Tag: Writing

Back at it

~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

When I started this blog about eighteen months ago, I had every intention of writing every single day.  I had read in Stephen King’s On Writing that he required himself to write 2000 words each morning before he allowed himself to do anything else.  That’s a lot of words. His theory was that the exercise of writing itself would produce better writing.  And, I mean, it has worked out pretty well for him, hasn’t it?  So, agreeing with his premise, I purposed to write every morning before I did anything else.

For the first six months, that writing was my anchor.  That, and exercise, and all the other healthful routines I built into my life for this Next Chapter.  The anchors were critical to my well-being.  I hadn’t yet made many friends here in Ann Arbor.  I wasn’t working.  We didn’t have a church family.  I needed those anchors to bring order and sanity to my days.

The bonus, of course, was that I had created a venue through which to process all my thoughts about the major move we had made and all the transitions it involved.  And, the unintended benefit was that I was also able to see, through my writing, all that had transpired during the soldiering years. This writing, this daily discipline, had become a pouring out of my soul in the presence of many witnesses — a confessional that provided deep healing.  So, I continued writing.

When I started tutoring last January, I was still able to maintain my daily writing, my exercise regimen, and my weekly Bible study.  It wasn’t until April, when I went back to work on a more regular schedule that something had to give.  And, as in the past, those healthful routines were the first things to go.  I let go of my regular exercise and instead tried to fit in a walk every now and then.  I stopped going to my weekly Bible study because it met during the day. My blogging became more sporadic while I learned to juggle work with family and sleep.

Even so, I was still able to find time for my personal Bible study and blogging at least a couple times of week.  This routine continued to anchor me and provide a venue for all the change that was happening inside of me — the learning, the healing, the growing.  And, in fact, I have been able to add back the other disciplines over time, too.

So I get to a day like today, where I look back and see that I have not blogged (or done personal Bible study) in seventeen days, and I say, “What’s up? For what have you abandoned this discipline? What have you decided was more important than this daily breath that centers you and allows you to process emotion? Have you been soldiering?”

Well, not exactly.  But kind of.  I mean, it is December — the month of parties, and semester finals, and travel, and gifting, and preparing.  So everyone has been busier than they were just a month ago.  And, yes, I have tutored more in the last four weeks than I have all year.  I have edited countless papers, met with more than a dozen different students, and graded close to one hundred essays.  I’ve gone to weekly physical therapy, and two doctor appointments.  I’ve exercised, socialized, cooked, crafted, and shopped til I dropped.

So, it’s time.  It’s time to get back to the discipline that orders my thoughts. It’s time to be still and breathe.  It’s time to get back to my writing.

 

[I] proclaim to you what [I] have seen and heard,…  [I] write this to make [my] joy complete.

I John 1: 3, 5 Rathje Revised Version

Students of the Week

~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

Eleven days since my last post?  How can that be?  What did I do with eleven days?

Well, a quick glance at the calendar tells me I’ve done a lot with eleven days.  We spent three of those days traveling to see a grand baby.  Two days were spent hosting our daughter and her boyfriend for a quick visit.  And the rest of the days?  Well, friends, I’ve seen a lot of students.  Wanna meet some of them?

Let’s see, maybe we’ll start with the youngest.  About six weeks ago, a mother contacted me and asked if I would work with her two daughters on writing; they are in the the third and fifth grades.  I told the mother that I typically only work with older students — as in high school and college — but she persisted.  So, I met these two little Chinese girls who I could easily carry around in my pockets with me, and I fell in love.  They are precocious — the fifth grader’s writing is laced with sarcasm and hyperbole; the third grader is wise and obedient, wishing that all of her classmates would see the error of their ways and comply with her teacher’s wishes as she does.  We work on writing and grammar and I try to absorb some of the academic pressure that their hardworking parents are piling on top of them.

Next in terms of age is a student that I have had almost from the beginning.  She is a a seventh grader who works closer to eleventh grade level.  The pressure from her Indian immigrant parents to do better/work harder is palpable, but she is able to resiliently shrug off what she can’t carry.  She steps to her own beat.  She wants to please her parents, of course, but she also knows what she does and doesn’t like.  Our challenge this past week was ignoring her deep ‘need’ to change the wallpaper on her laptop so that we could work on test prep exercises.  Yes, the seventh grader in her shines through.

