Day 6 Be Gentle....

"What feeling is so nice as a child's hand in yours!  So small, so soft and warm, like a kitten huddling in the shelter of your clasp."---Marjorie Holmes

I tend to be very critical of myself.  This can cause me some stress at times.  I need to be gentle with myself.  I'm sure I need to be more gentle with others too.  The Lord inspires me to be a gentler, kinder and compassionate person.  It's easy to be this way with the children I teach, it's hard for me to be this way with adults and myself at times.

I'm sitting here this morning the house is quiet and I'm enjoying a cup of coffee.  I love my family, I'm proud of my three children and the adults they have become.  I love my job as a PreK Montessori teacher and Executive Director at the school I teach.  Why do I feel so unsettled at times with myself?  Is it because I'm am older and I know time is marching on and my life on this earth is limited?  I want to leave a mark on this earth.  I want to do good.  I want to be important to the people around me, not in a famous way but in a way that when they think of me they smile.

My job does place me in a position of being able to touch the lives of little ones.  I've not added up the students I've taught but if I include all the years I taught Sunday School it's probably about 200? Nothing fills my heart more than the hugs and "I love you, Ms Brenda" from my students.  It's pure and impulsive and honest.  I'm not Mommy, Daddy or Grandma and Grandpa.....I'm their teacher, for many students their first teacher.  But their emotions are genuine.  I hope in some small way that I am doing good and am important to them even if just for a little while.  I am Blessed to be able to have a job where I can see the smiles and joys of a child writing for the first time or reading for the first time.  Those "light bulb" moments when they finally get the Math lesson we have been working on or the amazing look of wonderment from watching an experiment in Science.  I'm touching little lives in little ways I pray my students AND their parents will look back at the PreK years they spent at the Montessori and think of Ms Brenda as kind, compassionate and gentle.  I hope my name will bring a smile to their face.