A Spotted Pony Kind of Girl

I tell my students that I'm from "the olden days, and  I am! I know about rotary phones, life before Google, and remember having to teach people about the value of email! In this case, however, I'm talking about being from a time where your parents decided what you would be when you grew up. All four of us Huntleys knew a few things for absolute certain: we would turn 18, leave home, go to college, get degrees and support ourselves. We would have careers, marry and have children, and all in that order. None of this was ever in question. Our parents would not (and could not) help us. We'd pay our own way through.

I don't know what my siblings were told about their futures but mine was a bit ambiguous. All my life, I'd wanted to be a mother, a teacher and a helper of children. I had no other ambition. (I had a "calling" -- with an uppercase /c/ -- but that's a story for another time.) When we played with the neighbor kids, I was the teacher, running the school. 

However, my dad forbade it. "It was no career for a Huntley. I was too smart, it doesn't pay well enough it, there is no future in it." When I was a kid, if your dad said you couldn't do something, you didn't do it. So I set my sights on becoming a dietician, but my heart wasn't isn't it. All my friends at school knew what I was really doing there . . . I was working toward my Mrs. degree. I got it in my first  year and  the Mr. got me to Texas, land of my dreams.

On our trip down, we stopped to see my Uncle Myke who helped me with my vocational planning. He is the one who first called me a Spotted Pony. He said I'm like the Appaloosa*, rare, courageous and fierce but good at lots of different things and that I should NOT listen to my Dad and follow my heart and have my future wherever I wanted it. I was only 19 at the time, though, and not brave enough yet to go my own way. 

I spent several years in work far from teaching. Administrative assistant, full-charge bookkeeping, office management, that kind of thing. I loved those roles, actually. I'm really good at seeing what someone needs and quickly filling that void. One of my bosses called me "Radar," - we just had that synchronicity you sometimes have with some people.

Yet eventually, I couldn't avoid my calling. Unce Mykes words stayed with me. I worked "around" teaching: Children's Minister, Life Coach, Mentor,  Homeschool Mom and then the spotted pony finally shone through. I came to teaching at the perfect time in my life, when I had the patience to finally take on a job that takes YEARS to learn. Who knew?  I'll tell you now, I couldn't have stuck it out in my 20s. Maybe it takes a spotted pony to be a teacher. Maybe it's easier if you get caught in some fences and brambles along the way first, so you know you can get out and be okay.  

Whatever,the reason, I know I'm home. I have plenty of room and sunshine here. Happy New Year.

*The Apaloosa are a breed once found only on the Palouse, just miles from where I grew up, so very familiar to our area

The Path: Elusive but Omnipresent

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. 

Henry David Thoreau

I've had a calling on my life from an early age. In my twenties, I was able to put words to it, "Be an advocate for children." Since then, I've followed that calling in a variety of ways, some less gracefully than others. All of these ways of these paths have had their pratfalls and dead-ends but I keep on "faith-ing" my way forward.

Now, and quite unexpectedly, I'm on a path wide and bright  which I can follow for some time. If you had to hang a sign over the fork in the road which I crossed last August, that sign would read, "Special Ed."

I am home here in the world of Special Ed, and especially in the world of autism. I love the 5 beautiful boys and our one girl who fill my work days. I love the intricacies of working with these amazing kids. I love the intimacy of the small class and my team and teacher . . . they are an inspiration to me every day.

It's challenging work, don't misunderstand. Every day there is some new mystery -- usually in the form of undesirable behavior -- that we have to unravel.  It is very challenging and yet, it is all joy, too. That sparkling moment when the light bulb goes off and someone does something completely amazing, it's rapture, pure bliss.

My greatest joy in life has been being a mother. That last paragraph completely applies to parenthood too, right? And this, this world of autism and Special Ed, it is a very close second. 

I have said all this to say, simply, it's never too late. If we are faithful, God (or Life or "Thou", if you prefer) is faithful. If we keep following our path, "however narrow and crooked" and if we walk it with "love and reverence," it does lead where we want (and perhaps need) to go.

 Take courage, pilgrim, and take up your staff and walk.  Happy trails.

More on the Nature of Fire

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/869370

According to The Nature Conservancy, 
More than half of the terrestrial world, including almost all of North America, depends on the existence of fire to maintain healthy plants and animals and natural resources upon which people depend, such as clean water." 

Further, the National Park System says,   
Fires are a natural part of the Northern Rockies ecosystem [italics mine]. Fire promotes habitat diversity by removing the forest overstory, allowing different plant communities to become established, and preventing trees from becoming established in grassland. Fire makes minerals more available to plants by releasing these nutrients from wood and forest litter and by hastening the weathering of soil minerals.

This is simply amazing!  In general, we fear fire and do everything in our power to prevent it, which is reasonable.  Of course we are speaking here of actual fire, not the metaphorical kind I spoke of in "The Nature of Fire."  Yet there are certainly parallels, aren't there?

5 years ago yesterday, my best friend and sister-in-law, Sharon Parish, died.  She had a "cardiac accident" two weeks prior that had left her brain-dead and unresponsive.  This was the biggest "fire" of my life.  In the days I sat at her bedside, the cleansing fire raged through and removed all the trash and underbrush.  In the weeks and months following her death, that fire cleared off the over-story and mis-planted seedlings.  In the years since, the forest minerals have created a healthy ecosystem for what is new that is emerging in me. 

At times after her death, I fought "the fire" with all my might.  At times, I fed it.  In the end, the nature of fire prevailed and all that was not essential fell away and what remained was the true essence of who I am; I have re-prioritized my life to place my loved ones first.  I have recognized the value of pursuing my calling, something Sharon did very well. 

I have been reminded -- in the most graphic way -- that I am actually not in charge on this earth and I do not know how many more minutes or hours or days I have to make a difference in another's life or to tell my friends and family how much they matter to me.   I have a big and messy home but I always have time to read a story to my little ones. I have time for softball games and track meets.  I have time to foster parent.  I make time to exercise and sleep so I can have what I need to do it all again tomorrow.  I have time to call my parents and send thank you notes to my grade school teachers.   And if it turns out I have 50 years, I will be able to look back with satisfaction and know they were years well-lived.  This is the nature of fire.

"There remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as though it were our last, and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a great future.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer