Pressing Puzzles

This posting is kind of a sequel to the last posting dealing with Self-Image #47. I mentioned in that post that instead worrying about your appearance, maybe you're better off trying to show others what you can do rather than concerning yourself with appearances. Being able to go out and help others is called the mission field...or basically glorifying God. If you simply do something helpful to someone else and not boasting about it then you're giving God the glory. It doesn't mean you have to go to some foreign country and hand out bibles to be on a mission. In many ways, my classroom is my mission field. I see hundreds of students every day and there are a few times when religion is brought up by the students and I'm able to talk with them about it. I will be honest and tell you that there are times when I wish I could do more than just be in the classroom, but I realize this is where the Lord wants me to be and I'll just have to deal with it. So...You never know...

I was going to add this to a previous post about identity, but I felt it needed to be addressed all on its own. I realize having an identity crisis and living a life can run parallel, but I want to look at just existing. The first thing that made me think of this was when I had released our pet turtle. I'm not sure what bugs me more, letting her go or knowing that part of my routine has changed for good. I say that because when I would put the dogs to bed, I would then feed the turtle. It made me think about emotional attachments to animals and people. I find it hard to have any emotional attachments to people and animals, but it almost goes without saying the difficulty of living my life without some kind of attachment to the ones I love can make me feel very lonely. In a way it’s like a double edged sword when it comes to the ones you care about. I chose to be married to my wife and have children. Not everyone makes the same decision and that's perfectly fine, I mean...

"You are what you eat." Does this statement define who you are? A few might say so, but I think it goes a lot deeper than that. I've been writing these blogs for a while now and I would assume one would label me as having Autism, so I guess you could call me Autistic. However, you also know me as a father, a husband, a son, a brother, an uncle, and not too far off...granddad. So...what am I? A Christian? A teacher? A writer? A heterosexual? A lover? A fighter? It seems like we've gotten into this habit of labeling everything. Even some of these labels have turned into fads. Anyone still remember the 'Hippies'? It's frustrating when society takes a way of life for some people and blows it up into fad. Makes me wonder if they'll try to turn autism into a fad! It's a just cause, I mean, I didn't get this from a vaccination needle or from a mere choice, but I was born with it. Now that I think about it, I guess deep down me having the label of a...