Month: February 2024

Gem of the Week: Netta*

Featured ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

My first impressions of Netta are fragmented. Hers was a name on my roster that I rarely marked present.

When she did show up during the first quarter, it was hard to get a read on her. At times she seemed withdrawn, introverted, like she preferred to be left alone. She sat in the back, by herself, and I didn’t often hear her speak. In fact, the sounds I usually heard from her were the sounds of deep contented sleep — the rhythmic breathing that is not easily disturbed, the kind that causes others around her to turn and look, to say, “Man, she is knocked out!”

I stopped fighting the sleep battle long ago. I have no idea what is going on with my students outside of my classroom, so if I nudge them once and encourage them to “come on, you’re here, you might as well get something for your efforts,” and I get no response, I am prone to let them sleep. Maybe it’s the only rest they’ll get today.

So, Netta was a show up once a week kind of gal who often spent that day in slumber, face pressed against the desk, eyes closed behind the very thick coke-bottle lenses of her glasses.

I didn’t know her well, but I got the impression that she wasn’t a meek, shy, introvert. No, she seemed more like a sleeping bear — completely content if left alone, but disturbed? You’d better run for your life.

Every so often during that first quarter, she would blow into the building like a force. Her hair would be done, her clothing would be intentional, she would sit up straight in class, she would feverishly take notes, and she would demand that I answer her questions about the assignment, never mind that she had missed the last two weeks of school.

It didn’t make sense to me. Why such apathy followed by such intentionality. Then I heard the rumor that Netta’s probation officer was scheduled to show up on that particular day, and Netta was going to make sure to leave a good impression.

I never did see the probation officer, and Netta reverted to her status quo.

I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t have my hackles up just a little bit every time she showed up. The fact that she was often reserved coupled with the fact that she could occasionally show up like it was game day put me off balance, and occasionally I’d see her — rather hear her — move through the hallway, strings of expletives bursting from her like machine gun fire. I presumed, if provoked, she could tear me to shreds. I wasn’t planning to provoke her, but I couldn’t be sure no one else would. So, I was often just a little hyper-vigilant when she came to class during that first quarter.

For some reason, she showed up on the first day of the second quarter, the day that I characteristically give each student a printed summary of their academic performance so far. It’s a simple sheet from PowerSchool that lists the student’s current grade, how many assignments they completed, how many times the student was tardy, and how many times the student was absent. I do this to provide information to my students — to allow them space to reflect — but also to reward what I have seen. If they have earned an A or a B, if they have had fewer than two tardies or fewer than two absences, I give them a “Rathje Ticket” that they can use to purchase items from my class store.

On this particular day, I was calling special attention to students who had been chronically absent — who had more than two absences per month for the first quarter. Raising attendance has been my classroom goal this year, and although attendance had definitely improved from previous years, students like Netta still had a way to go. So, because she was in class on that day, I handed her the report that I had marked with yellow highlighter, showing her double-digit absences and noting that she had been “chronically absent.”

Netta, typically quiet [or sleeping] Netta, said quite loudly, “Mrs. Rathje, this is terrible! Imma do better.”

And do you know what? She did.

She started coming to class, just in time for the unit on personal narratives. I wanted students to show themselves in a scene or several scenes that revealed to the reader who they were, what was important to them, or what their strengths were.

Netta dove in. In fact, she asked to move to the front row, smack-dab in the middle. She read the models I provided. She did the brainstorming, she chose a prompt, and she began to write.

I can see her now, totally honed in, bent over her desk, face inches away from the paper as she wrote and wrote.

“Mrs. Rathje, can you read this and tell me how I’m doing?”

The writing was rough — very rough — the kind of writing you might have if you only went to school one or two days a week for several years. The penmanship, the spelling, the grammar — not anywhere close to what I would call standard. But as I read, everything else in the room fell away. She was writing about the fact that her mom had died — during Netta’s birthday week — six weeks before the start of her senior year. Six weeks before she started sporadically showing up in my class to sleep in the back of the room.

“Wow, Netta. This just happened?”

She nodded, looking through those thick lenses into my eyes.

“This past summer?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I’m so sorry. Thank you so much for sharing this. I’m so glad you chose this topic. I want you to write more. Give more detail.”

