.

Wednesday morning I was desperate. I was applying make-up and braiding my hair and musing over how to engage the bored, dull, tired 8th grade first period class. I was praying, too.  Just before I hit ‘PLAY’ to roll out the well-worn monologue of why I wish I had a different job, a new script for the day emerged!    What occurred to me was God’s promise to Paul, cited above.  As I applied it to me, I reasoned:

  • If God won’t let me escape today’s challenge, then He must be willing to provide for me.

That conclusion turned into a prayer:

  • Father, HELP!  I need to modify the plan so as to engage these students who complain of being bored. Give me an idea!

And a possible activity came to mind – one that involved a bit of partner work to engage everyone.

And you know what?  It worked.

That was Wednesday.  Then on Friday, we had one of those faculty meetings I described. Again as my inner voice intoned, “I’m too old….” But then, for some ‘strange’ reason, I stopped it and realized that it WAS possible for me to change the narrative…… from:

I’m just not good at reaching/connecting with MS kids anymore…not that creative…or fun like all these other teachers….(as in giving myself an excuse)

to:

Your grace IS sufficient for me in this area that I lack, for Your grace is made perfect in MY weakness…So please, give me the will to keep asking You for what I need today and EACH day.  By your power I CAN do this job.

Mike and I have a rule of thumb in our house.  If the cats get away with something naughty two times in a row, it’s a pattern.  If we don’t break it then and there before the 3rd occurrence, it will become ROUTINE for them.

I am now on the lookout for that 3rd time, so my new tape will be my TOP of the queue go-to one.  Old dogs CAN learn new tricks.

 

Christian Life Internship – Stage #25

August 28, 2016

Maria Acts, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

Interns The summer’s sabbatical has refreshed and delighted me. The school year is underway.  My quiet time is shorter now.

Typically I struggle with resenting the reduced margin in my days as I step back into commuting and teaching Monday through Friday after the summer.  I cherish that restful season.  I take advantage of the each morning’s leisure to ‘noodle’ around in my Bible, to linger in prayer, to investigate Hebrew and Greek word meanings via the Blue Letter Bible app on my phone or laptop.

And already toward the end of July as I anticipated the reality of HAVING to budget my time again, it occurred to me that I was looking at my upcoming transition all wrong.

God gives me the 9+ weeks of summer time out of school for intense study.  Then he sends me from my home-based classroom back to my workplace for another residency in servanthood.  The internship goes from mid-August through the first week of June.  But there are classroom periods scheduled each Saturday morning and for an occasional week or so throughout my annual residency. These are called ‘national holidays’ and ‘spring break’.

Through Holy Spirit empowered faith, I am trying to approach each residency day with this greeting to my heavenly schoolmaster:

  • Okay, dear teacher, what do you have planned for me this day?  What practical exercises have you, in your wisdom chosen and laid out? What summer study lessons do you intend for me actually to apply this fall among my students, colleagues and family?

I think I can trust him to be a perfect tutor.  After all, the Greek word that sometimes gets translated as ‘discipline’ -paideuó, means to educate or train. Discipline is just part of the formation process.

Acts 7:22  Moses was educated/trained/instructed in all the learning of the Egyptians

Acts 22:3  (Paul says of himself that he was)….educated under Gamaliel

PS:  If you’re curious to know why I wrote “Stage # 25” in my blog post title….It’s because this is my 25th year teaching French!

 

 

 

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