As I Get Older

One of my friends turned thirty yesterday. When asked if she felt wiser, she said, “Oh yes. I feel much wiser. Very learned. Ready to lead the world to victory.” Then she laughed because she rarely uses battle terms and wasn’t sure why she’d chosen one in that moment. I guess she felt empowered by thirty.

On most mornings, when I first wake up, I look at the time and the date and then I say, “Happy Birthday whoever has a birthday today.” Then I roll back over and fall back asleep. Most of the time, I don’t know exactly whose birthday it is. Many times, Facebook will tell me. Sometimes I happen to just know—a family member, a childhood friend, a specific date etched in my memory. But yesterday, I simply offered a general birthday wish to the world…and then arrived at work to find out that I actually did know someone celebrating her birthday that day.

Every once in awhile, I go on a writing streak. During those streaks, I can birth poems like I have an endless supply inside my being. Have a stomach ache? I’ll write you a poem. Have a run in with a bug? I’ll write you a poem. Need encouragement? I’ll write you a poem. Have a birthday? I’ll write you a poem.

I’m not on a writing streak.
I had no Hallmark cards to save me yesterday.
So I deferred back to a previous writing streak for birthday inspiration.

I found the following poem. And I said this to my friend:

I wrote this when I was 30.
Once again, Happy Birthday, my beautiful friend.
My guess is that you don't like to make a big deal about the day.
But for this one day. Let us celebrate YOU.
May you smile as you grow younger and may you dance to your heart's desire.

I hope the same for you, friends. And I wonder: What are you learning as you get older?

As I get older…

…Popularity doesn't matter so much anymore,
the fear of rejection isn't as pressing on my heart,
I realize that most people aren't as gossip lustful as I thought,
I understand that there are many people who are forgiving, and
the routine passing of days makes the urgency of going somewhere
a little less urgent.

…Pessimism turns into a mild form of healthy complacency,
I slowly begin to accept that I cannot conquer or change the world,
I quietly plant simple truth into my life:
do the best with what I have, where I am, as who I am...and let that be enough,
and I begin to try, settling into the knowledge that there will always be information
that I do not know and situations that I do not understand.

…Peace comes in the form of rocking chairs on porches,
serenity transcends the thrill of roller coasters traveling on trombone slides,
the aches and pains of organs and bones gently nudge me
to honor the temple that I've been given, and
the world settles into brilliant color that spans the spectrum from red to violet,
passionate to sensible, chaotic to calm, hard to soft, black to white.

…Pulling grey hair only leads to baldness so each grey hair becomes
a signal of one step toward the wiser,
each wrinkle adds another story to life’s book,
each change is greeted with subconscious understanding that time lets go, and
I smile as I grow younger, and
let my hair down as I learn how to dance.

I Love You, Deanna

I’m almost 38 years old.
I own my car, my clothes, and some artwork.
But I don’t own my own house.
I am an aunt, a daughter, and a friend.
But I don’t have my own children or a partner.
Last night after I returned from helping B burn some yard trash,
My dad asked me to name my five best friends.
I didn’t give him an exact answer but for some reason I did say,
“Almost all of my friends are married and/or have kids. I’m the only who is single.”
Sometimes being single is very lonely.
But sometimes being single is what makes it possible for me to be present in the lives of those I love.

Today, I had the unexpected opportunity to spend time with 3-year-old Isabelle.
As soon as she saw me,
She climbed into my lap, studied my face, said,
“I love you,” and gave me a huge hug.
She then proceeded to pretend that she was Dr. Isabelle the Dentist and cleaned out
Six monsters, one zombie, and one lantern from my mouth.
She couldn’t reach the phone that was in my stomach.
Later tonight, Isabelle scribbled some lines on her chalkboard that read,
“I love you, Deanna.
It makes me happy.
You make me happy.
And I love you, Deanna.
The end.”

Sometimes being single is very lonely.
Sometimes not owning a house or having kids makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong.
But sometimes being exactly who I am, where I am, is what makes it possible for me to be present in the lives of those I love.
God, help me always to remember that fact. Amen.
The end.

I'll Take It

I think something died in my hut.

It certainly smells like it.

But the whole room smells so bad that we can’t figure out where the dead carcass might be.

In the ceiling? In the wall? In the floor? In some hidden corner?

Or there might not be a dead carcass.

Who knows.

All we know is that my room stinks.

Really badly it stinks.

And for someone with a strong sensitivity to smell,

It’s made for a sickeningly frustrating week.


