Everywhere I look – on social media, television commercials, slogans printed on T-shirts and pasted on signs – the prevailing message today seems to be about achieving greatness, thinking big, striving for the maximum measure of success.
As I near the end of my first academic quarter teaching middle- and high-school English at a local Christian school, I have been thinking about how we measure success. An academic grade is one way – and one that as a creative person I am not very fond of.
Our 4-year-old son is a chess master, winning match after match. Sitting across from his father in a cozy inn on a recent afternoon with a wooden game board between them, Ezra confidently moved his knight to capture his father’s bishop. On his subsequent turn, he deftly seized a pawn. The next to fall was a rook. Piece by piece, Ezra gleefully cleared the board, grinning triumphantly as several bystanders and I looked on. “Who’s winning?” a silver-haired man asked.
Wife, mom, writer, friend, sharing God in my everyday life through “Faith Notes.”