“Mrs. Rathje, I know it’s a mess. I want to make it better. Will you help me?”

“Of course. We’ll work on it together. That’s what this assignment is all about.”

And that was the beginning. Of Netta’s engagement in my class, of Netta showing up four to five days a week instead of one, of Netta communicating (if at the last minute and out of desperation) with our social workers before her next probation officer visit or court date.

She hadn’t ascended to a straight A student by any means, but I was watching her transform before my eyes.

Now, she NEVER enters my classroom quietly. No. How do I describe the self-confident force of nature that is Netta, that boldly proclaimed during our Intro to Racism unit this past week, “I know what my unconscious biases are, and I’m not changing them!”

“I guess you might say they are no longer unconscious then, am I right?” I grinned at her.

She crossed her arms, gave me the side eye, and said, “They are not. I am fully aware of my bias. And I am keeping it.”

She is not afraid to tell a classmate, “Shut the hell up, you talk too much, and you sound stupid,” and although I check the outburst, I can’t often disagree with her assessment.

On Friday, late in the afternoon, she was walking down my hallway and she shouted at me, “Mrs. Rathje, you would be so proud — I didn’t cuss at all in that class.”

“That’s amazing, Netta,” I said, smiling, as I watched her walk into a classroom.

Two. seconds. later. I heard the most profane stream of words come from her mouth halfway down the hallway.

I walked down to the room she was in, popped my head in the door, looked her in the face, and said, “Netta, did you not just say I’d be proud of you for not swearing?”

“Mrs. Rathje, I had to get it out of my system before this class started.”

I smiled, shook my head, and walked away.

Earlier that day, she had come into my room, dressed as though she had something important going on after school, sat down, and handed me a paper she had pulled from her purse, “You wanna see my momma, Mrs. Rathje?”

“Of course!” I said, taking the funeral program from her hand. Her mother’s face was on the front, and I said, “Netta, you look like her. This is so precious. I had forgotten that this just happened last summer.”

She looked at me, putting the coke bottle lens back in the broken frame of her glasses, “I don’t read the obituary,” she said. “It makes me cry.”

“Of course it does,” I replied. “I love that you carry this with you. Your mom would be very proud of you.”

“Yes, she would.”

We move through the class, past fires to put out, questions to answer, demands to respond to and then it was almost 3:15, time for me to take my post at the end of the hallway to make sure that students don’t leave their classrooms before the bell.

I saw a door open and then Netta as she stepped into the hall.

“OK, Netta, back it right up, the bell has not rung,” I say.

In slow motion, she puts herself in reverse, maintaining eye contact with me, and retreating into the classroom.

The action of it cracks me up. I laugh, and I say, “I just love you, Netta.”

“I love you, too, Mrs. Rathje.”

And who needs more of a gem than that?

The Unexpected

Featured ~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

We never know what’s coming next, do we?

I was sitting in the naivety of January, setting goals for the year when I thought, “I know what I’ll do this year — I’ll post a vintage blog each Thursday and new blog most Mondays. That sounds like a great way to mark ten years of consistent writing.”

It was easy to begin, in the newness of the year, in the freshness of possibility. I was sitting there in early January gazing into a new season with my husband retiring from public ministry and transitioning to a private counseling practice. I was anticipating a slower pace after over thirty years of busy-ness.

And the year did indeed begin with a tone of spaciousness and possibility.

But we never know what’s coming next, do we?

We didn’t know that in the next couple of weeks his mother would be diagnosed with stage four liver cancer, that my stepfather would be diagnosed with stage 2-3 bladder cancer, that one of our kids would have a serious medical episode, that another would be starting a new job, and that another would be in the midst of several major life transitions.

We couldn’t anticipate all of that.

And it’s hard to know the emotions that such realities will bring up — shock, sadness, grief, anger, fear, worry, excitement, anxiety, joy, and even pride. But that whole chorus shows up and begins to take space in one’s body.

As each reality fleshes itself out — the reality of hospice, of surgery, of chemo, of diagnostics and medical leave, of transition and opportunity, of waiting and adjustment, those emotions jostle and elbow at each other, struggling to claim territory.

And one can’t anticipate how all that internal jostling will impact one’s external capacity for resiliency, for patience, for empathy, for tenacity.

