The Last Day of Being Miss Neal

And then, all at once, I was standing on the curb outside my little school, a retired teacher.

Friday was a half-day.  Never have I been so intent on keeping all my PCs alive for 4 hours than I was on Friday.  Thursday had been sort of… bumpy, so I was hoping for a smooth Friday.  We had assembly as usual, then recess, then a movie in Mrs. P's classroom, then half an hour of chaos - kids signing shirts and memory books, passing out high fructose corn syrup and Red 40 in its various forms.

All the while, I packed.  Encyclopedia sets I should've used, social studies textbooks, letter charts and flashcards.  I had been packing and taking loads of books and construction paper home all week.  

Lots of "can't you teach 4th grade next year?".  Lots of "I'm going to miss yous".  Lots of tight, waist-high hugs.  Then they were gone, leaving jackets and forgotten summer program flyers and a year's worth of memories hanging in the air.

Mom came and did what she does best - the hard work of summoning order from chaos - making stacks, scrubbing surfaces.  My principal initialed my checkout form, murmuring "thanks for taking the time to do this" as he looked through my detailed inventory entries.  We shook hands and he added to let him know if I ever needed anything.  I don't really know what sort of circumstances he had in mind when he said that, but I think he meant it.

As we stood on the sidewalk, Mom and I, she asked how I felt, if it was bittersweet.  I told her no.  Maybe in a few months, but not now.  Not yet.  I was too relieved.  It was too heavy to carry around right now anyway, too sticky with what ifs and should haves.  There were too many knots and tangles, dreams tied up with disappointments, successes and failures intertwined.  But life is like that.

I hugged her goodbye, thanked her again for her help.  I drove home, unloaded my car and spent the next hour digging in my garden.


Love,

Little Miss Sunshine

The Thing about Mothering

He put another parable before them saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field.  It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and comes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” 
- Matthew 13:31-32

The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed.  It starts unnoticed, like a tiny grain of hope tossed in the dust.  Like a baby in a manger in a tiny town.  It starts small, like a tiny orb of potential fighting against the odds to sprout.  Like a few rough and tumble impulsive fishermen who left their reeking nets because a carpenter said “Follow Me”.  It starts humbly, like an unassuming yellow brown bead who could hardly catch anyone’s eye.  Like a foot-washing session before dinner one day.

You know it by the life it leaves in its wake.  Jairus got his daughter back.  An outcast was healed.  A blind man could see desert sunsets for the first time.  And smaller than that, a father slowly ceased to criticize his children.  An employee paid back funds he was pocketing illegally.  The lonely was no longer alone.     

When it comes to the kingdom, things start small and move slowly.  They grow like the mustard seed, just a sprout at first, hardly worth notice.  Over time, what began as a yellow-brown speck sprawls into a tree.  It goes from easily overlooked to impossible to miss.  

Though the mustard tree started humbly, softly, it is not so anymore.  It is a monument to patience and persistence.  Its roots break up concrete, and its branches provide shelter and shade from an unrelenting Middle Eastern sun.  Over time, it has been transformed from vulnerable to powerful.  

These aren’t really my musings at all, just sermon notes from a sermon by Tyler Johnson this morning.  I’m not sure if he did it on purpose, but it was the perfect sermon to celebrate Mother’s Day.  What endeavor requires more persistence over time than mothering?  What job starts smaller and has the potential to end grander than mothering?

Talk about starting small.  A few cells multiply by miracle into tissues and differentiate into organs and ripple into fingerprints.  That sometimes squalling, sometimes serene baby will not always be 7 lbs. 6oz., 21” long.  Somehow, by means that are far beyond my college education (insert mitosis and meiosis diagrams here) that little person will become a walking, talking, working adult.  

Somewhere between baby showers and baccalaureate, mothering happens.  The thing about mothering is it often goes unnoticed.  Sure, people might notice if you are screaming profanities at your children, but for the most part, no one is going to commend a mother for giving her child a regular diet of veggies while also teaching them to celebrate the use of high fructose corn syrup in moderation.  No one is going to verbally affirm a mother’s decision to place a child outside their comfort zone to nurture an adventurous spirit.  

The thing about mothering is it happens in a thousand moments, like individual drops of water suspended on a spiderweb after the rain.  It’s the driving to soccer practice and showing up to dance recitals with flowers.  It’s the setting of healthy boundaries to propagate healthy relationships, even when those conversations end in slammed doors and rolled eyes.  

The thing about mothering is it is a force to be reckoned with.  Though it happens imperceptibly, it produces adults who have the potential to love well, give generously, and put others first - if indeed that’s the sort of mothering they got.  

In some cases, that sort of mothering was not acquired from the person who physically carried them in the womb, but from someone whose heart was big enough to guide the children of another.  Sometimes intervention by these “extra mothers” is the difference between life and death.  

Thankfully, I have a mother of moments.  She brought Capri Suns to soccer matches, and dropped me off at dance practice.  She said no.  She said let’s go.  She roadtripped.  She gave wisdom (and still does).  She modeled what ministry in the home and outside of it looks like.  She raised us day by day, meal by meal, spanking by spanking, kiss by kiss.  I am the woman I am today because of her.  

