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  • Monday Again…

    For each of of the next 21 days, I will be sharing specific ways believers can set themselves apart for Christ through prayer, fasting, and intentional focus. Today is day 1 of “Setting Ourselves Apart IN…” 

    Monday. 

    The start of the week, and the start (restart?) of the stress.
    Alarms, to-do lists, traffic, demands. 
    Mondays are just hard.
    .The only thing I like less than Monday morning is Sunday night. I know...
    theberry.com

    Sundays at church, I feel on top of the world. I raise my hands in worship and get together with my people, and I feel like I can do anything. The coming week looks like a rose-colored world of possibilities, and I gaze with optimism at the days to come. I just know that I’m meant to make a difference come Monday morning.

    Then Sunday night comes, and I get that Sunday night feeling. You know the one – the nagging sadness that the weekend is over and that the work week with all of its, well, work, is coming. 
    And then, Monday morning. Back to the grind, back to the work.
    It’s so easy to walk into the work world on Monday morning and forget that Sunday ever happened. There’s no worship music blaring in the office to keep your spirit focused, and often there’s no time to stop and think that Jesus is right there in your midst. American culture demands the American work ethic, and the American work ethic means that even stopping to go to the bathroom is a luxury. Nonstop work means nonstop distraction, and without purposeful pauses, we can work ourselves away from the presence of Christ. 
    Today, whether you’re beginning or ending your Monday, the challenge is this: set yourself apart for the Lord even in – especially in – your work. Your work is not a terrible requirement; it is a divine appointment. It may not be what you desire, and it may not be what you enjoy. There are seasons for all of us where work is just hard. But you are there because God ordained it, and in it, there is purpose. The Westminster Catechism states, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” Your purpose – in everything, even work – is to bring glory to your Maker and Savior. 
    Today’s Prayer: “Father, we praise you on this Monday for the gift of work. We repent of our complaints and grumbling, and we ask you to reset our minds to see that our work is an everyday possibility for fellowship and light-sharing. You have given us each a circle to influence, and when we allow the enemy to distract us from the needs and hurts in our circles, we fail to carry Your grace to those who need it. Give us a new sense of purpose, strengthen our weaknesses in our work, and help our hands work to give You all glory.”

    “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” Colossians 3:23-24

  • 21 Days

    Tomorrow morning, I will begin a 21 day fast along with other members of my church. We are choosing to abstain from something (food, social media, etc) in order to set ourselves apart and purposely pursue God.

    For each of the next 21 days, I will be posting about the fast and 21 different ways in which we as believers can set ourselves apart. (I will be doing the Daniel Fast, in case you’re curious or need a place to start.)

    I invite you to join us and deliberately walk away from something that draws your heart, time, and attention away from God. We’re believing the Lord will do amazing things through our decisions to focus solely on Him. We’d love to have you join us!

  • Tuesday’s Takeaway – Identity Crisis

    I sometimes lie in church.
    I don’t mean to, but words come out of my mouth that aren’t true. I sing lyrics during worship like “I’m giving it all away…” and “We surrender all to you.”
    All?
    Some days – most days – that’s just not true. I want it to be. Really, I do. I want to relinquish all of my thoughts, worries, and decisions into the hands of the One who sees what I can’t and knows what I don’t.
    But many days – most days – I don’t. I hold tightly to what constitutes my life because I believe my grip equals my control. I don’t give over my all, and sometimes I don’t even give over my most. 
    Which parts of all are you not letting God have? Which parts of yourself are you giving to the enemy, either intentionally or not?

    Don’t skip over those questions, looking ahead for a solution. There is no solution without reflection. Read them again.

    Which parts of all are you not letting God have? Which parts of yourself are you giving to the enemy, either intentionally or not?

    Is it your physical health? Your marriage? Your dissatisfaction at work? Your money?

    In all likelihood, your struggles reveal your stubbornness. Your stubbornness reveals strongholds, and strongholds are chains the enemy uses to bind you into ineffectiveness and wandering. A wandering believer will never accidentally stumble into her true identity, and then Satan’s work is complete.

