A Case of the Mondays.

There are two truths that comprise any Monday:

1. I always love seeing my kids.

2. I never look forward to driving to work on a Monday morning.

This morning, I was up bright and early and signing-in at AHS because I am volunteering in Mrs. Stone's 2nd Period English class. The class is comprised of about ten boys and one girl, all of which have some level of learning disability and all of which are expected to successfully complete a "Scholarly Paper" before graduation. Today I sat down with a Junior student and mock-debated whether or not a Wal-Mart should open in Arlington in preparation for the persuasive argument he will build for his "Scholarly Paper."

I loved being there...but also I was thinking, "it's 9am, and I have had no coffee, and where I really want to be is curled up on a bench where I was yesterday--watching the tide roll in at sunset on the Hood Canal."

My grandparents are visiting from Ohio, and they have a nice time share out on the Hood Canal, which is about a three-hour drive from Arlington...I was with them this weekend and left them last night...it was beautiful...and it was restful...

...and now it's Monday morning, and I'm having problems grappling with the fact that I'm so self-centered that I would prefer to mentally drift away to a daydreamed mountain sunset with a cup of hot coffee instead of engaging the here and now of kids who need to pass high school.

This afternoon, one of my students dropped by to say hi, and I was so thrilled to see her that I spun around and welcomed her in. We sat and talked about lots of stuff for a half-hour or so...and I thought about how important it was that she know that the most important thing I had going was to talk to her...because as soon as she sensed that I was distracted by other things, she said, "well, I need to go..."

Learning how to be "here" mentally is the most important and the hardest part of my job. The kids always sense when I'm upset or distracted...and because I happen to enjoy being upset and distracted a lot of the time, it means I have to fight my very human nature just to do my job well. I'm assuming that everyone deals with this, but it's a hard thing to feel when I'm in 'ministry' and I have all these supporters who are committing financial support to me because they know that I am doing a good job. It means that when I feel distracted and disengaged on a Monday morning, there's all this pressure that I'm letting more people than myself down by my own self-centeredness.

I'm not sure what the solution is, other than to continue my daily ritual of praying the Sinner's prayer about 4800 times, "Oh Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner."