I'm A Teacher

When I decided to go to graduate school to become a rehabilitation teacher for the blind, I didn’t have too much doubt that I’d be able to do the job. After all, I was blind, and I’d lived alone and taken care of myself. Did I ever have a lot to learn.

Just being a reasonably successful blind person was not enough. Everybody who was blind wasn’t like me. They had different interests, different desires, and different skill levels—both directions.

Believe it or not, there were many other kinds of adaptive equipment besides the ones I used, which I needed to learn about to be able to show people. I needed to learn many new methods and techniques than the ones I successfully used.

For example, the way I cut food—holding a potato in my hand while I cut it—was probably not the way I should teach clients when showing them kitchen safety.

I was so proud of the fact that I could crochet, and that I taught another blind student in my class how to do it. But, I learned, people who had crocheted with sight for many years, might have to be shown how to continue their favorite hobby with a different technique than the tactile one I used.

However, in my internship toward the end of my program, my professor said something which has always remained with me: “You have an easy way of relating with the clients, which is a skill that cannot be taught.”

After graduate school, I was a stay-at-home mom for nine years. When I started my first, and only, teaching job, I was much humbled about my ability to do the job.

The first student I had needed to work on stovetop cooking skills. I remember going to my boss’s office, where she was in a meeting, to ask her if it was okay for me to have him make hotdogs for lunch.

With time, I settled into a more comfortable way of handling my students.

One man repeatedly refused to listen to how I told him to type and continued to make unnecessary mistakes. Not wanting to lose my temper, I said, “Okay, I’m going to stand up, turn in a circle three times, and then sit down again before I speak.” I did.

My favorite areas of teaching were Braille and typing.

I made up my own braille teaching book, which I called “Kathy’s Braille.” The reading lessons had sentences like, “Kathy enjoys many foods.” “I will work after I have coffee.” “Actually, I just want more sleep.”

We had a computer program that we used for touch typing lessons. Once we’d finished with that, and we were working on speed and accuracy, I again came up with my own curriculum. Goofy jokes from the internet.

“Why it’s great to be a dog: You can lie around all day without worrying about being fired. There's no such thing as bad food. A rawhide bone can entertain you for hours.”

“Test for chocolate lovers: 1. Suppose you start out to make chocolate-chip cookies by opening a bag of Nestlé’s Semi-Sweet Morsels, but instead you end up eating them, one by one.

When the bag is empty, how many will you have eaten? a. 350; b. 675; c. 900; Answer:  Count them carefully as you eat to find out. 2. True or false: Never trust anyone who doesn't eat chocolate.”

I loved being a teacher, and I believe it became a natural fit for me.

Once I was showing my son Caleb how to write braille with a slate and stylus. I walked around the dining room table, and I must have taken on a lecturing tone.

My daughter Rebecca said, “Now I can see how Mom acts as a teacher.”

Even when the name on the professional certificate I held changed to “Certified Vision Rehabilitation Therapist,” I never stopped calling myself a teacher.

Several years ago, I had to stop working due to health reasons. I have found other constructive and enjoyable things to do, but I miss teaching. Will I ever teach again? I have found that God still brings surprises into my life, so who knows?

Once in a while, I still throw out a rehab teaching kind of suggestion to my children who are visually impaired. Sometimes the things I learned from school and years of working, sometimes my old faithful personal techniques.

“When you’re pouring a glass of milk from a full jug, to make sure it doesn’t spill, feel free to pour over the sink.”

Some Things that are Hard to Understand

The Bible is a book with a wealth of things to offer. But there are in it “some things that are hard to understand.” 2 Peter 3:15-16

One of these is in Mark chapter 7 where a woman who is not a Jew asks Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus replies to her, verse 27: “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

This sounds harsh, maybe even cruel to us. That’s why we cannot stop at that passage. We need to search the Scriptures to find out what else they have to say about this subject.

Jesus knew he had come to save people from all nations. In Matthew 8:5-13, he praises the Roman Centurion for his great faith. Jesus says that many will come from other lands to sit with Abraham in Heaven

From early in the Old Testament, God promised that the whole world would be blessed by Abraham’s descendant.

Genesis 12:3

Genesis 22: 18: and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed because you have obeyed me.”

Maybe Jesus used this incident in Mark 7 as a lesson for his disciples and other Jews. Maybe it’s a parable, with a strong, shocking picture, to teach us … so many things.

My opinion? Truly, you can’t buy a Snickers bar with the amount of money you can get for my opinion. But I wonder if, first of all, this wasn’t simply for that lady, the mother.

She was a Greek, so she knew the Jews wouldn’t want her around. But she wanted her daughter healed, so she behaved with desperation, with bravery, with hope that this man Jesus she’d heard about could help her.

First of all, Jesus would have wanted her to accept him as her Savior. Maybe he knew he had to push her even further than she was willing to go, to make her think even more deeply about who he was.

The Bible is sometimes hard to understand. But God, with grace, has promised us the Holy Spirit to help us find the meaning.

John 16: 13: But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.

A Husband's Love

Murray loves me.

My husband Murray doesn’t like putting things together—furniture, other “needs assembly” things for the house. He can do it, but it doesn’t come easy to him, and it frustrates him.

Recently, I said, out of the blue, “I wish I had an exercise bike.” Then I forgot about it.

Until one day our neighbor knocked on the door and told me a truck had just dropped off a box for us that said, “Exercise Bike.”

That job went a lot better than Murray thought it would, and in just a couple evenings, I had my new bike set up in the living room.

I call it Charger, and I’ve been pretty good about riding it almost every day for seven weeks now.

Murray was encouraged by the bike, so he agreed to get me a porch swing. That didn’t go quite as smoothly.

When he opened the box Murray said, “There’s at least a hundred parts.”

I didn’t think so, but as I stood by him as he put it together, I decided he was right.

“I’m helping,” I said. Mostly I held tools and washers and other parts while he worked, or picked up things that fell. He could have done it without me there, but I said, “I’m here to encourage you.”

Just putting the frame together was the first session. It’s amazing to me how many parts there are in just the outside frame.

But that went okay, so Murray thought surely it wouldn’t be hard to get the seat together.

Right.

Again, a lot of parts and quite a bit of time, but finally it was done.

When Murray said, “I did this a hundred percent wrong. I’ll have to do it completely over,” I thought surely not.

We had both the seat and the backrest on backwards.

We took a break from it the rest of that day.

Murray started the next day with excitement. “This is going to be easy.” And it did seem to go a lot faster this time. “I’ve learned how to do it better since I’ve already done it once.”

Finally the seat was ready to hang. Except …

Murray went through everything in the box multiple times. The springs that connected the seat to the frame were not included.

So we had to wait almost a week for the company to send us the springs. Putting the final parts together took less than three minutes.

Who would go through something like this unless he loved me?

Of course, this isn’t a surprise. We’ve been married almost twenty-nine years, and I have many memories to show me that Murray loves me.

A memory that probably touches me the most was how, when I spent six weeks in the hospital after an accident a few years ago, Murray came every day and spent almost the entire day with me. And not because he didn’t have anything else to do.

I’ll never be able to explain to him what an amazing difference this made to that experience for me.

Sure, we have disagreements. We’re two very different people. But I pray that every time I sit in my new porch swing, I remember that I have it, not because it was easy, but because Murray loves me.