Instead of coming home extremely ill today, though, I came home smiling. Even with arms still sticky from an emergency freezer clean-out in the workroom (which last year pushed me over the edge around this time of year), I am smiling. Here are the four reasons why:


1) As one of the assistants picked up her class this morning, I noticed that we were dressed alike: khaki capri pants with an orange tank top under our Team Julie shirts. I looked at her and said, “We’re twins!” Then I said, “Look kids! We’re twins! If I were walking down the road, then I wouldn’t be able to tell us apart.” Then we heard someone say, “Noooo! You don’t look alike, Ms. Deaton. Ms. E has a streak in her hair.” I said, “Oooh. So if I go get a streak in my hair, THEN we’ll be twins.” “Noooo! Your shoes don’t match.” “Her hair is shorter than yours.” “You don’t have on socks, Ms. D.” So on and so forth. Here’s the thing: Ms. E is black; Ms. D is white. It’s very clear that we’re not twins. But that one obvious fact never crossed the kids’ minds. I looked at Ms. E and said, “I love how kids think.” And I do.


2) Kindergarten. Students are singing and dancing. A tiny,cute, curly-headed boy urgently walks behind my desk, insistently taps me on the hip, then looks up at me and says, "Do you have any chips?" I wasn't sure that I'd understood him, so I said, "What, baby?" He said, "I need some chips. "I chuckled and said, "No, baby. I don't have any chips." He said, "Okay," and then walked back to his place and continued dancing. I was laughing so hard that I called Barb to share. She said, "It's sort of like, 'Got milk?'" and laughed, too. Then, at the end of the day, as this student sat in the car-rider line, I said, “Hey. Did you ever get your chips?” He said, “No. I got some cookies.”


3. This week’s character education writing challenge was to write about someone who has persevered. As I read this week’s submissions, I found myself feeling a full range of emotions. Some stories were of book characters. Some were original works of fiction. Some were heart-breaking stories of reality that helped me better understand the things our students deal with. And one was the emphatic declaration, “I am perseverance”—although I’m pretty sure that this emphatic declaration was more of an accident than a statement. I’m pretty sure that the student didn’t know how to turn the word perseverance into “someone who perseveres” or any other form of the word. Regardless, what she wrote was pretty awesome. It was something like this: “I am perseverance because I didn’t give up when my teacher gave me a problem that was hard. At first, I didn’t understand it but I kept trying until I got it right. I am perseverance. Now, every time my teacher gives me a new problem, I know that I can do it. I am perseverance.”


4. I received one distinguished on this year’s summative evaluation: Teacher provides an environment in which each child has a positive, nurturing relationship with a caring adult. I’ll take it…


…even if I’m currently building positive, nurturing relationships in a hut that stinks.

The Wrong Side of The Bed

I’m pretty sure I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Or as Sara Groves once said in her song How Is It Between Us: “Woke up on the wrong of the bed, the wrong side of the room, the wrong side of the world…”

I haven’t had a particularly bad day. My classes weren’t terrible. Nothing overly frustrating happened.

Yet I feel a little like I could snap off someone’s head. And I’ve felt like this all day.

I’m pretty sure this desire is not very Reverendly. Yet it’s very human. And Reverends are human, too.

As I drove home today, brooding about all of the things that are bothering me in my snap-off-someone’s-head grumpiness—borrowing but not returning, making plans but not communicating, taking but not giving, pretense but not integrity, surface but not depth, expecting someone else to do your job, leaving things worse than when you found them, beauty skin deep, ignorance, jealousy, disrespect, rejection—I prayed that God would help me turn my wrong-side-of-the-bedness into something that might be meaningful to someone else.

Immediately, I thought of a recent conversation with a friend. “Please keep us in your prayers,” she said—as she pointed to her family. She said no more; I asked no questions. A few days later, when we had a few moments to talk, I said, “I’ve been praying for you. Is there something you want to talk about?” With tears in her eyes, she shook her head and said, “I can’t.” And she couldn’t. There were no words. I made a guess as to what might be burdening her. She affirmed that my guess was correct. I told her that I would keep praying. And I will. And I did in the car in the midst of my brooding…suddenly feeling really small for being so ridiculously and selfishly petty in my thinking when there is so much deep hurt and suffering in this world.

Have I experienced deep hurt and suffering? Yes. Is it ridiculous and selfish to acknowledge and feel that hurt? No. Please hear that. I think sometimes we diminish real suffering out of a misguided sense of humility and selflessness and an unhealthy comparison of there always being someone struggling with more. But deep hurt is not what I’m feeling today. I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed…and I never found a way to get myself to the other side.

Although…I think I may be finding a way to get myself to the other side right now. I think that in praying specifically for my friend, I’m finding a way to lay down my brooding and awaken a calmer sense of purpose in myself—a quiet, steady service of love.

