Sunday School Lessons

Today in Bible class, I had the privilege of teaching about Daniel and the lions den. Everything was going smoothly until . . . we read Daniel 6:24. In the New International Version it reads, At the king's command, the men who falsely accused Daniel were brought in and thrown into the loins' den, along with their wives and children. And before they reached the floored of the den, the lions overpowered them and crushed their bones. To my 3rd and 4th graders this was absolutely horrifying. I am not a biblical scholar at all and trying to explain that "innocent" women and children were killed because their husbands/fathers were evil was not an easy task. I told them that this was before Jesus and the ability for us to have a personal relationship with God. I also explained that in the Old Testament it states the sins of the father were on the children for generations. One young lady was still mortified. I tried to explain that the children were raised by these evil men and might grow up to be evil as well. I know that was a very judgmental thing to say but when we were under the law there was only judgment. My last attempt was to compare it to when someone is being abused at home by family members, sometimes they become bullies at school. My young lady that was mortified said but that isn't under their control. They can't help that. I said you are right that is why we need to show them grace just like Jesus does for us when we aren't our best. We build relationships not judgements. I don't know if I said was right or even helpful but I think she understood that grace is better than judgement. I am thankful for the grace of God in sending Jesus to die for my sins.

Writing a Book

I am thinking about writing a book. I cannot decide if it should be a nonfiction book about being a teacher or if it should be a fiction book about being a teacher. I have many stories as a teacher could fit in either type of book but I would like to have a plot just in case someone wants to buy the movie rights one day. I do not have a larger than life story like Ron Clark, Jamie Escalante or Coach Boone. So, I am wondering if I could write a fiction book with elements from real life.

If there is anyone out there knows me and reads this blog. What style of book do you think I would, could, should write?

Never Ending Cross Roads

Have you ever felt like you are always making decisions that could alter the course of your life? I may feel this way because I am a constant worrier or because maybe I take life a little too seriously. I suppose no matter the reason I cannot help but think that one wrong move and I will find myself on a path that will require a GPS recalculation. It is not a fun way to think or feel. I am working on my mindset but as usual it is a slow, less than desirable process. I want to be a good human and I want to make a difference. I think I have almost turned those two goals into burdens rather than things I want. These are my personal thoughts, and no one person or event caused my mindset. Sometimes I want to read a book, go to a seminar, or even just go to church and have my whole being changed and while that is completely possible, it has not happened yet. So, while I still hold out hope for a miraculous "wake up."  I have started making some small changes now to help this process and this summer I want to make some bigger changes. I would use a caterpillar analogy here but that seems a bit cliché even for the queen of clichés, me. I do wish I could go into a cocoon and not see other humans for a while but that is not how life works. One change I can talk about is not bringing my work home with me whenever possible. I am a high school math teacher and while you would think that I could leave my work at school, you would be incorrect. And some of it is physical work like grading and lesson planning, but most of it is mental and emotional. Hopefully, not bringing home the physical work will translate to leaving some of the less tangible things at school as well. Anyway, it is school night and we have a match tomorrow. Good night.

Making Some More Changes

I am making some more changes. I have "deleted" my other three blogs. Yes, I know, why in the world did I have four blogs? The simple answer is because I wanted four but the real answer is I have no idea. Therefore, today I am down to one blog with the same, more than the minimum, internet address but now under the title "It's a Wornock's Life" because that is my internet hashtag. I keep wanting to create all these really cool names/brands but "It's a Wornock's Life" it is probably the best description of the things that go on in my life. I hope this will help me post here more often and combine the ideas that I had for all the other blogs in one place. If you didn't read any of my other blogs that's cool. But now I have to tell you what they were all about. One blog was supposed to help me talk about my weight loss journey, the second blog was where I posted about my faith and the third blog was about the Wornock life. As you can tell, I can and will be able to post about all of that here because they are parts of the sum this is me. There are some more changes coming but those are under wraps for now. I am learning the more I talk about change the less I want to make a change. My new mantra "Don't talk about it, just be about it" is now in full force. #changeiscoming #justbeaboutit #itsawornockslife