    Here’s the issue. As Pastor Mark said this Sunday, “It’s impossible to deny your Creator and know your identity.” When we don’t know our identities, we don’t – and can’t – give Jesus our all. It’s as simple as that. We can sing it on Sunday and never live it. We can proclaim it with words and never show it with actions. It is impossible to give your all when you don’t know what your all consists of and to whom it belongs. When we aren’t rooted in Christ and don’t fully understand that we are His creations, we live in the midst of an identity crisis – one that keeps us gripping tightly to what was never really ours.

    Don’t miss this – you can deny your Creator while very loudly acknowledging Him with your mouth. Denial is not just evident in words; denial is evident in lifestyle.

    John 10:10 says, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” Satan – the enemy – is out to steal your identity as the righteousness of God. He cannot take it for himself, but he wants to steal your assurance that you are a child of God who does not have to perform to please the Father. He wants to steal the peace that is available when God’s children fully rest in knowing whose they are. When Satan succeeds in stealing our identities, he leaves us with confusion and a lack of power. He leaves us making no difference in the Kingdom of God.

    The challenge I’m facing right now is to honestly answer the question, “What am I holding back from God?” Whatever we withhold from Him is whatever we don’t trust Him with, and whatever we don’t trust Him with reveals what we don’t fully understand of His character. We must learn the character of the One whose identity has become our own. We must uncover what we’re holding back before we can ever sing with conviction that we’re surrendering all.

  • Wordy Wednesday – I Need a 2nd Job for My Book Habit…

    Surprised by Motherhood: Everything I Never Expected about Being a Mom by Lisa-Jo Baker

    I love books that make me underline thoughts. I adore books that make me cry. When I’m underlining as I cry, I know I’ve hit the mother lode.

    Lisa-Jo Baker was a speaker at a conference I recently attended, and while I knew of her, I had never read her book Surprised by Motherhood. The conference was selling copies, so I bought one – and consumed it in a day.

    Throughout the book, Baker traces her journey to motherhood (which she never thought she’d take) and recounts hilarious and poignant stories of mothering. She also writes of her own mother who died when Baker was still a teenager and how her experiences without a mother have shaped her as an adult.

    If you have children, you need to read this book. She writes about how “…you continue to labor long after the baby is born,” and I’m not sure truer words have ever been typed. This passage, I adore: “There is no part of our everyday, wash-and-repeat routine of kids and laundry and life and fights and worries and playdates and aching budgets and preschool orientations and work and marriage and love and new life and bedtime marathons that Jesus doesn’t look deep into and say, ‘That is Mine.’” What a great reminder!

    Click here to purchase from Amazon

    Wild in the Hollow: On Chasing Desire & Finding the Broken Way Home by Amber C. Haines

    This book is one I happened to stumble on, and it is excruciatingly honest and beautifully written. Holding nothing back, Haines (a writer I was not already familiar with) describes her wanderings in her youth, looking to drugs, fun, and sex for answers. She also writes of her dramatic conversion and hard-fought faith. Her book reads like poetry, so I’ll just leave you with her words.

    “What I remember of that rebellion is that so many of us never had a space to work through difficult circumstances. There was no open culture to discuss pain or injustice. For many families, God was the answer, and he was a God who thought up good youth group T-shirt slogans, who said, “If you just believe hard enough, you’ll not suffer anymore.” Look around at the cinder-block houses and the kids whose feet grow holes in their shoes. Look around at the beautiful clothes on the girl whose daddy finds her at night. The God of the bumper stickers doesn’t add up here.

    “So much hammered doctrine was an effort to control, as if it were our own job to uphold the morality standards of Jesus for the world, rather than to be embodied by the actual Spirit of the living God.”

    Click here to purchase from Amazon

    “I whitewashed my story and lived like beauty was the point, to be unbroken.”

    “Know that when you meet someone working hard to be outwardly beautiful and fit for consumption, inside they may be wasting away.”