So this past week, now that I am sitting with all these emotions and still struggling to accept all of these realities, after two weeks of testing students and selecting two new cohorts of reading students, after transitioning them to my class, and after working intentionally and diligently to gain their buy-in, I got an email directing me to test more students. Although I had selected enough students to meet the 10-student capacity of both sections of this course and two alternates, two of those students had unexpectedly elected to move to virtual instruction making it impossible for them to join my class and another two, along with their parents, had opted not to join the class. Consequently, my classes were both at 9 students — each one short of capacity.

As I read the email, I became annoyed. My classes were already in progress. I was already building community and establishing expectations. Couldn’t we just proceed with 9 students in each class?

Couldn’t my administrators see that although my classes weren’t at capacity, I was certainly at capacity?

I, ever the dutiful employee, uncharacteristically ignored the directive for a beat. Then, I replied to my principal somewhat pointedly that if he wanted to identify a few more students for me to test, he could be my guest, but I didn’t think any others would qualify.

Yup. I had a tone. It was a warning flag, to be sure — I was past my limit.

I had too many emotions crammed inside of me, they could no longer jostle for space, so they started seeping out in irritability, in pettiness, in sarcasm.

I was in a funk, and I couldn’t see a way out.

Nevertheless, at the end of my school day, I decided to call my son to check in. I hadn’t spoken to him for a while, and after he gave me a quick update, he asked, “How are you doing, Mom?”

I signed out a deep breath and said, “I. am. weary.”

And he replied, “I bet you are.”

And that little sentence, that acknowledgement of all that is going on, that validation that I am in fact at capacity, created an opening.

He allowed me to share just a little bit, some of those emotions found a passageway, and others were allowed more space to dwell.

That small offload allowed me to move through the next day with civility, however, I still had no intention of adding students to my course. The issue wasn’t resolved, though. As I left the building on Thursday, I got a text from my principal that a directive had come again to add more two more students.

I shot off a text, trying to veil my annoyance with professionalism, “Please let me know if you want me to look at the data again. I am moving forward with planning instruction for these classes, but if you think I need to go back I will.,”

I really wanted him to respond with, “No, no. You’re right. Move forward,” but instead he said, “If you can; I am too. Maybe there are kids right on the cusp that would opt in. Thank you so much.”

Argh. My defiance had gone on too long. The responsible core of my self rose up.

I grudgingly sorted and resorted the data and found a group of kids that hadn’t yet been tested and that met our criteria for the class. I sent him the list, reluctantly offering to test the ones he thought I should

By the next morning, he had chosen his top three, but after a search of the building, it appeared none were present. It was Friday morning, typically our lowest attendance day of the week.

I met up with the principal in the hallway and he invited me into his office. He said he wanted to touch base — how was I really doing with the directive to test more?

“It’s fine,” I said. “I get it. I am just at capacity with stuff going on in my personal life, and it is leaving me less capacity for stuff here at school. Every little thing is annoying me — the chaos in the hallways, the broken up parking lot, my unswept classroom floors, and this directive to test more when I thought I was already done. Normally this stuff doesn’t get to me, but so much in my family is outside of my control, I think I am looking for ways to find control here.”

He already knew about some of the stuff going on in our family, and he said, “I get it. I’m sorry you are dealing with all of this in your family. Also, these work things are annoying. How can I be a support to you?”

There it was again, the acknowledgement that my feelings were valid, and really that was all I needed.

“I’m good for now. Thanks for hearing me. I’ll find a way to test these kids, and I won’t be a jerk to anyone.”

“Thank you,” he smiled.

I did find a way to test one of the students later that day. I had no way of knowing that she could barely answer comprehension questions at the first grade level. I couldn’t have known that she was more than willing to join my class. I couldn’t have known what a gentle spirit she was.

We never know what’s coming next. Sometimes when we take the next step, we get a pleasant surprise.

No matter what is coming next — no matter if our parents have cancer, if our kids are going through transitions, no matter how little control we feel that we have — we can trust that we are always being prepared for it — that is my experience — I’m always being prepared for what is next.