Happy Mother’s Day, mom!

Love,

Little Miss Sunshine

#Alt Summit believes every mother counts

The Last PCs

The Last PCs

the story of a change in direction

I don’t really know how to say this.  I feel like I’m about to break up with you.  

I’m not going to be a teacher anymore.  

I feel like I’m a writer who’s just killed off a character.  Miss Neal will still be my name, but only on airplane tickets and wedding invitations.  I know you have objections.  But Miss Neal, why?  But Miss Neal, what are you going to do now?  But Miss Neal, I thought you loved teaching precious children?  But Miss Neal, I thought this was your dream? 

Let me tell you, reader, it is not flippantly that I lay this dream aside.  After all, I was the one who read Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie and Christy and thought - that’s what I want to be.  Little did I know that it was much more complicated than having a “heart for kids”, lots of energy and a college degree.  

Teaching is a weighty thing, and to call it “being a teacher” is like calling the tip the iceberg itself.  Calling it parenting, counseling, organizing, planning, event coordinating, inventing, administrating, and teaching and anything else they ask you to do would be more accurate.  Naturally, you’d agree and counter with “but lots of people do it”.  You’re right.  

So why can’t you do it?  

I wish the answer were as simple as a sentence, that I can’t handle the confinement of “the system” or that I decided to start an orphanage in South Africa or that I had a batch of demanding, unreasonable parents that spoiled everything.  I know you’ll have objections.  

Do you have a terrible set of parents or a bad school?

The parents I had this year were reasonable, kind, helpful people.  I love working with the people I get to work with.  The school is positive, creative, and so supportive of families.  That’s not it at all.

But you’re such a good teacher!

I think I may possibly be a good teacher, but I am most certainly not a good manager, and that, friends, is what matters first.  I don’t think I’m Type A enough.  My small group laughed when I told them that.  I don’t think I had an inkling of how rigid and organized a 3rd grade teacher has to be, or that I want to be that organized.  I thought that I could get away with making teaching easy because I’m smart and have more energy than a power plant.  I thought wrong.  

But the breaks are so nice!

Yes, they are.  They really are.  And by the time you get to them, you need them desperately.  I don’t know that I am wired to oscillate between running 200mph and 0mph.  I think maybe running 60 all year is going to be a better pace for me. 

But it’s such a ministry!

You’re absolutely right.  The only problem is, when your job is ministry and your Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night and Sunday are ministry, it can get a little overwhelming.  I’m not saying we ever ever turn our love for Jesus down or decide when we want to love other people, but there should be a balance between pouring out and resting.  In the teaching field, I feel like there are three options.  You can be a teacher who doesn’t pull 60 hour weeks and neglects her job (not really an option).  You can be an experienced efficiency wizard who manages to get it all done in a 40 hour week.  You can be an 60-70 hour a week die hard who wins awards for her after school homework clubs, house visits, and community projects.  I’m not meeting the middle criteria, and the two bookends aren’t options I’m willing to consider.

But everyone says it’s just a learning curve!

You’re right.  And I think if I stayed in it for another 5 years, I’d get my act together and my kids might be achieving the way they should be, but right now, they aren’t.  A good sized lot of them are in the bottom bracket of testing because I didn’t know how to push 26 eight year olds hard enough.  In another 5 years, I’ll be almost 30, and really, in 5 years, I want to be home with my own kids, not just barely getting the swing of teaching.  

So what are you going to do now?

Well.  I’m staying in the field, sort of.  Last week, I was offered a position at Pearson in their inside sales department selling curriculum to schools.  It’s an office job.  I’ll sit in a cube.  I’ll probably wear heels and a pencil skirt once in a while.  I’ll be able to use my people skills and classroom knowledge to help teachers use their curriculum better and equip them with tools to help their kids succeed.  I won’t be working 60 hour weeks.  I won’t be spending money on my job instead of making it.  I won’t feel like I’m failing my kids.

How are you going to still be involved with kids?

Here’s what I know.  I love kids.  So much.  That hasn’t changed.  If I could teach a class of 5 of my toughest, most disrespectful hooligans, I would.  I know that working with kids is something I’m wired to do.  I kind of have an internal kid radar.  Sometimes I prefer being with them to being with adults.  They don’t take themselves so seriously.  I have a few ideas about how to work with pcs, like coaching soccer, teaching dance, doing a co-op class in the evenings, or teaching Sunday school.  

The truth is, I don’t know.  I don’t know if this is a hiatus or a goodbye.  I don’t know if it’s quitting or just reevaluating what I’m good at.  I don’t know if it’s actually a quarter life crisis, or if it just happens to fall around my 25th birthday.  I can’t see it all laid out right now.  What I do know is I want to try this, and I think I can do it.  I think my best friend got it right when she said not to think of it as quitting something but trying something new.  And that’s what I’m going to do.  I don’t know what it will be like.  I don’t know if you’ll still think my stories are funny if they’re about the secret life of an office girl.  Only time will tell.

Thanks for listening and for understanding,

Little Miss Sunshine