Oh. I pray all day, everyday. Sometimes I feel as if I have credits rolling through my mind—a long list of people who are important to me, who I want to offer to God in prayer—students, coworkers, family members, people from my past, people from my present—but sometimes those credits roll so quickly that they can roll at the same time as other thoughts—and brooding.

But this intentional praying. These specific prayers. They don’t leave room for anything other than themselves...and the reminder that, “Greater love has no one than this that (she) lay down her life for her friends.”

And then…evidently…she will have the opportunity to get up on the right side of the bed.

Between The Lines

I’m a really bad dancer. But I appreciate really good dancers. I suppose it’s no wonder, then, that I enjoy watching both Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance. I enjoy watching the dancers improve each week and I enjoy seeing the unique musical interpretations of the choreographers. Most of the time, I watch the dances, smile, and casually give my civilian critique. Yet every once in awhile, I watch the dances, cry, and find myself so completely moved by emotion that I can’t say a word. That’s what happened a few years ago when I first saw, “Between The Lines.”

I still remember the package that played before the dance. The choreographer asked the two young dancers to reach into a place that connected with the darkness of addiction. They were challenged to feel very deeply and to put themselves into the emotional space of not being able to overcome that which was controlling them. I remember the male dancer being profoundly impacted by the dance—being pushed to tears by the connection that was so powerful that it radiated from his dancing. And I remember watching the dance in awe—sitting in stunned silence—tears filling my eyes—because I got it—and then I watched it again—and again—and again—because, each time, I got it.

I get wanting to move beyond fears that paralyze…
I get wanting to shake off chains that bind hands behind a wounded back…
I get wanting to break free of the power of negative self-talk…
I get wanting to leave failure behind and walk forward in peace…
Yet having fear, chains, negative self-talk, and failure come from behind and grab hold of me until I can do nothing but stumble forward—or collapse under their weight.

Drugs, alcohol, unhealthy relationships, playing the victim, playing the martyr, disordered eating, cutting, picking, burning, self-harm, gambling, pornography, chocolate, texting, Social Media, money, violence, work, power, sex, control…

It’s all the same yet all so different yet
I get the strange addiction of staying with those things that I know—
even if what I know is slowly killing me.

I get those moments when that strange little monster of everything I hate rears his ugly head,
comes out of hiding, and hijacks all sense and sensibility…

I get those gut-wrenching jolts of human reality that slap me in the face with everything I thought I’d moved beyond and pick me up and leave my legs flying pointlessly in the air…

I get those dark days when all that is hiding between the lines comes out of remission and begins its cancerous quest to take over all that is good and right…

And those days are hard.
Human reality is hard.
Strange little monster moments are hard.
Addictions are hard.
Fear, chains, negative self-talk, and failure screaming are hard.

And sometimes all I can do is pray for God to read between the lines of my broken heart’s prayer: Dear God. I can't. You can. So please, Lord. Have your way. And help me to be all that I cannot. Amen.

An Accidental Name

For a few short months last year, I had the privilege of knowing a student that we’ll call Bob. Something happened to Bob’s legs at birth, so while the rest of his body grew normally, his legs did not. For this reason, Bob’s primary mode of transportation was his wheelchair. Bob’s hands were strong. The rest of his body was, too. He would participate in music class just like everyone else, scooting himself out of his wheelchair and walking himself around on his hands whenever it came time to move. I enjoyed teaching Bob…and I told him many times that I believed that he could be an amazing athlete. I still do.

Each morning that he was with us before he transferred to another school, Bob descended the bus on the chair lift. For safety purposes, I held his chair in place when he was on the lift. While he was more than capable of wheeling himself into the building and taking himself to class, he liked it when one of his friends, TJ, met him at the bus and rolled him into the building. Faithful friend that he was, TJ waited on Bob every morning. As he waited, we talked. In the process of talking, I started calling TJ, Teej. I’ve called him that ever since.

Recently, Teej did something out of character in music class.
I don’t remember what he did, but in the midst of a class transition,
I looked at him and quietly said, “TJ. What were you doing?”
He very respectfully responded, “TJ?! My name is not TJ, Ms. Deaton.”
A bit confused, I said, “Okay. Then. Toussain.”
Again very respectfully but somewhat playfully, he said, “My name isn’t Toussain either.”
Very confused by this point, because I knew that I knew the boy’s name, I said, “Well what’s your name?”
He smiled and said, “My name’s Teej.” It was sort of like, duh.
I smiled softly and then we all went on with class.

