“Count your blessings; name them one by one…”
 |
| www.snazzylittlethings.com |
Are you familiar with the lyric?
Yes, the first phrase is the
title of the actual song, ‘Count Your Blessings.’
My students and I are studying
about multiplication now. It is quite a hard topic for me. When I looked at the
list of Math topics that we should cover in a year, the topic of multiplication
caught my eye. How would I explain this
to my students? Would they get it? Would they pass all the assessment? My
mind was all over the place.
FYI, in our school, every teacher
has to submit her/his weekly lesson plans. This is quite a challenge too! :P When
making lesson plan for this topic, I was confused what to write on the Biblical
Integration section. I had no idea until my playlist randomly shuffled to the
songs Count Your Blessings. Light bulb popped up, flowed ideas naturally
through my head. I eventually understood that God wants us to learn and realize
that He has showered us with multiple blessings. It tickled me. I stopped for a
while, questioning myself: how many times
a day did I stop from all the works to count God’s blessings in my life? Sad
but true, I have never done such thing, not even to think of doing it. Well, I
probably have done it, but my complains always outweigh my gratitude.
As a teacher, I can’t but to
personally do the counting of all God’s blessing in my life first, before I
taught my kids to do so. I went back to the good old times, when crying is the
cutest thing ever (at least in my family, he he).
When I was three months old, my
mom told me that if I did not get to meet the doctor immediately then I could
not be able to live as I am now. There was a time when something wrong happened
with my lungs that I could not breathe. We came not from a rich family. We only
had one Vespa which my dad used to go to work at that time. We also did not
have mobile phone. My mom was crying and clueless. We might not rich, but our
God is.
A moment later, a woman who just
moved to our neighborhood came back from somewhere (my mom did not ask her, he
he). The Holy Spirit led my mom to her to borrow her bike. The woman agreed to
lend it and even more panic than my mom did. Long story short, I was able to
get the medication I needed, and ta-da! Here I am people! Way healthier than everyone
could even imagine ;) This experience of how priceless breath is was the first
blessing I shared with my students
I also shared about my
educational experiences in hope to motivate my students. I told them that I always
tried my best in every class and made my parents proud of me. I even went for
extra lessons outside school hours. My parents did not have extra money to pay
for another expense outside the formal school so I had to search all over Medan
for the cheapest tuition fee yet that offer the best education.
It was still vivid, the memory of
me, still in my school uniform, jumped off from one bus to another, knocking on
the door. It was a long day. I almost gave up! I almost run out of money for
bus fees and so decided to walk for couple blocks to save some money. I stopped
by an institution and somehow felt led by the Spirit that encouraged me to ask
more information about the tutoring program they offered. Praise the Lord! They
asked me to take a test first (for free! :D). The result came about half an hour
and I was placed in the upper-level class. The thing which made me excited and
thankful was when they told me not to rush to pay for the book and tuition
fees.
Along the way, I got the first
rank in the class and that gave me two months free for another level’s tuition
fees. I made my teachers smile most of the time which made me realize that I was
just like them in some ways. But I made my teachers sad too! Now I now that
even teachers, in their process of becoming one, were not perfect. Whenever my
teachers were sad because of me, it made me sad too. It was not pleasing to see
your teachers or other people close to you become sad. Even from afar, it was
still ugly. Therefore, I started to change my bad habits in order to make them
sad no more. The Holy Spirit helped me. I am amazed by the ways the Lord
provided for me and my family.
The last but not least, by the
grace of God, I was accepted in a university by receiving full scholarship that
covered almost everything. Is not it great? After graduation (through a lot of
struggles, of course), I got opportunity to work right away, which for many people
is hard to do. I took a deep breath and almost cried! I did not realized that
God, throughout my life, has blessed me with multiple blessings – not onlyfor
myself but also my family.
Love,
No comments:
Post a Comment