Week 4 Day 7

It was so nice to be able to sleep in today! Especially after the events in the middle of the night.

I have moved 20+ times. I’m more accustomed to living in small towns or out in the country. However, since moving to the large city and living in buildings where crimes were committed, I feel a little “less safe”. I am very thankful to have dogs for this reason. They are a first warning, a first defence for any strangers trying to break in to my house. And when my dogs bark at around 1:30 in the morning? You better believe I think something is going on. My husband was in such a deep sleep he was answering my questions, but not really being awake. So I had to go downstairs to see what was going on. The problem was, I didn’t see anything. So either someone had been outside (it was a weekend night, so quite easy for someone drunk to be walking around) or something.

Now, the problem is I like to watch shows like CSI or Murdoch Mysteries. So many scenarios started playing in my head and I totally freaked myself out. I couldn’t sleep. I watched the clock until after 4 in the morning, praying the whole time that we would be safe from everything. And it is surely by God’s good grace that I was able to fall asleep sometime after 4. I am so thankful for a God that is willing to protect me and give me peace, even over such things as my own made-up fears.

After I spent a long time sleeping in, I got up and ate, did some more cleaning, In the afternoon, I started getting ready for the big show that evening. I was going to the Muscle Beach Fall Classic and going to see Dennis Wolf! How exciting!

So when evening came, my husband and I got ready, and headed out. We spent a little bit of time going to few booths they had there: Cellucor, My Muscle Meals, Bio X, Mutant, Muscle Beach, Xaocai, and a couple others. I waited until intermission to purchase these new protein cookies hand made and produced at some protein cafe that I hadn’t heard of before. Man, they were good! And to think they were made with cottage cheese… Normally I can’t stand cottage cheese with anything sweet, but you couldn’t even tell it was in there. It was so good!

After intermission, I was so happy! It was time for Mr. Dennis Wolf to grace the stage! Ah! I cannot tell you my excitement! He is probably my favourite male bodybuilder. I love his attitude, his dedication, and just everything. And after watching him in the movie Generation Iron, then watching him online compete at Olympia and seeing his awesome attitude of dancing in the confetti blast on stage, and actually being able to see him in person and get my picture with him? It was amazing!

He posed to the first song completely on stage. They gave him a break, then he posed to a second song while walking up and down the middle aisles of our venue. My husband was second away from the aisle, and I was third. How massive he was in person! And then getting my picture with him; he’s just pure muscle. That man is huge. It was such a good night!

Following that, my husband and I stopped at Boston Pizza for a quick bite to eat. No, after being so motivated by all the competitors on stage and knowing that is my goal, to be on that stage, it was not the greatest choice of places. But I was still able to make a good choice by getting a salad with chicken. You just gotta learn how to make the best of every situation!

I’m looking forward to my workouts this week and pushing as hard as I can. My 21 days of meals from Fresh Fit Foods starts tomorrow, and I’m just pumped for making the best of every minute. Motivation levels are higher than ever, here I go!

Today I Walked in the Office and Said “I Quit!”

Ok, so not really. But I did walk in and said that I felt like quitting.

Today was one of those days. Those days where you wish you had never gotten out of bed, that you called in sick, that anything would have happened except what did. Teachers, I’m sure you know the kind of day I’m talking about.

Today I had to deal with something I hoped to never deal with; something that totally broke my heart. Since I don’t have kids of my own, those school kids are so much more like my own children. They are the kids that I try to protect. And when something happens, I immediately attack myself that I did not do a good enough job training and guiding them in life. When something happens, I immediately feel like a failure.

Today was probably one of the worst things I’ve ever had to deal with. So immediately my thoughts were I had failed as a teacher, I had failed as a guide in the life of my student, and I wasn’t fit for my job. What a hit!

Teaching is such a large, tough responsibility. Parenting is a huge responsibility. Any career in which you work with children and youth is a huge responsibility. When working with children, you have to realize that everything you do, they are watching. Anything you do or say, they will carry with them the rest of their lives. What a scary thought!

And as a teacher, you are being entrusted with someone else’s child which carries an extra burden in itself. You strive to be a good influence in their lives. You strive to teach them such great morals in such a small time and when something happens (and it honestly only has to be one thing), you feel as if you’ve failed altogether. Nevermind the fact that you have so many other kids in the class. All it takes is one student, one incident, and you immediately begin to judge yourself.

That’s what I went through today. I wanted to cry. I wanted to quit. I wanted to go home. I wanted to just curl up in a ball and go to sleep so that I could forget about the world around me at that moment. But instead I took deep breaths and did what I needed to do to deal with the situation.

Today was a really hard day.

Fellow teachers, a lot of you have probably dealt with something similar. I feel your pain, I feel your stress. Please know that you are not alone. The devil’s presence is ever near to us and our students, which makes our job ever increasingly important in showing them God’s light and guiding them away from the devil’s tactics and creating their own personal relationships with a Saviour that will be with them always.

Do the best you can and be the role model those kids need. Pray for your students and the choices they will make. It’s the best thing you can really do.

God Only Knows…

So the weirdest thing happened to me this week, and it can only be explained that God was providing me with what i needed before I knew it, and it happened in the strangest way. Here’s what it was:

As far as the dynamics of the school, grades 5-8 are all downstairs. Because we are all together, we share in our options classes. Junior High had an outdoor adventure this week, and so it was simply grade 5 and my grade 6s in our area.

Options happen every Tuesday and Thursday and prior to this year, we have ALWAYS cancelled Options during the week that Junior High was gone. And that’s why this year was so strange.

The grade 5 teacher came to me on Monday saying that he knew I needed a break and was considering teaching a his Choir class so that he would have both grades 5 and 6 and I would have a spare. Normally this would not be a spare for me anyways because I teach the Junior High French at the same time. And as much as he seemed to stress that I needed a break, I could not figure out why!

Tuesday came, and he told me he had decided to teach Choir that day and went out of his way to tell me that he would keep them as long as he could so I could have a break and was just making sure that everything was ok and convenient for me. I was in total disarray trying to figure out what I did to require such a break!

I knew Choir class was almost an hour, and decided to use my time wisely: hence the government call that I have blogged about earlier.

The best part is, not only was Choir scheduled for just shy of an hour, but he kept the kids overtime!

Now picture this: just gone through the worst, most frustrating call I’ve ever had with the government over such a huge issue in my life, got treated incredibly rudely on the phone, was left so emotional afterwards, and yet had the spare time to regroup myself. eat some food and manage to level out before my students returned. Now tell me that isn’t God’s timing!

You see, I didn’t plan on that call. I definitely didn’t plan on that spare! Yet for some reason, somehow, God impressed upon my co-worker that I needed that particular time that particular day with the right amount of time to deal with something I needed to deal with. I had no idea. I had no idea why things were going the way they were, and yet it all made sense in the end. God had this planned and provided me with what I needed to do it.

I cannot sing God’s praises enough. The very fact that He sees everything – the beginning and the end – and knows everything in between just humbles me. My God has it all under control before I even realize it. My God provides everything I will need when the time comes. My God is more powerful than I could ever imagine. My God is truly the God of Love.