I Changed the Mirror

So, I have not posted on here in over five months and the last post I created had a lot to do with me growing as a person. Well, I am still growing and some days it is pretty painful. I am not the person I want to be on a lot of different levels. I still hope for better outcomes from myself daily and I beat myself more than I should when I do not meet my own expectations. Today, however is not one of the those days. My mom asked me to find a picture for her from my sister's wedding from over fifteen years ago. It was a trip down memory lane that I did not really want to take but I am so glad I did. I had to dust off some old CD-ROMs in the back of my office cabinets to find the picture but I found the picture of her in less than ten minutes. I was going to put the discs away and I decided to dig around and see what else I could find. Younger people may not believe this but you can take selfies without a cellphone and I did back in the day. There was a time in my life when I took a lot of selfies but not because I liked the way I looked. They were taken in hopes that someone else would see me. You see as I was going through the photos I realized how much I did not like myself. I did not like myself  because I determined my "face value" by how others treated me. I wanted to loved by certain people and they were never going to love me the way I deserved and needed to be loved. And I immaturely thought that meant I was not enough. That I was not worthy enough and it had something to do with my physical self. That belief really messed with my psyche. Well, I can now say that I know I  was wrong. My value is not determined by how others see me, it is determined in how I treat myself and more importantly in how I treat others. You are probably wondering if I just discovered this today and I promise I did not. It really hit me today as I was looking at the selfies I had taken so many years ago. If someone had told me back then that I was beautiful I would have laughed. I would have said thank you and the monologue in my head would have said they were lying, you are not even close to beautiful or worthy. Does that mean that I no longer see myself as ugly and unworthy these days? Oh, no. But I give myself grace on those days. I remember that the outside is what the world sees but the inside is what God knows.  I added a collage of the pictures I found. I look at them now and see someone how really wanted to be beautiful to herself more than anything but thought that meant it had to come from outside but the whole time the mirror was inside . . . so I changed the mirror. If you are feeling ugly, unloved, or unworthy because others do not see your value  . . . change the mirror.

Waking of Women

    A week ago today I was at a brunch to help talk about and plan a new program through Believe, Inc. named Waking of Women. It is a program created to help young women, with a focus on young women of color, become leaders in their communities and in the world. I was fortunate to see the Making of Men program in the high school where I work. I know the program changed the lives of the young men that were in the program. I wanted to be a part of the next steps.

    The women invited to the brunch were from all around Oklahoma City and came from different cultures, socio-economic levels and careers. Each woman came with a different perspective and that made the discussion even more impactful. As each woman spoke I felt as though we were all listening to each other and coming together as women united for the purpose helping the next generation of woman reach their potential. The time passed so quickly, we had been there four hours before I even knew the time had passed.

    On a personal note, we were asked to stand up and talk about different parts of emotional intelligence. I choose "self awareness." It is a topic that I am passionate about because I spent a lot of years letting others tell me who I am. I still do sometimes. I started by saying that you need to know yourself, so no one can tell you who you are. As I continued to speak, Mr. Davis continued to question and push me. He talked about a young girl who had been sexually abused and had become promiscuous, what would I say to her? I broke. I started to cry because I know I have had young women just like that in my classroom. As I cried, I said you are worthy. You are worthy of love. You are worthy because we are all worthy. What no one in the room knew at the time was that I was a victim of sexual assault. I was a victim of men thinking that my body was theirs to touch and make comments on. I was not a teenager at the time but a young single women in my twenties and it made me distrustful of all men including my father. I have always body issues and they only became worse after that. I blamed myself. I should not have gone to the club. I should have stayed with my friends. I should have stayed off the dance floor and away from strangers. So I broke down and cried in room of women that I had only just met a few hours before. They did not judge, they handed me a tissue and gave me a hug. That is what young women today need. A group women to come around them, support them and love them until they can find that love within themselves.

    The final discussion we had at the brunch involved answering the question, what taught you more failing in love or falling in love? I chose falling in love, falling in love with myself. There is a quote attributed to Judy Garland, "Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else" I am the only me and I am the best and the only person who can be her. I eat too much junk food, I sing too loud in my car, I am afraid the ocean but love the beach, and I am worthy of love.