    I would not say that this is an easy book to read, but it is lovely. Sometimes I just needed to put the book to the side and digest what she was saying, perhaps wrestling with my own thoughts a bit. So many truths spoke directly to my heart, and that’s the value of this book. Her story is very different from my own, yet it was eerily familiar.

    So there you have it – two more great books that are worth the time and money. Happy reading!



  • Tuesday’s Takeaway: From Safe to Crazy

    When was the last time your faith was anything more than ordinary?

    This Sunday, Pastor Dean of 5 Point Church challenged me by showing me myself – an American Christian whose faith is often not obvious to those around me and often not bold enough to believe God for something crazy.

    We use the word “crazy” to identify people who appear absurdly out of place: the teenager with rainbow colored hair, the person whose outfits do not meet “acceptable fashion,’ people who say things no one else would utter. “Crazy” really should describe anyone who follows Christ. When we trust and follow Him, our citizenship belongs to heaven, and as a result, we are aliens and strangers in this world. We should appear crazy because we are no longer of this world. Our behavior should be obviously different from everyone else’s. We should stand out, but far too many of us are consumed with anything other than Jesus.

    Crazy faith is what I say with my mouth that I want, but it is something I rarely step into. I realized Sunday that I rarely do anything that requires crazy faith because I am afraid. I am afraid of what people will think, afraid that maybe I’m just acting selfishly, afraid that God really won’t come through… Fear cancels out faith. I’ve seen it in my own life, and I’ve seen it in others’.

    When Jesus’ disciples could not drive demons out of a young boy in Matthew 17, Jesus clearly said it was because they had so little faith. Do we believe God or just believe in God? There’s a huge difference, the difference between faith that changes nothing and faith that changes everything.

    Here’s the challenge – examine your life and what it is you need to believe God for. What circumstances hinge on your ability to believe, and what fears are you allowing to suppress the faith God wants you to have? God is honored by our bold prayers and crazy faith, and He is waiting on us to step out and just believe Him. Believe He is good, believe He hears you, and let nothing alter that belief. We will be amazed what happens when we have the faith of a mustard seed. The mountains in our lives will move, and we’ll never be the same.

  • Trump, Women, and Me

    Fat pigs.

    Dogs.

    Slobs.

    Disgusting animals.

    These are some of the names that a man who desires to lead our country has called women. As he was asked about it, there were boisterous laughs and cheers from the crowd as he made it into a joke. There were more cheers when his answer was that a big problem in this country is being “politically correct.”

    It’s the year 2015, and a Presidential candidate – in the United States in 2015 – suggests that it’s acceptable to use these names for women because he doesn’t have time for “total political correctness.” Sure, because it takes a lot of time to be respectful to other human beings, and it’s only about political correctness.

    He said during the debate, “What I say is what I say, and honestly… if you don’t like it, I’m sorry.”

    Well, I don’t like it, Mr. Trump, and neither do the millions of women who have been called such names and live today trying to forget how it made them feel. You said it was fun and kidding, “having a good time.” So you’d be ok with a man laughingly saying that your daughters and wife are fat pigs? You’d let someone call your little girl a disgusting animal? Somehow, I think not.

    The bottom line here is that in so many ways in our society, females simply are not respected as valuable human beings. We are seen as inferior, treated as unintelligent, and given value only for sexual appeal.

    Look, I know that I am not the names I have been called – and I have been called several. I know that I have more worth than my looks. But to be looked down on, critiqued, and publicly shamed in large part because of one’s gender is simply unacceptable.

    I feel confident that Mr. Trump does not represent the majority of men in this country, thank goodness. But the sad truth is that he represents many, and judging by the laughs he received during this exchange, the issue isn’t taken seriously by many more. Powerful men berating women. Is this seriously ok?

    Further, are we as a society willing to overlook a Presidential candidate’s lack of self-control in the words he uses? It’s not a matter of time to be politically correct; it’s an issue of self-control. It’s an issue of respect. It’s an issue of dignity. It’s an issue in the inherent lack of equality given to females. It’s an issue, all right, and it’s one that needs to be taken head-on and unapologetically.