A few years ago, when my husband and I were in the midst of one of the most challenging seasons of our lives, we reached out to a dear friend in the early hours of the morning. We shared with him our current reality, he heard us, he paused, and then he said, “None of this is a surprise to God,” and that was a comfort to me. Even though I hadn’t known what was coming next, surely God had known, and He had been at work in our lives to provide in advance everything we would need for that season. Even though on that morning all seemed hopeless, God did carry us through that season and provided miraculously for us along the way, just as he had through every other difficulty in our lives.

And so, as we face this uncertainty — of caring for our parents in ways that we never imagined, of encouraging our adult children in their own uncertainties — we can trust that we are ready — everything that we’ve experienced up until this point has prepared us.

And we are not alone. We have people around us who will hear us, and we have a God who is going before us, making a way, andproviding everything we need. He who will be with us in everything that is coming next.

Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD will personally go ahead of you. He will be with you; he will neither fail you nor abandon you.

Deuteronomy 31:8

We Don’t Know Everything, a Reprise

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You may have seen that I’m running a Thursday series called “10 Years Later” — a weekly reposting of something that I’ve written in this space over the last 10 years. This past Thursday, I re-posted We Don’t Know Everything, a reflection I wrote in January of 2015 about how if we knew everything that would happen in the wake of a major life decision, we might choose differently and how our limited vision allows us to step out in faith that God will provide for every eventuality.

I re-read that post again this morning, and it feels particularly apropos in this moment.

Over the years, we (like you) have made many major life decisions — the time I enrolled in graduate school, for example, or the time when we quit our jobs before securing new employment because it was just that important for us to move closer to our oldest son, whose other family had just relocated to the west side of the state.

When making these decisions, we look at the information we have in the moment, try to anticipate future needs, and make the choice that seems to make sense.

When I enrolled in graduate school in 2002, our younger children were in 1st, 3rd, and 4th grades. I thought that since I had been home with them for the last 10 years, it might be wise to ease in, maybe take one class at a time, in order to put less strain on the family. My husband disagreed. He said, “If you are going to do it, I suggest you go full time. Fully immerse yourself. We have no idea what is coming next.”

I was kind of surprised that he was willing to make that kind of commitment because I knew that in addition to his full-time ministry position, he would have to pick up more of the burden of caring for our children — after school pickups, homework, dinner, etc. But, if he was willing to do that, I was willing to — gulp — take three graduate courses at a time for two years.

We didn’t know at the time that we would, just two years later, be moving to St. Louis for him to attend the seminary. Turns out, I finished my program about one month before we moved. And because of that degree, I was situated to easily secure immediate employment, first teaching at a community college, then at a public high school (once I had obtained my Missouri teaching credential), and then in the Lutheran high school that would become such a formative place in my career.

When, in 2013, my health was very poor, and it was becoming clear that I could no longer sustain my role in that school, my husband was offered a position here in Michigan, and although it was our daughter’s senior year of high school, the position was such a good fit, that he decided to make the move ahead of us to not only take this new role but also to prepare a space for me to land when she was finished with high school and situated in college. We didn’t know how desperately I would need to convalesce, but that decision which was very difficult given that he would miss large portions of her senior year, set us up for a season of healing, not only for me but for our whole family.

It was that season that allowed me to learn new ways of living that supported my health, to process some trauma that could no longer be ignored, and to — after a while — be ready to land in the position I have now, a position that is incredibly fulfilling. We had no idea when I started this position if I would be able to sustain it, but for over three years I have, and this past fall it became apparent that we should consider a shift for my husband.

We had long discussed that he would one-day shift to private practice counseling, but we didn’t have a firm timeline, and we sure didn’t know what was coming when we sat down with our financial advisor this past fall to determine that this was indeed a good time for him to make that shift.

We just looked at the information that was available to us and made the choice that seemed to make sense.

We had no idea that the week before he intended to open his practice one family member would be diagnosed with cancer nor that the following week another one would. That’s right, two close family members in two weeks diagnosed with cancer.

We’ve had a little anxiety coming into this shift — what if he doesn’t get enough clients right away? What if he doesn’t get approved to take insurance for several months?

What would we do?

Well, we needn’t have been concerned. We didn’t know what was coming, but God did.

In these past weeks when he hasn’t had all the responsibility of his former position, he’s had time to rest, to take care of family details, to spend lots of time on the phone, to make extra trips, and to care for himself.