I have another sister pair.  They are the fifth grade and eighth grade daughters of  a Taiwanese mother and an American father.  They have lived in China, Chicago, and little old Northville, Michigan.  They are bilingual, as are many of my students.  They are also quite bright.  Their parents, like so many others I have met this year, want their children to succeed academically, which means they will need supplemental instruction in Standard English, not because they don’t speak it very clearly, but because their parents don’t consistently model Standard English structures.  This seemingly small factor, can impact standardized test scores and hinder clear written communication.

I know; I started by saying I don’t typically work with younger students, then I introduced you to five.

I’ve got a couple of high school boys that I see weekly — same scenario as above — bright guys with international parents who need additional work in English.  These boys are taking honors classes, playing sports, and participating in myriad other pursuits, then sitting with me for an hour doing test prep, writing essays, and talking about sentence construction.  I don’t think I had this kind of work ethic in high school!

I also have adults.  I must say I love my adults.

The first is a twenty-year old whose first language is Farsi and second language is English.  He has struggled his whole life with reading and comprehension, so we are meeting twice a week to work on these skills.  He hopes to be one day be successful in college.

Then there is the thirty year old Brazilian woman living in California.  She and I meet online once a week to improve her writing.  She already has an American MBA, but she wants to become a blogger to promote her startup and to discuss issues of marketing.  Yes, as you can see, all of my students are slackers.

My other thirty year old is from Romania.  After twelve years in the country, she decided to become a nurse.  We spent four months preparing her for the pre-nursing exam. She passed the test and was accepted into a program. She’ll start in January, so we are meeting weekly to continue to improve her English skills.

My personal favorite at the moment is a young woman from Saudi Arabia.  She is here on the government’s dime to get a degree in English literature so that she can return to her country and teach in a university.  She’s taking three graduate level classes — Romanticism, Literature of the Holocaust, and 21st Century African American literature.  She reads, thinks, and writes about these very different topics.  I get to talk her through some of her ideas and make sure that her writing reflects what she is thinking.

This week I will meet a Hispanic man who is about to graduate from the University of Michigan.  He needs some support preparing for the Michigan teacher certification test, you know, since English is his second language.

Guys, I get to do this.  Each week I get to sit across the table from (or in front of the screen with) a person who I never would have come into contact with if I didn’t have a degree in English, years of teaching experience, and an online profile.

I am learning from each of them, perhaps more than they are learning from me.

Just a part of my life in this next chapter — way more than I could have ever hoped for.

Ephesians 3:20-21

20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Intensive Coursework

~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes I feel like I am taking an advanced course — like the three-weeks-in-the-summer-six-hours-a-day course that earns you three credits.   One summer in college, I took a course called ‘Teaching the Christian Faith’.  After sitting in class all day, I would go home and work all night to prepare for the next class.  During those three weeks I felt like I was eating, breathing, and sleeping with ‘Teaching the Christian Faith’. I think I remember making my friends sit around one evening while I gave them an object lesson — something about preferring an old sweatshirt to a new clean garment — so that I could practice before I stood in front of the whole class.

I am forty-eight years old and I am no longer enrolled in college, but, guys, I am taking one of those courses right now. The course seems to have started about the time I started writing this blog, and it seems to have several course objectives.  And, apparently I am not mastering these objectives very quickly.

If I were the teacher, this is how I would state the objectives:

I will acknowledge that God is God and I am not. 

I will learn how to be still and know that He is God. 

I will trust God for His provision. 

I will wait for God to establish the work of my hands. 

I will understand that I am sitting in the palm of His hand. 

I know these are the objectives, because they are the themes that come up repeatedly in my blogging.  And, if you haven’t figured it out by now, blogging — actually all writing — is, for me, a way of processing thoughts, issues of faith, and emotions.

But these objectives show up outside of my writing, too. Yesterday in church, our pastor said “We need to acknowledge that God is God and we are not.”  He also said, and had as one of the points in his outline, “Be still.  Now.”  I can’t make this stuff up.

