Teaching 6th grade!

Wow! I never would have thought that I would love teaching 6th graders but they are my heart now. I have a fabulous group of 6th graders this year. This week I told them that I was pregnant and that I would be leaving in March to have a baby. They were so cute in their excitement and questions? Are you having a boy or a girl? What are you going to name the baby? With that question they had some opinion on what I want to name my child! Are you sick? But over all they were great and happy for me. Even though their teacher last year left half way through the year to have a baby too! Oh well, that is what happens we newly married women teachers...just a fact of life. Thankfully I did not have to explain anything about the "facts of life" when I told them I was pregnant. Whether they still think a stork brings a baby, mom and dad just magically get a baby when they get married or their parents have already told them. Either way, I don't care, as long as I was not the one explaining!

As I teach 6th grade and I can't help to think back to when I was a little six grader at Greenville Middle school with my tight rolled jeans and my NKOTB buttons on my jean jacket and my 6 inch bangs! I think about how insecure I was, how I worked so hard to recieve everyones approval. I think about how hard I had to work in school to be successful and felt like a failure so many times. I think about how boy crazy I was and how dumb I acted to get the attention of a boy that did not even matter. I look back at my life as a little six grader and thank God that I made it through and that I am now a happy, well adjusted, married, pregnant 31 1/2 year old. God has been so very gracious to me each and every day of my life from the time I was in six grade until now. I think God for incredible parents, family, brother, new friends, old friends! I think God for amazing memories and experiences I made at Marietta Baptist Camp, Edwards Road Baptist Church, Gardner-Webb University, Southeastern Seminary, First Baptist Woodstock! God is good all the time and all the time God is good!!

As I wait and pray and seek God as this little grows inside of me, I pray that I can use all of the experiences I have had and all the influences that have poured into my life to become the best mother I possibley can be. In fact I was telling a friend the other day, that if I can be just half the mom my mom was to me, I would consider that successful. I pray each day that God helps me lead and guide this precious child in the way that HE has already laid out for him/her. From the time we started trying to have a child, up until now, I have given this child to God. He or she is not mine. I am but a clay pot that God is using to carry and care for His precious creation!