Joy

Saturday. Day three of rain. Jack is despondent now. Three days without a walk and his blonde head is barely visible in the window. He’s lying prostrate on the couch as though it’s the last few moments on his death bed.
I think it may be in their thirties that men start to realize that they’re never going to achieve the superhero status that they had always somehow believed that they were going to spontaneously evolve into at some point in their life. I emailed a friend not long ago with something like this sentiment. We had survived the horror of our twenties together where are goals and dreams were ranging between professional football at one end of the spectrum and President of the United States at the other end. Now, it seems like we’ve let our goals shrink down to more reachable items like bed, food, clothes, and matinee movies.
Honestly, I hear the Lord speaking through the way my dog stares at me behind the glass door leading to our backyard. It’s like he has placed pure joy in his wild, scraggly face. He doesn’t care how long he has to wait or what horrible conditions he has to endure for that one exuberant half hour he gets to walk with me through the neighborhood; it’s what he lives for. I think this is the kind of joy the Lord is wanting to approach Him with; as though nothing else matters except the moments when we can catch a glimpse of Him through the snot-spotted glass or dance in front of Him because we know we’ll be going on a walk together. And nothing else matters. No other thought can weigh our minds down in those moments. That is the joy I crave.

Rain

Friday. We are now on day two of rain for Southern California which is just about as rare as our state having a balanced budget so I’m enjoying it while I can get it. I left an umbrella at school which is the first umbrella I’ve owned for as long as I can remember. I was telling one of my students that men never use umbrellas and then, after an afternoon of getting pounded by the rain as I was running from one place to the next, it really didn’t matter if I was considered in the running to be a man or not. Even by myself. Sometimes you just gotta’ do what you gotta’ do.
I said good-bye to my ninth graders today. I get a whole new set of ninth graders on Tuesday which tends to lead me to all of these differing degrees of sentimentality which may or may not be completely genuine. Some classes I will definitely miss. I would love to have them and teach them even longer than the administration is willing to give me. But some classes… and I’m trying to be as diplomatic as possible in expressing this… some classes make me want to count the number of seconds I have in each class period. My fourth period were like little brand new puppies who you want to spend all day with but my second period made me want to bring back every form of corporal punishment ever devised in history no matter how barbaric- the more creative the more therapeutic they might be.
My dog Jack is lying down outside with his nose to the glass and wagging his tail. He hasn’t been walked yet and he expects me to walk him even though it’s raining and I don’t know how to explain to him that this is not what sane people do. This is not what anybody does. I don’t even see insane people walking their dogs in the rain. But Jack clearly doesn’t understand this and he’s waiting for me which is testing my normally-strong level of guilt tolerance.