Faith, Hope, and Love

3 ...We also celebrate in seasons of suffering because we know that when we suffer we develop endurance, 4 which shapes our characters. When our characters are refined, we learn what it means to hope and anticipate God’s goodness . 5 And hope will never fail to satisfy our deepest need because the Holy Spirit that was given to us has flooded our hearts with God’s love. Romans 5:3-5 ( The Voice )    

Today my kids were taking their Writing TAKS test, and since I'm only the lowly student teacher I got to have the day off. I guess I could have gone and observed in the 5th grade class, or maybe helped out in the library. But since I've been sick over the last week, and just stressed and exhausted in general, my mentor teacher thought it'd be good for me to have a personal day. And did I need a personal day. For one, two weeks ago my mentor teacher went to a professional development workshop and was gone for the day. So, our 4th grade class had a substitute... who did nothing . I mean, I basically had a good handle of the class. I was teaching the spelling and grammar, and then guided them in their centers and stuff. And so I guess she didn't really need  to do anything. But this sub was on her phone a lot, and kept running off to the bathroom, and then would walk up to me WHILE I WAS TEACHING and start holding conversations with me and stuff. It was like, "oka...

I've been a member of Fictionpress since 2006--I joined shortly after finishing undergrad, when I was trying to figure out "what's next" and was often bored and lonely in Oklahoma. Mostly I spent my time reading and reviewing other people's work (primarily my friend Tatiana Moore ), but occasionally I'd post my own stuff. I haven't updated my FP account since 2008, but today I decided I'd use it to post any vignettes or short stories I end up writing over the next couple of months (or longer). I have so many books that offer writing prompts and exercises and stuff (plus, I often pick up more at the library). My plan has been to do at least one exercise/prompt a day. However, I won't post all of them. I may also re-visit some of the novel-length projects I had been working on all those years ago. At least one of them is very important to me and I actually want to see completed. So we'll see what happens... Today I posted two "chapte...