I also get everyday practical exercises to ensure that I will master this content:

  • Bills that seem too large to pay — Trust God for His provision.
  • An interview that resulted in, “we’re going in another direction” — God will establish the work of my hands.
  • Life circumstances that seem overwhelming — Be still and know that He is God. 

My last blog was about money.  The numbers aren’t all adding up on paper. (My husband reminded me over the weekend that they never have.) So, I have been trying my old MO — need money? work more! I went to an interview on Friday for a proofreading position — full time (and some overtime) for March through July or August. While I was contemplating this position, I was working out in my mind how I could keep my tutoring and proofreading clients.  I mean, how hard can it be?  I’m sure I can do it!

I was discussing all this with one of my daughters, who not too long ago observed me lying in bed for several hours a day. She remarked, “That sounds like a lot.”  I responded, “I think I can manage.”  So, I went to the interview which involved two hours of proofreading a biology lab manual.  As I was marking misspellings and font shifts, I was thinking, “I could do this 40-50 hours a week.  That would solve some of our money issues.”

When I am at the front of a classroom and a student gives me a wrong answer after weeks and weeks of instruction, I have been known to make a buzzer noise and ask the ‘next contestant’ if he has the correct answer. I mean, come on, we have been over this and over this.

On Friday, I confidently turned in my proofreading ‘test’ and walked out the front door of the publishing house, thinking to myself, “Yup, I will be working here very soon.”  But before I even got home the buzzer sounded. “Wrong answer!”  I had a message from the publishing house that said that had chosen a ‘different candidate’.  What?  I thought you were hiring several.  I thought you were building a pool of freelancers that you could call in for special projects? I was going to solve all of our problems.

Buzzzzzzzzzzzz!  Wrong answer!

This morning I open my Bible study.  (Are you tired of reading those words yet?) Here is the text; I am not kidding.

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you of not more value than they?  Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? … But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. 

Sometimes when my students don’t get an objective, I present the material over and over — in multiple packages — praying, hoping that I will find just the right combination of direct instruction, practice, and external reinforcement to make it stick.

The Master Teacher is skilled in multi-modal instruction.  He is aware of my special learning needs.  He does not grow weary or frustrated when I continually go back to my old ways, even after weeks and weeks of instruction.  He just prepares another lesson for me, knowing that eventually, I will “know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

Until then, I will be taking this class.

What to do, What to do, pt. 2

~ Kristin ~ Leave a comment

Remember way back in November when I broke my unemployment by working as an election agent?  I had been unemployed for four months or so and I agreed to sit in a press room at the county court house and report election returns via my smartphone.  It was my first post-teaching gig.  I had actually applied for that job while I was still living in St. Louis and interviewed for the position on the day that we moved in to the little house by the river.

The same agency that hired me for that position called me this morning.  They want to hire me for the months of March and April to drive about thirty miles one way, buy stuff, and then go donate that stuff to a shelter.  It’s not great money, but it’s 20-25 hours of work each week for eight weeks.  I was tempted to say yes.  I mean, they sought me out.  Why not?

Well, there are a few reasons.  The pay is not great.  If I am going to commit to something for 20-25 hours a week, it has to be worth my while.  I emailed the hiring agent and told her this.  She replied by telling me that they would compensate me for mileage — which would add up to a decent sum.  They would also pay for my travel to Cincinnati for training.  This would include lodging and meals for St. Patrick’s Day weekend.  That’s tempting, especially since the grand baby is in Cincinnati. But still, is it worth 20-25 hours of my time for six to eight weeks?

The second issue is that three of us are sharing one vehicle right now.  I know —  it’s practically un-American.  We have one car and one television.  (Actually, we have always only had one television, but that’s a story for another day.) We are working it out with only one car, but it takes some pretty fancy stepping including a Google Calendar specifically for car usage.  Taking a job that’s 20-25 hours each week in a small town thirty miles away would really bog down that calendar and make it very difficult for others to ‘share’ our one vehicle.

The third issue is that I am now a certified math story-problem grader (impressive, I know) and I am scheduled to start grading the short answers of unsuspecting third through eighth graders in early March. That, my friends, will earn me about the same amount of money as the purchasing position without leaving my home.