#selflove #teacher4life #wakingofwomen

Preface to Chapter Forty Three

"What's past is prologue"

William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 2, Scene I

Today begins the preface for chapter forty-three in the tome of my life. I realize that my birthday is over two months away and that makes this a long preface. Today, we closed out one opportunity that we are currently certain we will not do again. We took our final exchange student to the airport to begin her journey home to Thailand. We have enjoyed hosting exchange students immensely. We felt it was a great opportunity during and after hosting our five students. We have decided that there are other opportunities that we feel more called to do. This year has brought a lot of things to light for myself, and I am truly the only person I can speak for. I think my husband has also felt a shift in our purpose and our dreams as a couple. We want to leave the world a better place than we found it. I believe we has done that in some ways already but we want to do more. I say all of this because I am making a lot of changes in the next two months and a half months to start chapter forty-two. I do not want to put the changes out there just yet because if I have learned anything in the last year or so about myself it is this, I seem to like saying I am going to do something and then I do not do it. So, I am going to do the things and then talk about them. Hopefully, I will write about them here and in my paper journal for all of posterity but that remains to be seen as well. Until we meet again.

PS A tome is a book, especially a large, heavy, scholarly one. I love this. 😁

A Good Week

I wanted to put down on my thoughts about my week before the next week starts. It started out as a typical week and as I look back to really honest I cannot really remember most of the first part. I feel as though my week started, took off, and left me behind to figure out what happened. It was a good week. On Wednesday I went to "volunteer" at The Making of Men Power Luncheon. I put volunteer in quotation marks because what I took away from the event was so much more than I had to offer with my volunteerism and allyship. I took away a hope that although the work is difficult and far from over it is possible. The young men in the Making of Men program are intelligent, outspoken, passionate, and powerful. This does not surprise me at all. What surprises me is the number of people who do not think this work is important. That black young men do not need this kind of support in today's world. I have heard some say that black young men need to stop "playing the victim." I am here to tell you, those young men are not victims but victors. They are proving people wrong. They are and will continue to change the world. They will do it with us or without us. And I have to chosen to be their ally in this.

Another less pivotal moment in this week, I had a friend not tell me the whole story. In the past this would have bothered me and caused me to question their friendship. This is not how as a friend should act. After some thought I realized they had their reasons and while I may not understand I will except that this is how it is. Of course, this person has no idea that I feel this way and again that is not important. What is important is that I talked to them about what was going on when I started to think something might be wrong. Even though I only received part of the story, it was enough. If you know me cognitive dissonance is not my friend. It is an evil master that pushes me to "know everything," to be a part of the knowing. Although I still do not know the whole story, I know enough to wish that friend well and move on to the next mystery.

My week concluded with prom. Every year I hear students say they are not going that prom is a joke or that the music is never good. Last night I did not hear any of that. I saw students having a great time, dancing, laughing and making memories that will last a long time.

All in all I had a good week. 

Two Thousand Twenty One

I refuse to say twenty twenty one. I will not let this year win. It did not win and now it must exit the stage. But I am distracted. I have had this blog for thirteen years, that is unbelievable. I have so many stops and starts with this blog. I think I have settle on a title that reflects what I want this blog to be about. Although I am sure that it will be a lot of my opinions but I want to talk about doing more than the minimum in life. We are given a finite time to make a difference and I believe that I have an imperative to do the most with it. Maybe that is how we become infinite. I hope to find out. Until Next Time.

Tuesday's Thoughts

The school year is coming to an end and none too soon. This is the first year I really feel that I want to leave school and not look back. I know most of my issues at school have been of my own making. I need to learn how to work on relationships, grading, planning, etc. and balance that with life at home. I must say I do not believe that having children is in the cards for us at this juncture. We have had two teenagers for almost the last year and I have learned so much about myself. There are things that you do not know until you try them out. I do love our exchange students and I think it is a good idea to host. Going forward though I am not as certain that we should continue to do it. I do realize this blog is public and maybe someone I know will read it but I am good with that idea. I would rather this than Facebook where I am certain people will read it.

We are going on another project this year, only we are going to Argentina.I am excited and scared. It is always an adjustment to be in another country for any length of time no matter the reason. I am worried about making sure I have enough rest between school and the project. Last year when we left directly after school finished and that is not how I want to do this. It is another one of those things that I need to learn to balance in my life.

Anyway, I am going to probably start rambling so I will sign off here. Until we met again.