    I couldn’t care less who you vote for and who you don’t. What I do care about is women standing alongside men saying, “We won’t stand for this. We won’t laugh when any human is berated and treated as less-than, and we certainly won’t accept it from anyone in leadership.”

    We’re better than this, America. It’s time we prove it.

  • What Running Reveals about Life

    I’ve run 84 miles in the last 17 days (no, I’m not training for anything in particular, and yes, I’ve just wanted to), and those long runs have taught me some valuable lessons. First, if running in the South Carolina summer, try to run in the morning before the heat and humidity make you feel like this.

    Second, invest in good running shoes. Third, no matter how good your running shoes are, your feet will still hurt after 84 miles.

    More than those lessons, though, I have come to realize that what you experience on a long run is a metaphor for what you experience in life. Here’s why.

    • When you first set out on your adventure, everything seems good. Your playlist is set, your legs are fresh, and you feel like a gazelle bounding through the morning mist. But as the miles go on, you realize your sock is crooked, the tag in your shorts is slowly driving you mad, and the hitch in your right hip isn’t getting any better. In other words, the Utopian picture you painted in your head isn’t your reality, and you just have to slog through the miles. Sometimes, slogging is all you can do. Slogging is good. Stopping isn’t.
    • There will be poop. At some point, you will see it, smell it, or heaven forbid, step in it. Poop is out there, and one day you will be its victim. You can’t always avoid it, and sometimes the only thing you can do is wipe it off and keep on going. Poop happens. It’s all about how you respond to it.
    • You will find yourself judging the yards of the houses you run past. Your critical eye will see the tall grass and weed-ridden flower beds, and you will wonder how the occupants seem not to care about lawn maintenance. And then you will run up your own driveway and see the weeds growing with great freedom in your own flower beds. So you will repent. (And probably repeat the pattern the next day.) Judge not lest ye be judged.
    • Not everyone will wave back at you. Not every car will move over to give you room. Sometimes, you will have to jump into the bushes because drivers are staring at their phones instead of the road. So, yeah, other people can be irritating and not very nice. True on a run; true in real life. Wave to them anyway, and when they run you off the road, refrain from making hand gestures or trying to chase them down. Take Elsa’s advice and let it go.
    • Minor irritations will give you blisters. No matter how well you protect your feet, they will betray you. A runner’s feet are a sight to behold. Bulging blisters and black toenails – no one can say we runners don’t take our sport seriously. Until you lose part of your phalanges to repeated pressure, you’re not hard-core enough. (I’m not sure of the metaphor here. Work until your toenails fall off? Sure. We’ll go with that. Oh wait – I think it was more about minor irritations. Don’t let them be the cause of your blisters.)
    • You will become calloused. Repetitive friction has given many runners ugly callouses, and life can do the same to your heart. Whenever there is constant pressure, a callous can form. While intended to provide protection, callouses that continue to grow can also cause pain. Callouses in our hearts can prevent us from feeling what we need to feel. Don’t let the callouses of life cut off your feeling. Feel all the feelings. 
    • You will run past parties you weren’t invited to. You will hear their laughter over the fence and smell their barbecues wafting through the air, and you will be sad. You will want to be there, at the party, and you won’t be. The lesson is that sometimes you will be on the other side of the fence – and you need to be ok with that. Keep running and plan your own party.
    • You will be tempted to judge people by their garbage. Piled by the curb, overflowing the massive green cans, garbage will be on display. You will see people’s food waste and evidence of their purchases, and you will be tempted to create stories in your mind. Don’t do this. Their garbage is no different from yours – it’s just visible. We all have garbage, and none of us want to be judged by it. You will also see trash on the ground as you run past, and you will leave it there because you think it’s not your problem. You might not have created it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t help clean it up.
    • Sometimes, when you’re at the farthest point of an out-and-back route, all you’ll want is to be home already. A hard truth is that it might take being super far away to realize where you really want to be. Distance can be a great teacher. 
    • There will be days when you feel like the greatest runner ever to lace up running shoes. Your breathing will be in perfect harmony with your steps, and you will end your route thinking, “I could do that all over again!” Likewise, there will be days when you feel like a hippopotamus thundering down the road, and you will be thinking, “I cannot take another step.” Don’t let either extreme define you. Take them in stride and know that you’ll be back somewhere in the middle soon.
    • Your pace doesn’t always need to match the sound in your ears. Just because Lecrae is rapping a million words a minute doesn’t mean you need to double-time it down the road. Likewise, Josh Groban’s gentle crooning doesn’t mean you need to slow to a crawl. The music of the world (get the analogy here?) will try to control your pace. Forget it. Listen to your breathing and heart rate, and you’ll know the right pace for yourself.
    • And finally, running will teach you that you need to take some breaks. You can’t run a million miles a day at a million miles an hour and not suffer some consequences. Your body needs your brain to be ok with taking a day off. Sleep in, go out with friends, read a book. Your time off will make your time training more effective. It will also make you remember that your run – and you – aren’t the center of the universe. And when is that a bad thing?

