March Thirty-first, Twenty-ten.

Today is my soon-to-be nephew's fourth birthday. Four was my favorite age. We had a kind of party for him last night, but he wasn't feeling too well, so we just had some cake and presents. His maternal grandparents are here from Sweden until Tuesday, so this was a good time for his birthday.

I bought my old guitar amp back from the friend I sold it to a few years ago back from him today. It's good to have it back. It's like suddenly rediscovering an old friend.

Michelle and I are having a picnic this evening. As much as I dislike people complaining about bad weather, I'm so glad for the sun's return.

Today, the class I was in had a visiting teacher that spoke about recycling and then taught them about haiku, and had them write some haiku about the earth. Naturally, I wrote a few.

Do your part to care

For Earth: always keep closed the

refrigerator.

The earth surrounds me

I look around, and I see

trees, bees, peas, and knees

You down with hippies?

They are down with Mother Earth

Mess with her; with them.

"Oh, my recyclers,"

Captain Planet bids you, "Be

also bicyclers!"

(these next two are from the perspective of Captain Planet)

Ugh. Oh, pollution

My band and abhoréd foe

I'm comin' for ya.

Um. Did you just throw

that toxic waste in the woods?

You just made my list.

I had a good day today.

Discovery

This week, I had the pleasure of substitute teaching at my old middle school. I was expecting to see a few teachers that I had, and I did. But I wasn't expecting to be revisited with how much those teachers meant to me.

Some background: I was a really insecure kid in elementary school, and didn't really come into my own until around seventh and eighth grade. But, being between the walls I walked as I found out who I was, I remembered just how much each of my teachers fostered that. Especially Mrs. Stutzman.

In fifth grade, there was an activity we did where we had a picture of a brain, and we had to divide it up into sections that represented each subject in school. The size of each section depended on how interested we were in the subject. I distinctly remember asking my teacher if I needed to have every subject in our diagram, because I wasn't interested in music at all. She said I had to, so I made it as small as could muster, and made it the ugliest color I could find.

Going into middle school, I was disappointed to find that I HAD to pick a music class. Wanting to do as little as possible, I signed up for Piano Lab with Mrs. Stutzman. Now...if I wanted to keep my indifference to music intact, this was absolutely the wrong choice. The first week of class, she taught us the grand scale, and played the entire class through a simple version of Ode To Joy. And I discovered that I could create music. My world was flipped. I didn't care much about science anymore (in elementary school if anyone asked what I wanted to be, it was a scientist). My mom bought me a keyboard from RadioShack, and I would come home from school and just sit down at the keyboard for hours--BEFORE I played Mario, even. Keyboard became the new most important thing, and I quickly excelled in Mrs. Stutzman's class. Then, in seventh grade, there was a three week guitar unit, right after my mom gave me a bass guitar. It whet my appetite a little, but I was still focused on the piano. The next year, after I had started working on bass at home, Mrs. Stutzman let me bring it in during the guitar unit. Then, after the guitar unit wrapped up, she let a handful of us continue the guitar unit in the hallway. For about half of that year, my Piano Lab class consisted of sitting out in the hallway with a few friends playing Blink-182 songs.

And there, in the hallway playing punk rock, I found myself.

Goodness, Faithfulness, Holiness, etc.

Today and yesterday, I substituted in two different preschool classes. Children are so incredible. I think my favorite thing about them is how they are completely free from prejudice. In each class, there were several students with mild to severe disabilities, but the other kids didn't look down on them. They were their friend, and that was that. One of my favorites was a little girl with a birth defect that made her arms very shot. When we went outside, she and one of the other teachers jumped rope, and she could jump about ten times before the rope hit her legs. And she was the happiest child I've ever seen. Then today when we went outside, I was chased for about ten minutes by at least eleven four year olds.

Michelle's dad's last day at his job is tomorrow. He's been preparing for them to lay him off, but it still is hard when it finally comes. It's alright, though. He hated that job, and he rarely sits still. If the past few weeks of my life is any testament, the Lord will provide generously.

The other night, I was reading Romans and I came to the verse were the Lord says, 'I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,' and for the first time didn't read that as, 'I'm the Lord, and I get to send whoever I want to Hell, no matter how good of a person they are' and instead read it as, 'I will forgive whoever I want to forgive, whether you think they're good enough or not.' I think that's more in line with His character. He forgives a lot of people we hate.

My parents are getting a divorce, and it's not going as well as maybe we've hoped. My mom's been staying somewhere else until things are finalized. I haven't seen her in two weeks. But hopefully in a week, I'll be living elsewhere. My apartment application is being processed and the super said she'd try to get me something by Monday. Incredible.

I had coffee with the youth pastor of the Vineyard today, which about half functioned as an interview for some level of involvement. At one point he asked me, 'Why do you love God?' My answer was something like:

Shoot, because I can't help it. He's too good. I'd love to just ignore it and be a selfish bastard, but He's just too good. In the past, I've tried to respond to that with as little as I could get away with, but He's just too good for me to just sit there and be a complete ass. I have to do something about it.

He really is just too good to just sit there and not see it, no matter what's going on.