I don’t make it a practice to tell anyone else’s story in my blog, so I won’t right now share the details of those who are ill or go any further with what this transition has meant for my husband. That is his story to tell.

Suffice it to say, that I am noticing, once again, that God goes before us. He is always preparing us for what is next. He provides what we need at just the right time — even when we cannot see that that is true. He is always working on our behalf, always making a way.

This, my friends, is most certainly true.

Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the wilderness…[You] did not fail to guide them on their path

Nehemiah 9:19

10 Years Later #5

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

We don’t know everything

 ~ KRISTIN ~ 

On December 21, 1989, my husband proposed to me, and when I accepted he said, “Things are going to get busy.”  If I would have known then what ‘busy’ meant, I might have turned back.

But God orders life in such a way that He lets us see just a bit.   At that moment, I could say yes, even knowing that my future husband was a divorced father of a four-year-old.  But would I have said yes if I had known that we would live in eleven homes in twenty-four years?  That we would ultimately be the parents of four children? That I was not only marrying a teacher, but a therapist, and a pastor, and a university administrator?

Maybe.  I was a starry-eyed twenty-three year old when I said yes.  I knew what was behind me — divorced parents, an eating disorder, my college education.  I had survived so much already. How hard could this be?

Hard.  You probably know all too well that life is hard —  just when you think you are sailing smoothly, a storm pops up — a job change, an educational challenge, a health issue, financial trouble, extended family trouble, and the list goes on.  Sometimes it feels as though we can’t handle even what this particular day holds — how on earth would we manage if we had the whole script in front of us from day one?

I was still a little starry eyed in 2004 when my husband said to me, “God is calling me to the seminary.”  In six months’ time I finished coursework for my Master’s degree, prepared a house for selling, sold/gave away half of our possessions, packed up a family of five, and relocated three states away.  I was excited because of what I knew — God had called my husband into ministry.  Would I have been so excited if I had known,  really known, the struggles our children would face in St. Louis?  Would I have been happy to embrace a life of busy-ness, a busier busy-ness than we had ever known?  What if He’d said, “You’re going to be there for 10 years, you are both going to experience significant health issues, and there is going to be plenty of family strife.”  Would we have still signed up?

Maybe.  I mean, back then we were still, in our minds, pretty invincible.  We might have still signed up.  But maybe not.  We might have been scared.  We might have wanted to protect our family from struggle.  We might have wanted to protect ourselves from struggle.

And if we would have done that, the story would be much different than the story is today.  We have been changed.  I am not the starry-eyed twenty-three year old who agreed to marry my husband.  I am not the optimistic ‘let’s do it!’ wife who moved mountains so that we could answer God’s call.  I have been changed.

And I’m still changing, because life keeps happening — the good, the bad, and the downright ugly.

It’s pretty easy to thank God when He gives you a beautiful granddaughter to hold and adore. It gets a little more difficult when you, or the people who you love, are hurting. But I find assurance in knowing that even before 1989, God knew every little thing that He would bring into my life — even the stuff of today.  He knew in advance that He would be with me through all of it — that He would be carrying me in the palm of His hand.

This morning the pastor at the church we were visiting recalled, through the genealogy in Matthew 1, God’s faithfulness, especially in light of the faithLESSness of man.  He started with Abraham’s unfaithfulness, then Isaac’s, and so on.  His point was that God knew, from before the creation of the world, that we (all of us) would screw it up.  And yet he planned, from before the creation of the world, to keep a covenant with His people.  The covenant did not depend on us doing the right thing, saying yes at the right time, or answering a call.  It only depended on the faithfulness of God.

And He is faithful.  Faithful to love me when I couldn’t have cared less about Him.  Faithful to hold me when I felt all alone.  Faithful to heal me when I was hurting.  Faithful to carry me when I was too tired to walk on my own.  He knew before time began that He would be faithful in all these things, even when I was faithLESS.

Back in 1989 I didn’t know what was in store for me, and today is no different.  I have no idea what will come into our lives in the years to come, but I do know that God will remain faithful to us.  He will continue to carry us in the palm of His hand.

Deuteronomy 7:9

Know therefore that the Lord your God is God;

He is the faithful God, keeping His covenant of love to a thousand generations…