What Was I Thinking?

I know that I should probably write here more, but sometimes I think that I have to have something profound to say before I write. (I can hear you all saying, "Really? So all those postings were supposed to be profound? You could knock me over with a feather!) I think I need to get over this profundity expectation and hope that I just manage not to bore you. Today was a sweet day to be the principal of Greater Grace Christian Academy. I had three invitations to visit classrooms and one invitation to an after school meeting with some teachers.   I spent the ten o'clock hour in Mr. Janssen's biology class viewing the science posters they had made about different biomes and asking the students questions about their research. The students had worked in small groups of two or three to compose their posters to Mr. Janssen's specifications (he has had great experience creating scientific posters and presenting them at science conferences these past few summers for the Univers...

Sometimes I think that people do not know how good a school GGCA really is. Sometimes I think that people say to themselves, "Well... it's better than my local public school, but it's so small... I mean they only have one classroom per grade, and the building, well... it's really just a strip mall turned into classrooms, right? And the tuition... if it was a really good school, wouldn't they be charging a lot more? I mean, look at the private schools that have libraries and laboratories and teach languages starting in elementary school and have auditoriums for drama and music performances and lots of electives, extra curricular activities, and after school programs. Now, those are are really nice schools, and the students there are getting a quality education." Maybe these are just demonic projections and nobody has ever thought these things but me. But I do get asked quite often by students why GGCA doesn't have things that other schools do, and I do hear...

I woke this morning to the pitter-patter of raindrops on the walkway outside my house. I could hear them as I lay in my bed. It was tempting to just close my eyes and listen to that soothing sound, but I pushed the duvet off my body and rose to my feet and wobbled out through the bedroom door in the dim, gray light seeping through the blinds and found my way to the kitchen. As I sipped my orange juice, I looked out the kitchen window and watched the rain splatter on the panes and drizzle down. When he was a little guy, my nephew Austin pointed out the "crydrops" running down the kitchen window to my Grammy Dunbar. I loved that child-coined word - crydrops - and I still do, because it was so expressive.   I saw teardrops running down the face of man last night in a movie, and I thought to myself about how raindrops, drawn by the force of gravity, trace watery trails down a pane of glass just like teardrops wend their ways down a man's face. The movie was "End of the S...

"Gray skies are gonna clear up - Put on a happy face! Wipe off the clouds and cheer up - Put on a happy face! Spread sunshine all over the place, just put on a happy face!" These are some of the lyrics from a tune from the 1960s era musical Bye Bye Birdie written by Charles Strouse, and I thought I would share them with you on this gray Wednesday afternoon. I had a wonderful experience this morning in upper school chapel. Kathie Groenewold appeared in the room, standing at the bottom of the center aisle, and I spontaneously asked her, "Would you like to sing this morning?" Kathie slowly made her way down the aisle to the stage saying, "Oh, no. Not me. I can't sing. You know how I hate attention!" When asked if she would like a microphone, she declaimed, "Oh, no!" and then held out her hand for one.   Robert Bridges was on guitar and Jordan Myers was tickling the ivories when we began to sing "Because of Your Love." I let the guys va...

I don't know why. Maybe I am becoming bipolar or something like that. Who knows? It's just that last week - even up through Sunday evening - I was feeling rather low, but these past two days I have been almost aggressively cheerful. I have energy and a desire to be out and about amongst the students and cracking wise, as some say. These past two mornings when I've shared at the 7:50 am teacher meetings, I have ended up speaking in an exuberant manner, and surprising even myself with the intensity of the passion behind my words. No, I am not suddenly head-over-heels in love and, no, I am not on some sort of mood-altering medication. The Lord has been waking me up for the past two days with a song in my heart and a buoyancy in my spirit and it is such a 180 degree turn around from where I was last week that I am astonished - pleasantly so. Can I say something? I believe that I will. I love GGCA - warts and all. I'm hoping and praying that the Divine Dermatologist is going...

It has been a while since I last posted anything to this blog, mostly due to the School Daze mentioned in my last posting. I came down with what I can only call a very bad cold that knocked me off my feet and put me in bed for an entire weekend ad a day. That day was this past Monday when I woke up in response to my flashing Moonbeam clock alarm, started my morning in the usual manner (my morning Achiphex pill, multivitamin, and a swig of orange juice followed by a check of email and some time reading from the Bible), but when I got up to ready myself for work, I felt compelled to lie down again and rest for a moment. That moment lasted for quite a while.   I was wakened by a loud banging on my front door. I roused myself from slumber, pulled on a pair of jeans, and stumbled to the door to find my dapperly dressed brother Doug on my doorstep. know that I must have been a sight - three days growth of beard, major bed head hair, perhaps pillow creases on my face, and the bedraggled, ...

My brain is in a fog. I took two non-drowsy formula pain relief cold caplets this morning and now I floating from task to task in haze. Everybody is pretty much leaving me alone to do my work in solitary confinement, which is fine with me. I would not want anyone else to get sick. I feel like I am awake yet dreaming all of this. It is not altogether unpleasant, but I prefer being healthy and more alert. I am the apple of God's eye. I love that verse, because it makes me think of beautiful, ripe McIntosh apples, green and red skinned, waiting to be picked and chomped into, to release their sweet-tart, juicy goodness. I like to think that I am the McIntosh apple of God's eye. Okay. I'm cutting this entry short today, because my mind is not a lucid as I would like it to be for writing for public consumption...