1987.
How did I get from 1987 to here?
I am twenty-three years old. My parents are younger than many of the people who share my job and my mission. I am twenty-three... less than double the age of the students I struggle so to reach.
I am still a child, aren't I? Isn't there still plenty of time?
No. Because it is now only seven 'til ten in the first week of November and my students don't know that this sentence is a fragment and that it's okay anyway if I want it to be. Because my students have learned you can't start a sentence with because because of sentence fragments like this one when really you can. Because the subordinate clause of this sentence precedes an independent clause, this sentence beginning with because is complex and correct.
But why do I care that my students don't know that again? And why does it matter that I do?
Here's a subordinate clause for me-- "Unless the Lord builds the house."
And here's the independent clause it has to have to be complete that sends shivers through my soul-- "the builders build in vain."
In vain.
In vain...
What a heart-wrenching little prepositional phrase.
What if it's all in vain? It certainly feels in vain.
God, where is Your glory in this? Lord, where are you in a world where children's lives are in my hands? What a sin that I think they're in my hands... they aren't.... they're in Yours. Lord, why can't I remember that? Because it doesn't feel like it... there was that fragment again. Fragment. Like my thinking. Fragments. Like my ideals. Fragments. Like my dreams and heart and soul and spirit. Fragments.
I have fragments of time, fragments of focus, fragments of answers.
Lord, I have to believe somewhere there is Whole and Complete, and it has to be You.
Ten o'clock on a November night in 2010. And I'm writing in fragments... looking for what can make me whole....
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