Crafting Like Crazy!

So, This week I've been in a crazy crafting mood-- crochet, decoupage clipboards, and today's project: my personal favorite Owl themed drawer pulls for Maggie's room!

Looking back, Looking ahead.

Tonight--for some strange reason, I decided it was finally time to clean out my facebook message inbox. Let me tell you, it's been a LOOONG time (aka the creation of my facebook account). A few pages in, I found several e-mails from the time when I was living in Tulsa...and a few immediately following. As I was reading them, I remember how devastated I was that MY PLANS weren't working out, and yet a big part of my heart just giggled inside.

I have such awesome plans. I'm a great planner, as it turns out. But it took the failure of my plans to convince me that God's plans were much better. In the two and a half years since I moved back home, I have had the time of my life. It's funny how one day, you can think that you life is over--nothing fun left to happen and then all of a sudden--God. It amazes me how through little situations every day, God reaffirms that I am heading in the right direction. For me, becoming a teacher is about so much more than providing an education for children. It's about using the talents and desires God instilled in me to shape my life into the Life God had planned for me from the very beginning. I don't know about you, but I think that is just basically awesome. :)

...Just my thoughts.

Oh dear goodness...

Want to hear how it all worked out? It's a pretty crazy story. Let's start back at the beginning.

In February, I spent a week in some serious prayer asking for God to show me where I needed to student teach. Basically I had two choices: Move home to Rocky, student teach in Sentinel and work in a really small school but live with my parents for free; OR student teach in the OKC area, and...well, just hope I could find a place to live, but get my feet wet in schools in a larger area since that is where I was hoping to end up anyway. Ultimately, I really felt led to come to the city area and just find a way for it to work.

Application deadlines came, and went. I applied for OKC, and waited and waited and waited to hear back. In the waiting I began to get nervous. Where was I going to live? How was I going to pay my bills? What if the school I was hoping to student teach at rejected me? Had I made the wrong decision?

Finally toward the end of April, the school got back with me. I was assigned to student teach in 5th grade for six weeks, and 7th grade math for six weeks--perfect. Now on to all of the other questions.

Then, life happened. :)

One night, someone showed up at my parents' house and asked if they would be interested in selling their house. Of course. So they showed her the place, she loved it. After a week of prayer, they were ready to hear her offer and begin the search for a new place. The next Saturday we looked at houses--made an offer on our dream house on Sunday, and the seller had accepted by Monday! Now, just a short month later--we have moved into our new home.

It's amazing how once things started moving, how quickly it all came together. Over and over through this all we have been reassured that God's handiwork is responsible. It is so amazing to see how He moves in our lives when we wait for His timing. I cannot wait to see what else he has in store for our whole family with these new developments!!!

Life!

It is amazing to me that graduation is so close! On Saturday, I will don my cap, gown and my hood for my Masters' degree!!! I am so excited, I have been planning for this weekend for almost two months now. My other graduation was just another day, but this one is really exciting and special to me for some reason. :D

I am also super excited to announce that I have my student teacher placement! I will be working in a school in the metro area, teaching 5th grade for 6 weeks and 7th grade math for 6 weeks. As it turns out, I still don't have a solid plan for the summer or where I will live during student teaching, but I have been doing what legwork I can, and trusting God's plan. I know it will all work out. :)

Reflecting

I went to a conference this weekend. At said conference I was told that part of the problem with our lives feeling so crazy is that we don't take the time to sit back and reflect on what is going on in our lives. It's like eating, eating, eating, without ever letting yourself go through the digestion process. I'm not going to say that I'm going to try to journal or blog every day or anything, but honestly what they said seems to make sense so I'm going to try to be more consistent.

I am currently in my last semester of regular classes before going out to do my student teaching. I'm crazy excited. So much so that I'm finding myself with a good old case of senioritis. Somehow I've managed to stay motivated enough to stay just on top of my coursework and job responsibilities, but for the most part I'm highly unmotivated.

Although, maybe it is best to note that un-motivated to me really just means "inappropriately motivated". I've had plenty of time to think up possible scenarios in which I work all summer, and somehow miraculously have enough money to support myself through student teaching. I also have been thinking about where I want to go to church when I move. Where I will student teach, how that will work out. How my dream of actually passing the Spanish OSAT really could come true. You know, other fun stuff. :)

Also this weekend I heard a quote that is kind of changing the way I think about everything. It says "When we fear things, I think we wish for them...every fear hides a wish." Thanks David Mamet for obviously reading my mail. I think this is such an interesting and yet super true assessment. So many times in life, the very things I say I don't want to do because they are "too scary" end up being the things I feel most led by God to do. I'm not saying that in the sense that God is mean and makes us do stuff we don't want to do, I'm saying that in the sense that when you really trust Him he allows you to go through this beautiful process where your greatest fears become your greatest desires and passions in life. I practically ran away from being a teacher when I was in school before because I was terrified of being unfit to help kids learn and grow. I'm still terrified by that prospect and yet I'm convinced nothing in the world will ever be more "right" for me than being a teacher. I'm terrified of other things too, and although I doubt there will be many people reading this, I don't feel comfortable talking about them in a public forum.

So, I guess if you do happen to be reading this, what are you wishing for? :) I hope it's something God-sized and laughably impossible, because that's exactly what I'm afraid of.