It's been two and a half months

How did I go through the entire month of April without posting anything? I have no clue.

Anyway, I'm very heartbroken that Danny Gokey was eliminated last night. Yet I'm privileged, as a viewer of American Idol, to have walked on this journey of healing with him. He grew leaps and bounds since losing his wife and I was glad to hear him sing every week.

This year has been an interesting year, so here's the highlights of things I've been glad to be a part of while living at home.

Christmas - We were supposed to go to Bloomington on Dec. 21 for the Kelly family Christmas, but that didn't happen due to weather, so we found ourselves at home having our immediate family over instead. It was a huge blessing because we didn't know when we would be able to have our own Christmas.

Hockey - My niece's hockey team made it to the section final game. They ended up losing 4-0, but it was exciting to watch them knock off the number 1 team in the semi-finals.

Graduations - This year my oldest niece graduates from high school. I attended her awards banquet last night as she was honored for being in the top 10% of her class. She also received a few scholarships, so that was fun too. My youngest niece graduates from her first year of pre-school on May 21 and I couldn't be more excited about attending that.

Concerts - Band and choir concerts are always fun for me to attend, but never more fun than the Jefferson Connection concert on April 26. My grandparents asked if I would drive them up for that Sunday afternoon concert and I said I would. They told me Uncle Jeff was getting awarded for something, but weren't exactly clear what for. It turned out to be a whole family gathering as my folks, my sister and brother-in-law, my nieces and nephews, and my other uncles, aunts, and cousins were there to help honor Uncle Jeff on 20 years of teaching at Thomas Jefferson High School in Bloomington.

Lessons learned - Living at home has allowed me to reflect and unwrap some of the lessons I learned while doing CPE. The big one for me was the question, "Who Am I?" Not so much who am I as a person, but who am I as a chaplain, or more importantly, who am I as a teacher. Having to figure out who we are as whatever title we hold is not something I had thought of before CPE. As that lesson unraveled for me, I started to consider going back into teaching. Also, this year I've been able to get back to my other love, music. I'm playing with an orchestra right now and playing a bit at the United Methodist Church in Albert Lea. Combine this with my CPE lessons, and everything came to a head when I sat in the auditorium at Jefferson High School. I realized that day that I was created to teach music. Now I just have to get to work and pray for a school to take me on even though I haven't taught for 3 years and have a seriously out of date credential file.

I guess that's it for now.