For Her Own Sake

Part of how I knew my parents’ love for me was by their love for my siblings. They welcomed 8 more children into our family after me. I remember the elation we all had at each announcement of a new baby on the way. The first time I encountered an outside negative reaction was with baby #6. Yes, it did take that long for me to realize there was something different about our family size! Big families were common in our Baptist community. But when I went to Sunday evening service with the happy news, my friend scrunched up her face and asked why my parents were having another baby. This question truly puzzled me. I didn’t see babies as a decision. Babies were simply what happened in families - they were occasions for celebration - unquestioned blessings.

I came to understand what my friend meant as time went on and I heard couples say things like “our family is complete,” “we’re done trying for a boy,” or “we have our three.” I realized that many people chose how many children they wanted ahead of time, or stopped having children once they achieved a boy/girl set. In my own imaginative world, I planned my future family too. I picked names for my sons and daughters to be and even made them little chore charts and school schedules. But I ended up having a list of names so long that I had to found an orphanage too! There was no limit to the new lives I imagined. In my world, children were not pieces to complete a family collection. They were individual people with their own names, stories, duties, and personalities, and they were each celebrated just for the sake of existing as themselves.

My parents’ openness to life soaked into my own understanding of who I was and why my siblings and I were alive. Very simply, we existed because it was good to be alive. I remember a stranger freely commenting to my mother, “You must be crazy!” as she was walking around with the crowd of us at our county fair. She smiled and responded that we were all gifts from God. I knew I had been received as a precious treasure just like each of my little brothers and sisters. We weren’t the derailed result of an attempted plan, we weren’t “oopsies,” and we weren’t the successful outcome of any personal project either. We were just there, and we were loved for it. 

In every stage of life, this outlook has grounded me. In the years when I wished for a family, but didn’t have a partner to share it with, I remembered that a husband and a baby weren’t a given. They WERE given! I could hope for them as for a bonus and not mourn the loss of something that hadn’t ever been guaranteed. And I could look at all the people around me, already bonuses in my life, and be grateful. After marriage, months went by without a pregnancy. I admitted that, as much as I would like to control the process, if I were in control, a child would no longer be a gift. Now that we are expecting our daughter, we delight in the gift and remember that we’re still not the ones in control of her little life. We receive her as a blessing, and love her for her own sake.

The Fourth Year of My Twenties: Dr. Barber & Dr. Bergsma

    My third year of teaching, I was finally out of survival mode and in the groove enough to have a life outside of school. A masters degree had been a long-time bucket list item. I had always said my undergraduate degree was for the job, but my future graduate degree would be for the education. Now with some money in the bank account, I could pursue an online M.A. in Biblical Theology from a Catholic University. Two standout teachers made this an incredibly enriching year of study and growth for me - Dr. Michael Barber and Dr. John Bergsma. 

    Dr. Barber, a founding university faculty member, taught THEO502: Foundations of Biblical Theology. One of my first impressions of him came from opening the reading lists for the class. The required readings were extensive and challenging, and the recommended readings were so far overshot that I didn't have a chance of getting through a quarter of that material. He immediately earned my respect simply for having a book list that long. It gave me to know two things right away: Dr. Barber was at least 700% better read than I was, and the bar was high. 

    Dr. Barber's classes were fast-paced, but followable. He provided a detailed outline of the content of each lecture. I had never seen notes with their own footnotes before, but I realized quickly that Dr. Barber was extremely detail-oriented, and he expected the same of us. He spoke in a combination of being both quick and succinct, which allowed him to cover a lot of content over a relatively short period of time. His planning and organization kept the classes purposeful and productive. As a teacher, this was a lesson inside a lesson. Not only was I learning the basics of theology - how and why to study it - I was seeing how extensive work outside the classroom brought about the learning inside it. We respected our professor for the rigor he imposed on himself, and it motivated us to aim higher. 

    The content he covered gave a much wider context for the theological books I had read in the past. It gave me a sense of where we had landed in the whole history of the discipline. I remember slogging through Ratzinger's The Nature and Mission of Theology, enough of it now unlocked that the margins were popping up with exited notes and connections. This foundations course was not only providing the necessities for the degree; it was also providing motivation and inspiration to do the work that would be required. 

    If Dr. Barber was the setter, Dr. Bergsma was his outside hitter. In BIBL511: Pentateuch, he applied practically what Dr. Barber had laid out theoretically. A visiting professor, his class was uniquely timed to overlap with my short enrollment. From the very beginning, I knew I was very lucky to take his course. One of the main texts for the class was the draft of an Old Testament commentary that Dr. Bergsma was co-authoring. My two favorite undergraduate courses had been ones where the professors authored their own textbooks. These teachers can present a depth of content that only comes from years of their own labored study. Just like Dr. Barber, Dr. Bergsma was meticulously prepared, and we students reaped the benefits. 

