A Seed of Light

I don't have time to write tonight, but I feel that I must. 

The last three or four weeks have been exceedingly difficult for me. We are implementing a new instructional model that I believe in, but actually putting it into practice has been rough. In theory, most of the class will be reading independently and responding in their journals while I focus on guided reading with a small group.

The reading part is getting better, for the most part. We started several weeks ago with 20 minutes of reading followed by whole-group instruction. That was a battle because over half of my students profess to hate reading. Every day, they'd say, "We're reading again? Why do we have to read every day?"

Each day, I calmly repeated, "This is reading class. That's what we do. You can't get better at reading without reading."


Every day, it gets just a little easier to settle them into reading because one by one, they're getting hooked. One of my classes are such avid readers that they nearly came to blows over a student who was disrupting their reading time. One girl threatened to beat his *ss if he didn't shut up! On that day, I could barely contain my excitement even as I admonished them to speak life and told them they could not threaten bodily harm to each other.

Since then, that class has learned to ignore the attention-seeking behavior of the one remaining non-reader, and his disruptions are beginning to fade out.

But my morning classes are a different story. Reading workshop has not really taken hold, and every time I try to meet with a small group, serious problems break out. I'm talking about talking, laughing, wandering around the room, and most definitely not reading.

It's so frustrating because the kids in the small group really want my attention, and they thrive with a little extra guidance, yet I can't focus on meeting their needs and simultaneously keep the others on task and quiet.

In the middle of all of this stress, I received some constructive feedback that crushed my pride and shook my confidence. That night, I went home to my prayer closet and sobbed until my eyes were swollen. I put myself to bed early and fell right to sleep, only to wake up two hours later. I happened to be out of my prescription sleep aid, and just knowing that made my fear of insomnia a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Somewhere around 1 in the morning, I went back to my closet and had the most intense, satisfying prayer time I'd had in many months. I surrendered all of myself to God--my hurts, my hopes, my dreams, my fears, everything. "Take my pride," I prayed. "I don't need it, Jesus. I want to be humble like you, and teachable." After nearly an hour, I concluded, "Holy Spirit, you can take me anywhere you want us to go. I don't care that I can't see where we're going because I know you'll be with me, and your plans are better than mine."

To my enemy, I said, "You didn't win. My God is bigger than you, and He already won the battle. The victory is mine."

I felt utterly peaceful and also completely spent, yet still I could not sleep. I lay in bed for three more hours, sometimes dozing fitfully only to wake myself up with violent kicks. I dragged myself out of bed around 5:30, 45 minutes before my alarm.

I peered at my red, puffy eyes in the mirror and wondered how I could possibly make it through the day. But I had to go. I couldn't crawl back into bed in defeat and pull the covers over my head. So I climbed into the shower and let the warm water knead my trembling muscles.

"You still didn't win," I croaked. "My God is in control, and everything is going to be fine. His plans for me are good. "

Despite dragging myself through styling my hair--which looked really good!--and packing my lunch, I still climbed into the car considerably early. About five minutes into my commute, I had a craving for the Word, so I switched to a talk radio station that I normally don't listen to in the morning.

As I listened to two speakers, a growing sense of wonder and gratitude overcame my exhaustion. I don't remember who said what, but these two speakers echoed my middle of the night prayers so closely that they could have been eavesdropping in my closet. They repeated the same verses that the Holy Spirit had placed in my mouth and also other ideas that were not Scripture. Here are the sacred echoes that I managed to jot down once I arrived at work:

• "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9)
• God sees the whole picture, while I see only a small part. He is making something beautiful from my struggles.
• God's got me. I am safe in his hands.
• God's not finished with me yet. He will complete the work He has started in me. (Philippians 1:6)
• God is a good Father, and His plans for me are good.
• God has equipped me to do what He called me to do: "For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." (Ephesians 2:10)
• The Holy Spirit will lead me where he wants us to go. I am a willing servant.
• I don't have to understand, only to trust. 

The second speaker's final prayer was the best part. I don't remember exactly what she said, only that God saw my pain and hurt with me. At the end, she referred to the listeners as His Beloved. I'd thought I was too tired to cry any more, but two hot tears trailed down my cheeks when I heard that word. I know we are all beloved, but Beloved is the specific name that God gave to me in the time when the enemy called me Forsaken. It was as if God were saying, "Sarah Louise, did you catch all of this? Because I arranged all of it just for you." 

The tender love of my Beloved carried me through that day. I didn't even feel tired until after the last tutoring kid left at 5:30. On the way home, a craving for hot soup overtook me just a couple miles from home. I was so tired that I didn't even want to stop at the grocery store to pick up a can. I looked around me; surely there must be a restaurant nearby that served soup.

My eyes fell on a tiny cafe that I'd always wanted to visit. As I waited for fresh chicken and dumplings to go, three employees chatted with me. I was the only customer, and I suppose they were bored. The dishwasher, Daniel, offered me a cup of coffee.

"I'd love that, but I'd better not," I replied. "I'm having trouble with insomnia right now."