  • Wordy Wednesday – Opposites Edition

    This week’s books could not be any more opposite, but I love them equally. Both are nonfiction, my favorite genre, and while their topics are nothing alike, they both have such profound lessons that they are well worth your time and money. I recommend buying your own copies because you will want to highlight and underline something on every page!

    Without further adieu, this week’s selections.

    Undone: A Story of Making Peace with an Unexpected Life by Michele Cushatt.

    Click here to purchase from Amazon.
    This book had me at the subtitle. I saw it recommended on social media, which is where I hear about a lot of what I choose to read, and from the minute the Amazon Prime fairy placed it in my mailbox, I was enamored. Both the story and the writing style are beautiful, and Cushatt will make you cry and silently whisper “Amen.”

    The back cover says, “She never expected a devastating divorce and single motherhood. Or a second marriage marred by the challenges of a blended family. Undaunted, Michele worked hard to put her upside-down life back in order. Until, at the age of thirty-nine, she received a cancer diagnosis. And eight months later, she opened her near empty-nest home to three little ones in crisis. The resulting chaos proved far more than she could contain.”

    Michele Cushatt’s life certainly became undone, and she has faced more unexpected hardships in a short period than the vast majority of people ever do. Yet she has not turned to bitter whining or faithless “why me’s?”. She has doggedly continued her pursuit of true intimacy with Christ, and this book is ripe with honesty. I guess that’s why I love it so much – it resonated.

    My unexpected life did not involve a cancer diagnosis, but I cried as I read these words: “I’ve talked to countless other cancer survivors, of all extents and varieties. The one commonality we all share is the unexpected grief. Even when we’re given a good shot at a long life, even when we have great doctors and the hope of positive outcomes, we experience a deep and profound loss. Cancer is a thief, stealing what we didn’t even know we had until it was too late. The innocence is gone, replaced by an acute awareness of the dark flip side of life.”

    Regardless of whether your life has included unexpected tragedies that changed everything, Michele has a word for you. Her greatest lessons are on faith, and this is one of my favorite quotes: “…faith in the middle of the unknowns is the only real kind.” Yes, and amen. Buy this book, and buy extra copies for those you love who are in the middle of life-changing hardships. They need its truth and hope.

    Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath & Dan Heath


    Click here to purchase from Amazon.
    Love. This. Book.

    If you ever need to say anything that people should remember, this book is a must. Teachers, this should be required reading before you teach another child. Businessmen, pastors, speakers of any kind – you need this information.

    Reminiscent of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, this one is chock full of stories and unexpected trivia that will make you scratch your head and say, “Duh! Why didn’t I think of that?! How did I go 35 years without knowing that?”

    I cannot tell you how many notes I made in the margins for myself to “try at school!”. The brothers Heath explain in detail what they call The Curse of Knowledge, which is basically when we become experts in something and forget what it’s like not to know it. (For example – try teaching a child to tie his shoes. Your patience slows to a trickle as you just can’t get how he doesn’t get it. The Curse of Knowledge.) This is what teachers are up against every single day. What is great about the book, though, is that you actually learn how to combat it. Practical knowledge is embedded in every chapter. For example, they talk in great length about the importance of being concrete in what you say and do. Forget being abstract – concreteness rules.