    The fact that Dr. Bergsma was advanced in his field did not mean his presentations went over our heads. He had a knack for simplification of complex ideas, and his dry oversimplification of humorous ideas kept us all laughing. He was known for his stick-figure illustrations and goofy impersonations of biblical patriarchs. Again, lessons in pedagogy underlaid the lessons in theology. Complex ideas can be distilled into accessible language, and the entertainment value of a class should never be underrated. 

    Dr. Bergsma illumined parts of the Bible that had been nonsensical to me. Leviticus is usually the book that bogs down well-intentioned readers attempting the Bible from beginning to end. Only 3 books in, they get dietary laws, washing rituals, and even guidelines on baldness. I had usually heard of these as reasons to discount the Scriptures; if such were God's laws in the Old Testament, certainly current laws of the Church were just as ridiculous. But Dr. Bergsma put these codes, so seemingly out-of-touch, into a historical and whole biblical context. I saw how fitting they were for the purpose at hand, and Leviticus unexpectedly became one of my favorite Scriptures. 

    This "hermeneutic of unity," this way of approaching the Bible as a tightly interwoven story, was absolutely thrilling. Of course, the Bible is mysterious, containing many seeming contradictions. But digging deeper and looking for ways to reconcile the surface-level questions was more satisfying than any deconstructive tack. Dr. Barber and Dr. Bergsma exemplified this approach in their scholarship and, in their own individual styles, modeled the highest quality teaching. 

The Third Year of My Twenties: Cyndi

    A few weeks ago I opened a new document and titled it Pacing Guide 2023-2024. From now until August, I will piece together the skeleton plan for my tenth school year as a teacher. This approaching milestone has me reflecting on my first co-teacher, and one of the most influential women of my twenties. 

    Cyndi was a special education teacher at my first school. I was hot off the press from college, and my first impression of Cyndi was her command. While I was struggling to cajole rowdy 10-year-olds with sweetness and convincing appeals, she walked into a room and told them what to do. They always did it. She carried herself with authority and walked with confidence. Not only confidence, but speed. She was always on the move, going at a pace about 2.5 times faster than everyone else around her, but never frantically. It was a purposeful urgency, and it caught on with her students. They worked with her when they wouldn't work with anyone else, and this was an invaluable to the whole staff. 

    I understood right away why she was respected. I came to understand later why she was so loved. The students formed strong attachments to her, and at first, I wondered how such a strict and often harsh-sounding teacher could create such bonds. But it became clear that Cyndi combined a firm consistency with what I can only describe as excessive care for her students. She went far above and beyond the given duties of a teacher, and made absolutely sure that they got to have experiences they never would have gotten otherwise. 

    Cyndi took charge of a big range of fun projects throughout the year, but the absolute best and most important in my eyes was going to camp. She planned and worked for months to make sure that all the 5th graders had the chance to play in the creek, look for fossils, catch crawdads, climb rock walls and ropes courses, ride on a zip line, play field games, hike through the woods, and have the time of their lives with an outdoor education. She traveled and stayed overnight to make it happen, almost staying overnight at school beforehand when an issue with school IDs meant we were printing our own last minute at 8 pm. 

    My second year of teaching, Cyndi and I were co-teachers on a new team. In this model, struggling students remained in the classroom with both of us rather than getting pulled back and forth from the regular classroom to intervention. With our rotating small group system, we were able to give those kids the attention and help they needed, and we had a great time doing it. If our principal ever questioned our teamwork, he was assured we enjoyed working together when he passed the door of our classroom and saw us both laughing as Cyndi was putting a cupcake into my open mouth. I don't remember why she was feeding me at that moment, but I remember our boss saying he was glad the new arrangements seemed to be working out well for everyone. 

    Cyndi invested in our relationship outside of the professional sphere. She took an interest in my plans to become a religious sister, and invited me over to her home for dinner before I took off for the convent. She and her husband told me all about their story which included their first meeting (it was at a fist fight) and his first impression of Cyndi (he was impressed that she won), and they asked about my motives and feelings as I embarked on my next step. 

    Cyndi not only took an interest in my life, but gifted me by letting me into hers. I was privileged to mourn her father's death with her, and watch as she cared for her feisty Italian mother in her final years. I was familiar with a daughter's love, but had never thought it out to its completion. What did it look like at the end? This was my first glimpse into the sacrificial love and life-shattering loss of an adult child now orphaned. Cyndi shared many of her mother's religious items with me - crucifixes, rosaries, and a tarnished old scene of Mary's appearance to St. Bernadette. I treasured these and prayed for the souls of the family from which they came. 

    Years have gone by, and the rosary bracelet Cyndi gave me is lost. The winter headband she crocheted specifically for my then high bun hairstyle is obsolete. But every once in awhile, I still reach into an old jacket pocket and feel one of the small crucifixes Cyndi passed to me. I thank God for my friend from those years, and I pray that she is blessed.