Without a word, he disappeared into the kitchen. He returned a moment later with a bottle of vitamins. "Take a picture of these," he said. "It's a supplement that promotes sleep, totally drug free. You can get them at the grocery store."

He told me that he struggled with anxiety and insomnia, and then he shared many tips on healthy sleep patterns that he'd discovered through research, such as the fact that ripe bananas promote sleep.

"Take a couple of these tablets with you," he said.

"Oh, I couldn't," I said. 

"No, please do. It's my pleasure."

I poured two tablets into my hand and then rummaged for a sandwich bag that I thought was in my purse. (Sometimes there are advantages to being a pack rat.)

"I'll get you a container," Daniel said. 

When he returned with a condiment cup, I saw that there were six tablets inside. I thanked him profusely.

While we waited for my dumplings, he told me about his dream to open a smoothie truck with recipes for insomnia, depression, anxiety, etc. I told him about the challenges of teaching seventh grade in a low-income school.

It wasn't until I got home and saw the $7.50 receipt that I realized I had not paid for my food. I hurried back, but the hostess, Liliana, would not let me pay. "Don't worry. I took care of it," she said. 

I asked for a spoon and ate my dumplings there, listening contentedly to the teenage waiter's chatter.

Before I left, I asked Liliana for a hug. "I don't know how God does this," I said. "I got a free meal, a sleep supplement, and insomnia tips at a restaurant I'd never been to before--all because of a sudden craving for soup."

She grinned as she released me from the hug. "Have a blessed evening," she said.

"I will. And I'll come back soon and buy some food," I promised. 

I had the distinct impression, as I often do, that God was showing off. "See? I can arrange a divine appointment for you any way I want to, just so I can bless you when you need it most." 

After a time of thanksgiving in my closet, I snuggled up with my Beloved and slept over nine hours. 

A Seed Of Light

For nearly two weeks, I'd been working on a 21-Day Detox from negative thinking. I'm sure the juxtaposition of this program with my intense bout of anxiety was no coincidence. Although I'd been making steady progress in replacing my toxic thought--that I'm not good enough--with all the truths that God says about me, at times I felt overwhelmed with my dark thoughts. 

Dr. Caroline Leaf, the neurobiologist who created the program, explained in one of the daily videos that it's natural to feel like you're getting worse. Normally you're not focusing on the toxic thoughts that hide below the surface, in the subconscious mind. It's only when you're aware of a thought that it becomes malleable, she says, and that's when you can destroy it with God's help. 

A few days after my night of insomnia, God spoke to me again. This time it was rather like a vision, which is very unusual for me; I'm typically a verbal person and not at all a visual thinker. 

When I awoke that morning, I immediately perceived a twinge of my frequent Sunday anxiety, manifested as a subtle tightness in my chest. No! How could I be feeling anxious again so soon after God had given me undeniable assurance that He is with me? 

My eyes fell on one of the sticky notes in my kitchen: 

The first sentence tied together the three words that had been coming up over and over in my prayers that week, but this was the first time I had ever put them together: joy, hope, glory.

I smiled as I fed the cats. "Thank you, God," I murmured.

During my quiet time a few minutes later, I stumbled across a verse that had never caught my eye before. 

Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. (Psalm 97:11)

I stopped to ponder. "How can you plant light? What does that mean? And what is the light?" I asked aloud.

The answer came in my thoughts. "Joy, hope, glory... breaking through the darkness." My heartbeat quickened, and I hurried to the kitchen to copy down this latest verse for my collection. 

Next, I started the day's 21-Day Detox video. Again, Dr. Leaf referred to the toxic thoughts that live in the subconscious mind, and how they influence my thoughts and feelings. 

My mind whirled as I began to understand how you can plant light. 

I pictured the ugly, gray tree that Dr. Leaf holds up in her videos when she explains that thoughts are physical things. When you're thinking, dendrites continually reach out to neighboring neurons, rapidly forming connections that resemble tree branches. 

A Dendrite - http://worldsoflearning.blogspot.com/p/how-we-learn.html

Toxic thoughts, she says, look different from healthy ones because the proteins are different. Toxic thoughts literally damage your brain, while healthy thoughts heal it. 

I don't think this next part is anatomically correct, but what I pictured was the roots of my ugly tree--that toxic thought that I'm not good enough--lodged in my subconscious mind. I saw myself planting a golden seed of truth by meditating on scriptures and thinking on things that are lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8-9). 

I realized that over the course of my detox program, that golden seed had been sprouting, right down there among the roots of the twisted tree, slowly dissolving them even though the visible branches in my conscious mind seemed strong as ever. 

In my spirit, I could see fissures forming in the dark soil under the ugly tree, and beams of golden light shone through the cracks, like the yellow rays in a child's drawing of the sun. This is where I am right now. The light is just starting to emerge. 

Soon, the truth will break through the surface and engulf that ugly gray tree in the dazzling light of God's glory. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it! (John 1:5) 

Unlike Moses's burning bush, my ugly, toxic tree will be burned to cinders. When that day comes, I will be free of the perfectionism that has stolen my joy for so many years. 

In the meantime, Jesus is always by my side. It's almost morning, and my joy is coming. (Psalm 30:5).