    When a group called Beyond War was trying to raise public awareness of the reality of nuclear weapons in the Cold War, they wanted to make the statistics more concrete. So a leader began carrying a metal bucket to meetings. He would drop a single BB in, saying, “This is the Hiroshima bomb.” He would describe the devastation in detail. Then he’d drop in 10 BBs and say, “This is the firepower of the missiles on one U.S. or Soviet nuclear submarine.” As the book describes, “Finally, he asked the attendees to close their eyes. He’d say, ‘This is the world’s current arsenal of nuclear weapons.’ Then he poured 5,000 BBs in the bucket (one for every nuclear warhead in the world). The noise was startling, even terrifying. ‘The roar of the BBs went on and on… Afterwards there was always dead silence.’”

    The statistics alone weren’t enough to provoke reaction. The concrete comparison to BBs was. Concreteness is just one of the qualities the Heath brothers say is necessary to make something memorable.

    Throughout this brilliantly-written book, the authors get to the core of why we remember some things and don’t remember others. It’s because of what they call “sticky ideas,” which have 6 key qualities: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotional, and stories.

    A fascinating read and practically useful resource, Made to Stick is a book for everyone.

    So there you have it – two books I love and think you will, too. Do you have any books in particular you want me to review? Any specific questions? Let me know!

     

  • Tuesday’s Takeaway

    Each week, I’ll be writing about my takeaway from Sunday’s sermon at 4 Points Church. Some weeks I will summarize, and some weeks I will focus on one main idea. This week, it’s all about the pit and the palace. To view the sermon, visit this link.


    There’s a difference between believing in God and believing God. A huge difference, and for much of my life, I was stuck there.

    Yes, I believed that God existed. I knew it and never doubted it. But I did – and sometimes still do – doubt Him. The Words He said and the Words He gave often feel like they’re contradicting my life. Believing in God? I’m good. Believing all He says and all He promises? That’s where I struggle. Does it make me unspiritual to say so? Oh well. Then I am.

    His Word says, “…the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you” (Deut. 31:6). It’s hard to believe that (and easy to doubt it) when everyone else has left and you can’t feel God anywhere. Doubting it is easy because we try to fit Him into the mold that other people have made for us. People leave. People forsake. We doubt God because we believe He is like people. News flash – He isn’t.

    His Word says that his plans are to prosper us and not to harm us, to give us hope and a future (Jer. 29:11). While this is ultimately true, it may not in the immediate appear that way. When Joseph’s brothers threw him into the pit in Genesis and Potiphar’s wife lied and caused his imprisonment, he suffered in prison and must have wondered how this was God’s good plan to prosper him. How was this plan giving him a future? Here’s how – without the pit and prison, he never would have been in a position to be elevated in Pharaoh’s palace. The pit and prison were intermediary but necessary steps on the way to God’s ultimate plan.

    This is where we so often falter – “We get stuck in our circumstances because we forget God’s already been where we’re going” (Pastor Mark).

    Our lives look like puzzles, and we become consumed looking at one tiny piece, forgetting there’s a beautiful picture being made, albeit slowly. We look at the only pieces we can see, trying to understand how they fit – and trying to force them when we don’t understand. As Pastor Mark reminded us, “You don’t have to understand to trust God.” There’s such freedom in that statement. Trust frees us from trying to figure it all out. It reminds us that our loving and grace-giving God only has our ultimate good in mind, so we can release the pieces into His capable hands and just trust.