The fourth issue is that I am building my tutoring clientele.  Last week I did eight hours of tutoring.  This week I have six hours scheduled.  Tutoring does pay enough to make it worth my while.  And, it’s doing what I love to do. And, it uses my gifts.  And, it allows me to interact with students and their parents.

The fifth issue is that I have also applied for a short-term full-time proofreading position that starts the end of March and goes through July.   That position is for a textbook company.  It would give me something to do while students are on their summer breaks, and it would give me some excellent experience in proofreading.  Now, I haven’t been offered this position, nor have I even interviewed, but if I take a position buying things and donating them to a shelter, I won’t be available for a proofreading position.

So, what should I do?  Step one: I contacted the textbook company and inquired about their hiring timeline.  Step two: I will keep tutoring!  Step three: I will grade those math tests! Step four: I will pass on the purchasing gig!

My very first post on this blog was entitled ‘What to do, What to do”.  I’m still asking that question, but I am getting some clarity as I move through this next chapter. 

Psalm 90:17

May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us.

Establish the work of our hands for us — yes, establish the work of our hands.

A little more on writing

~ Kristin ~ 4 Comments

I attended a poetry reading by Li Young-Lee last night.  He read three poems he said he is ‘working on’.  In fact, after the first, he said, “I need to change one word in that one.  Next time.”  I smiled and thought to myself, “No writing is finished, merely abandoned.”

I can’t remember who said that to me.  And maybe they didn’t even say it to me.  But it has stuck with me.  In fact, I said that phrase to many students who wanted their writing to be ‘just perfect’ before handing it in.  I don’t think it’s possible for writing to be ‘perfect’.  Revision is always possible.  We can always ‘change one word’ or one phrase.  We can always have a better introduction, a better conclusion.  We can always find a way to say something differently or better.

Also last night, a young writer sent me an essay she just received back from her teacher.  I had ‘helped’ her with her process and she had received a 69/100.  Ouch.  The marks all over her paper were valid.  Of course there is room for improvement.  She is revising at this moment.

Revision.  I do love revision.  But it’s so hard!  In order to revise we sometimes have to delete our creation!  We have to cut out words that were so difficult to find in the first place. We have to make decisions about which of our thoughts get to stay and which have to go.  It takes time.  And thought.  It’s agonizing.

And ultimately, we have to decide that enough is enough.  We have labored so long on one piece, revised ad nauseum, and we can’t stand to work on it any more.  So, we ‘abandon’ it.  We submit it ‘as is’.  It’s ‘good enough’.  We did all that we could do.

We are not perfect.  We cannot produce perfect work.  It’s impossible.

Yet in our imperfection, we are not abandoned.

Do you remember the t-shirts from back in the day that said, “Be patient with me, God is not finished with me yet”? Cheesy, yes, but true.  We are works in progress.  The Creator continues to make revisions, shaping and molding us.  He can visualize the finished product, and guys, we will eventually arrive there!

We will not be abandoned.  The Creator does not tire of working with us. He doesn’t wad us up and toss us in the general direction of the trash can.

Nope.

He cradles us in the palm of His hand, gently caressing and reshaping us.  He conforms us to His image.  And one day….

He who began a good work in you 

will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Phillipians 1:6

We, my friends, will not be abandoned.  We will be completed.

Write away

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

A friend asked me yesterday if I know what I am going to write before I sit down at my laptop.  Not usually.  I sit down and think “Well, what’s it going to be today?”  Sometimes I just start typing.  Sometimes I look at a blank screen for a very long time.  Sometimes I get two or three paragraphs in, delete the whole thing, lather, rinse, repeat.

On rare very blessed days, I wake up with an idea in my mind, sometimes in the middle of the night, and I can’t get to the keyboard fast enough.  I have a start, I don’t know where it will take me, but I know for sure that I have the topic right. In those moments, I feel like I am being instructed by the Teacher himself, as though He is pushing the words through my fingertips onto the screen, because He knows that is where I am most likely to pay close attention to them.