That conversation quickly got lost in the chaos that was the rest of his class—his was the class that I wrote about last Thursday that ended with three students crying because one of them was moving—but I remembered it yesterday when Teej showed up during his recess to show me his recorder. I had no idea that he was coming, but it was a neat little visit and it ended with us making plans to exchange his dollar store recorder for a five-dollar store recorder and a borrowed recorder book. [Teej is in a lower grade; I currently only do recorders with 5th grade. So this plan was top secret.]

Curious about last week’s name declaration, I asked TJ when I saw him today if anyone but me calls him Teej. He said no. Then he added that some people in his class are starting to call him Teej. I said, “Because they hear me calling you Teej?” He said, “Yes, ‘mam.”

I confess. I unashamedly smiled.

There are many days when I wonder what in the world I’m doing teaching. I come home exhausted, feeling like I’ve been run over by a bus, wanting to beat my head against a wall, because it often feels like I’m talking to a wall of overly chatty bricks that don’t want to listen.

But then I have a very chill student who rarely shows any emotion ask me to play an upbeat character education song from months ago because she remembers it and it was her favorite.

Or I have a very hyper student who rarely shows any interest in music ask me to show his class a clip that he enjoyed from Fantasia.

Or I have a very excited group of Harnett Off-Broadway students descend upon my room as a thrilled pack of loud animals and wholeheartedly sing songs that they haven’t sung in weeks.

Or I have a struggling student draw a picture of me and write about how he wants to make me proud.

And then I think about Teej and how I accidentally gave him a name and I think, “This is why I do what I do.”

It’s little moments of light, love, hope, and humor that keep teachers doing what we do.

How Are You?

Many years ago, a coworker asked how I was doing. I lied and said, “Fine.” She said, “That’s great to hear.” I thought, “What if I told her how I was really doing? What would she do then?”

Shortly after that encounter, I wrote these words:

What if I told you I’m a sinner and just yesterday ~ I drank till I blacked out on my black couch just to take the hurt away ~ And when I woke up to my family, the kids were crying, my husband not home ~ What is this thing I call life? I hate my life. I need help, but I’ve nowhere to turn. What if I told you?

What if I told you that I’m angry. I’m a liar, a gossip, a cheat. I steal from my company, look at pornography. I’m a glutton. I’m full of greed. I’m a criminal, an adulterer. I’m divorced. I’ve aborted a child. I don’t walk the straight path. I feel all alone. I’m depressed, I question and doubt. What if I told you?

In the years since that conversation and those words, I’ve learned a lot about humanity. Sadly, one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned is that many of us just don’t care. For many, “How are you?” isn’t a question asked to warrant an answer. “How are you?” is simply another way to say hello. I always think it’s funny when someone says, “How are you?” and I answer, “Ill,” or “Aggravated,” or “In a really bad mood,” and the person responds, “That’s good,” and keeps going on his/her way, not hearing the answer at all.

I’ve found, too, that while some of us want to care, many times we don’t know how—or something inside of us is so broken that we can’t. If the conversation moves too far beyond the surface, we often change the subject or shut down. It’s easier not to talk about feelings and emotions than it is to dive into the difficult messiness of life. Or when we do open up, because we’ve decided that we can trust someone, we are often met with responses like, “Do you have a counselor?” or “Have you prayed about this?” or “Don’t worry about it. God is in control. Things will be just fine,” or *silence,* or “I have no respect for you,” or “You are too intense. I need space,” or, “I just have no desire to be friends with you,” or *I don’t know what to do with what you just told me, so I’m going to tell someone else…who tells someone else…who tells someone else.*

And then we’re left hurt. And betrayed. And living with the sore reality that maybe it’s better to lie than to tell the truth of, “How are you?”

The thing is?
I actually really care to know the answer when I ask, “How are you?”
And I stupidly want people to care to know my answer to the same.
And I’m not very good at lying.
And being genuinely shallow or shallowly genuine is not something that comes easily to me.
And so I struggle to be genuine,
To respect boundaries and time,
And I continue to sing “What if I told you?”
And try to let go all of the times that the answer has gone wrong.

Oh God: Living in this world of broken humanity is hard. You tell us to love unconditionally, yet so often we fall short and/or end up hurt. Help us to know how to love—truly, deeply, genuinely—even when the practicalities are not clear. Help us to know when to speak and when to stay silent. Help us to know how when to hold on and when to let go. Help us to be good friends and lovers. And help us to genuinely care how others are doing—even when it means that we must sacrifice a few moments of our day. We can’t do this alone, God. We need your help. Daily knowing that you truly care—always care—how we, your children, are doing…Amen.