    But here’s the rub: we want the blessing from God, and we want it now. We want the pit and prison to quickly be removed and to be elevated to our palace. We look for it and demand it. But if God can’t trust you in the pit and prison – the valley you are in – then He can’t trust you with the blessing. Joseph’s position in the palace would never have been his if he had turned his back on God in the prison. So often we try to climb our way out of the pit, thinking it was never God’s plan for us to be there, while all the while He was trying to get our attention and make us palace-ready in it. Valleys build stamina for the mountaintops; pits prepare us for palaces. Sometimes the greatest act of faith is to stand still in the pit, lacking understanding, and say, “I will trust you here, and I will wait for your perfectly-timed deliverance.”

    No place you are is accidental; no valley is unplanned. Delivery is coming – your job is to allow your faith to be built and your heart to be prepared. Genesis 50:20 reminds us that the pits aren’t permanent and that God’s working in them all. “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done…” We might not be able to see what’s coming, but we can stand in assurance of Who is coming. The Deliverer whose plan is only for our good – both in the pit and in the palace.

  • Any Minute Now: A Reminder for Teachers

    So, teacher. You’re feeling anxious. And excited. And overwhelmed.

    I get that.

    Any minute now, you’ll be facing a room of expectant young faces, and you’re probably not sure if you can meet all the expectations. Let’s get this out of the way up front – you can’t.

    You can’t meet all of their expectations, or their parents’, or your administrators’.

    Most importantly, you won’t be able to meet all of your own.

    You just can’t. You are one person, and one person can only do so much.

    I know you. I know that this summer, you’ve seen ideas on Pinterest you’ve thought might be amazing in your room. I know you saw that sale at Office Max and stocked up on colored pencils and colored copy paper. As you were reading on the beach, you dog-eared passages that you want to share as beautiful examples of prose. The teacher in you might have slept later and might not have graded papers this summer, but you didn’t stop being a teacher. You thought of what didn’t work last year and what might be better this year, and you imagined what you could do to make a bigger difference.

    In other words, you continued to build the mountain of expectations that sits on a teacher’s shoulders. The mountain that, if not examined and realistically sifted through, can become a burden. The mountain that grows with every new piece of legislation and every new set of standards and every new piece of technology. The mountain that we want so badly to scale and daily feel like is growing.

    So here’s my humble advice to you who desires so badly to conquer the world in your classroom this year. (It’s also my advice to myself.)

    Keep the main thing the main thing. 

    Details sometimes are the devil’s playground, and in a classroom, details can overwhelm and consume you to the point you feel like all of your efforts are in vain.

    They are not, and to be honest, some of the details we so intently consume ourselves with are unimportant. (Ouch, right? They are, some of them. Believe this perfectionist.  Some details are unimportant.) You cannot do it all, so you need to honestly assess what you can do. What you MUST do. You cannot – and must not – do it all.

    I don’t know the details of your curriculum, and I don’t know the details of your students’ lives. I don’t know the exact pressures you feel, and I don’t know your inner dialogue right now. What I do know is this: children will be sitting in your classroom very soon, and those children need you. Sure, they should know multiplication and mitosis, and I’m convinced cursive handwriting should be on that list, too. They should know a lot of the standards we teach, and they should know a lot that we don’t. But what do they need? They need you.

    They need an adult who cares and shows it. They need an adult who listens. They need an adult who sees that they’re scared, and they need an adult to hear what they can’t say. They need an adult who won’t accept excuses, but they also need an adult who knows not every case is the same.

    They need you. You might be feeling unqualified or under-trained, incompetent or ill-equipped. You might be feeling a whole heap of things we teachers feel, and you might be feeling like you’ll fail before you begin.

    I’ll say it again. Keep the main thing the main thing.

    The main thing is the hearts of those children who will be sitting in your classroom. Yes, the brain must be taught, but the brain won’t learn if the heart isn’t safe. Your task is to make it so (even if your job isn’t). You went into this field because you wanted to make a difference. We all did. Yes, we love our content. But more than that, we need to love our kids.

    I have a stack of things to do nearby, and I have a list a mile long. I have pressures I’m already putting on myself, and I have pressures I feel from outside. But I’m telling myself this before I tackle all of that: keep the main thing the main thing. Love those kids. Expect a lot. Listen a lot. Laugh a lot. The kids are the main thing. The details are secondary.