On other days, I get up, drink my tea, eat my oatmeal, skim Facebook, read my emails, do my Bible study, then come to my computer with a general idea of where I am headed. This type of writing is usually an extension of my Bible study, allowing my brain to explore out what I just studied, making it personal.

Sometimes my writing sorts out what is happening in my life — the death of a friend, a change in medication, a potential job.  This writing usually reveals the feelings that I typically keep below the surface…the ones that are pressing to be examined…the ones that I really need to process in order to move forward.

And today, I am writing about my writing.  Writing allows my soul to breathe.  I learned that when I was very young, back in the days of pink diaries that locked with a little golden key.  I treasured the time I could lie on my bed and write in my diary.  I poured my little heart out into those cheesy little books.  Somewhere along the way I discovered poetry and dabbled a little in finding just the right combination of words to cryptically express my innermost emotions.  Later, poetry gave way to song lyrics, devotions, and lesson plans.

My students often asked me if I would ever write a novel.  “No,” I would say.  “I don’t really know how to write what’s not true.”  And that’s a fact.  The only type of writing I really know how to do is this — putting the ordinary stuff of life on the page in order to make sense of it.

Some people paint.  Others dance.  Some run marathons.  Others garden.  We each have to find the language of our heart and use it to say what’s inside of us.  We know when we’ve found it because we can’t help but run to it, and getting there, we see that others too, miraculously, are blessed.

It’s a mystery, isn’t it?  Someone could be blessed by my fumblings? Your fumblings? But they are!  So, I’ll continue to fumble along.

I Corinthians 12:4

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit…

Be still. Listen. Write.

~ Kristin ~ 1 Comment

You may be thinking to yourself, “Isn’t blogging doing something? I thought you were just trying to be.”  Ah, grasshopper, things are not always as they appear. 

From a very early age I have used writing to explore my thoughts and feelings, to access my inner self, my human being. I’m not sure how that started, but I can remember lying in my bed as a young girl with Bible in one hand and journal in the other. In fact, in the process of moving this time around I have found dozens of journals — cute little fabric bound books, battered spiral notebooks, and the latest, a Google doc. I have been journaling, on and off, my whole life.  So, really, blogging, is just opening this process of exploration to others. 

On the first day of this blog I admitted that I use doing to escape feeling.  I use writing to explore feeling.  When I am moving at top-speed, which is my comfort zone, I don’t take time to feel. Or to write. However, when I intentionally get up each morning, have my Bible reading, do a little Pilates, pour a cup of tea and spend an hour writing, I am taking the time to feel — to explore what is happening in my life, to think about it, to be honest with myself, and to dwell in the moment.   In sharing this process with you, I have discovered I am building in a layer of accountability — to be consistent, to follow a thread, to not avoid the tough stuff that comes up.  In fact, a few of you have responded to me in a variety of ways — this has been affirming, and thought-provoking, and humbling. 

I am not sure what got into me the other day, when I jumped through all the hoops to create a blog. Perhaps the knowledge that I am entering the unknown territory of being still prompted me to go back to my comfort zone — Bible in one hand, words in the other.  Perhaps I am just following the current blogging trend.  Perhaps, at my age, I don’t mind having my thoughts open to a wider audience. 

One thing I do know, as long as I have been using this practice of writing, I have found peace in the process.  I sense that I hear more from God, that I am more calm, that I am more centered.  So why do I get busy doing and abandon the process over and over again?  Will I do that this time?  Will I blog every day for one hundred days and then get a job and forget about my blog — about my Bible and words? About connecting to my inner being?  I don’t know.  

One thing I am learning is that I can’t not do something because I might not stick with it.  Today I woke up, got out of bed, read Matthew 7, brewed a cup of tea, and sat down to write. I am planning on doing something similar tomorrow. I pray that this season of somewhat forced being will allow me to embrace this practice more fully than I have before, to more completely and consistently connect with my interior self, and to listen more carefully to God. 

 Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 7, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” It’s that simple.  I don’t need to do a lot in the next several months.  But I do need to ask, seek, and knock.  What do you want me to do, Lord?  Right now the answer I am getting is, “Be still.  Listen.  Write.”  Ok.