new season

There are many parts of the world that experience four seasonal changes.  Quite possibly these islands only have one season with no change...HAWT.  There are claims of two but it's definitely debatable. After a fly-by-night summer break we finally started another school year on the 1st of August.

Dylan was apprehensive but excited.  He's a high achiever expecting much of himself so often self inflicting stress to make sure he accomplishes beyond what's expected in order to be more than safe.  Mediocrity is not his typical strategy for anything.  Excited to head out of the relaxed summer he was because doing almost nothing most certainly doesn't define him.

Tyler's excited because what he missed most was being active.  Faith Academy has high expectations for physical activity.  He fell in love with it last year and missed it so much over the summer.  The best part for him, I've observed, is being active with his friends.

I watched, from the front of the newly renovated face of  the Faith Academy high school offices [which back in my day was the main office], with renewed anticipation for my boys, the other students, the staff and myself.  Here starts another chapter in our transient lives.  Renewed goals, more achievements, another level of success, and more life to experience.  Then there was Keith. As often as he can, he gets up so early every morning, is at the school so early in the morning, has the encouraging Scriptural words picked out and printed for the day...and then he moves like lightening through the halls handing out these words and verbalizes his own encouragement to as many kids as he can. Things like, "you look beautiful today...I'm so happy to see you..."  The man's plethora of encouragement is what the kids need as they face each day's academic, social and spiritual challenges.  It was pure delight to watch this first morning of the first day of this new school year unfold in so many beautiful moments.

True to the command that our words should be encouraging and uplifting, the students are blessed 
with a teacher that loves, cares and encourages so radically. He greets them all with God's encouraging 
words which reminds us all of the profound value he created us with as only God Almighty can. This is how 
they start their day. This is how they get through their day.....and this is how it should be throughout 
the entire Jesus loving community. Not for our own praise but for Jesus himself. For by this they will know....

students catching up with each other and figuring out their schedules

While I was excited, there is this thorn in my side that can't seem to get pulled out.  Regret and resentment promise nothing but the company of pain. An aching for the years God robbed me of.  Years I strongly believed should have been spent here with my friends.  This was home.  They were my heart and he robbed me of them.  But those years are long gone.  Childhood friends got their near perfect high school.  They experienced everything this heart was deprived of.  They got all the moments they ever dreamed of cherishing.  Their memory files are packed full of treasures safely burried beneath the sands of time...to be recalled in great sentiments at every reunion or small reuniting of sorts.  So, for each treasured moment as I enjoy student watching [and watching of my own,] as they high five returning friends and lock arms together into a new year, there are sweet bitter tears that haven't stopped dripping off the sentimental faucet.  Yet, without these tears and without this nagging thorn in my side, I seriously doubt that I could ever treasure days like today as much as I do.  Such an odd pairing of emotions that apparently work to constantly feed on each other fueling and fanning the flames of God authored sentiments.  After all, he's the one that orchestrated every chapter and sustains my every breath.  Uniting passion with emotion, purpose with drive, and experience with sentiment.  So, maybe....just maybe that thorn shouldn't be gotten rid of after all.  

Bobbi's first day teaching at ‪#‎FaithAcademy‬ who-da thought when we met back in 5th grade 
(the Wullimans' first year as dorm parents...in the white dorm) that this day would come and 
she'd be my kid's English teacher?! ^_^