Up the Sunbeam

-- A little more than ten short months ago, I set out toward a cherished dream  to become a teacher, and today I reached the first major milestone on that road. I clicked the SUBMIT button to turn in my final assignment in the final class of my freshman year of college.  I love looking at the row of binders that hold all my textbooks from this year--each one represents a five-week chunk of my life that I spent on the way to achieving my big dream. Stacked up together, they feel solid, substantial, sacred. Not sacred because of their content (although every bit of truth they hold belongs to God), but sacred because this work is all an offering of love, given for God's glory. He is the reason I stay up late to finish papers. He is the reason I fuss over details. And He is the reason I step up to lead team projects with a commitment to excellence instead of letting someone else do it (or not do it) and just get by with minimum effort. Last year, just before I started, I

-- Hello, Friends! Anyone here? I've been gone so long I'm not sure I even belong here anymore. The demands of school and team assignments have prevented me from being here like I'd like to be, but my heart is still here even when my words are not. May I tiptoe back in and offer a little something? ~~~~~~~~~~ This is what California's Central Valley looked like in June 2010 when we took a family trip to Disneyland and points south. Green, lush, and every available acre growing crops to provide food for millions, maybe even for you. Tomatoes by the truckload were passing us down the length of I-5. As we ticked off the miles, we passed field after field of blackberries, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, asparagus, grapes, beans, strawberries, melons, lettuce, rice, peppers, spinach, corn, and cotton. Interspersed between the fields we saw orchard upon orchard of almonds, walnuts, pistachios, figs, olives, kiwi, lemons, plums, apples, cherries, peac