I wake up and I dread the mornings. The seven year olds that I used to adore, that I were absolutely in love with, are now like little tentacles sucking the life and energy right out of me. I used to wake up and look forward to seeing them. I used to look forward to hearing their stories and pretending like I understood what they were trying to say. Even if they took a lot of energy out of me I used to wake up and really look forward to my pre-kinder classes. They were all so adorable, innocent and lovable. They were so tiny. Every single one of them, all messy and honest and blubbering half nonsensical things majority of the time. They were my babies and I was just glad to be interacting with them. Now, I wake up and dread the mornings because they cling and beg and pull and pine for my attention and I lose patience and love quickly. Sometimes I peel them off of me, literally, and grow tired of them too easily. I try and try but some days I have so little to give. They need me, and I know it. They need me to be there, to want to be there with them through the nitty-gritty-Phonics-SH-SH-words- but sometimes I'm so over-worked, tired and exhausted that even their small, insistent hugs irritate me. It irritates me because they love me and cling to me. It irritates me because their very existence asks of me, wants from me. It irritates me because sometimes I know that they deserve a better teacher.

The days can be long. The days are getting longer, and the time I spend grading and filing paperwork and making photocopies after work hasn't been getting much shorter. I'm quicker, I'm quick on my feet literally and grade papers during my lunch breaks but I still can't seem to get far ahead in the lesson planning or grading. Grading. If only I had an assistant...

I'm glad I have work though. And I'm glad I'm making my own money, standing on my own two feet so to speak. I'm also glad that I haven't given up and quit, thrown in the towel because some weeks it's pretty dang hard to get up in the morning. Working 12 hour days really takes a toll on your health, attitude and soul.

I've been reading a lot of TIMES and What's so Amazing about Grace, and started on Not For Sale. I went to the Not For Sale conference last week and it really changed my life in the sense that it got me thinking about my "next" step. I really truly want to dedicate a year to help at a half-way house or an orphanage or a shelter or a school in a third-world country. I was reading the Not For Sale book on the bus the other day, and I started to cry thinking about all of the little children no body stands up for. And if I, a broken, ignorant, selfish, sinful person could shed tears reading one little boy's story, I wondered how much it grieved an all-loving, all-seeing, all-knowing and all-feeling God. I was so grieved for these children, children that I did not know and could not see. Children I had never known. And our God, who knows us so well, who knows the number of hairs on our head and knit us in our mother's womb, how much does he grieve and hurt over one single child's pain? It broke my heart reading story after story about the reality of poverty and sex-trafficking and slavery that enslaves so many young children today..If it broke my heart to read about these children, I wondered how much it grieved the Father...for so many of His children are lost and forsaken. So many of His children need to be healed, saved and REACHED.

I don't know what this year will bring. But it is the year of the Rabbit. And I am the Rabbit. I can only guess that this year will be a lucky, lucky year for me. Not that I need much luck anyways ;)