First things first, I need to thank the incredibly generous and extraordinarily talented Mr. Alan Doan for restructuring my blog into something beautiful. The big, scary purple blob page was becoming too big and too scary for my dozens and dozens of eager readers but I had neither the know-how nor the patience to do it myself. Doesn't it look great? You’re a miracle worker, Al. Thanks.

So there’s this great story I heard at first over the summer at an EFY session and then again during a CES Fireside last month. It had been on my mind countless times from when I heard it first and it rang true in quite different terms the second time from Sister Dalton. Goes like this:

It’s the story of a pioneer girl named Agnes Caldwell. Agnes told of her experience in the Willie handcart company in 1856. At the time, she was only nine years of age. She related: “Although only tender years of age, I can yet close my eyes and see everything in panoramic precision before me—the ceaseless walking, walking, ever to remain in my memory. Many times I would become so tired and, childlike, would hang on the cart, only to be gently pushed away. Then I would throw myself by the side of the road and cry. Then realizing they were all passing me by, I would jump to my feet and make an extra run to catch up.”

She goes on to share: “Just before we crossed the mountains, relief wagons reached us, and it certainly was a relief. The infirm and aged were allowed to ride, all able-bodied continuing to walk. When the wagons started out, a number of us children decided to see how long we could keep up with the wagons, in hopes of being asked to ride. At least that is what my great hope was. One by one they all fell out, until I was the last one remaining, so determined was I that I should get a ride. After what seemed the longest run I ever made before or since, the driver … called to me, ‘Say, sissy, would you like a ride?’ I answered in my very best manner, ‘Yes sir.’ At this he reached over, taking my hand, clucking to his horses to make me run, with legs that seemed to me could run no farther. On we went, to what to me seemed miles. What went through my head at that time was that he was the meanest man that ever lived. … Just at what seemed the breaking point, he stopped. Taking a blanket, he wrapped me up and lay me in the bottom of the wagon, warm and comfortable. Here I had time to change my mind, as I surely did, knowing full well by doing this he saved me from freezing when taken into the wagon.”

Since I’m a bit out of practice in this blogging world, and since my blogs are more just day-in-the-life entries anyway (my roommates would be appalled), I’ll briefly catch up on October- the month of concerts and auditions and football games galore. It’s a great time to be in high school, a little less ideal time perhaps to be a high school teacher. And actually it wouldn’t be so bad if I would just stop being so stubborn. See, I hate hand sanitizer. I hate the way it makes you feel sticky, the way it gags you, makes you feel all claustrophobic. So I just don’t use it. I prided myself over the summer at youth camps where gel by the gallon was being globbed onto the palms of unsuspecting passer-bys that I only think I used it 3, maybe 4 times. I guess it shouldn’t be any surprise to me that in a profession surrounded with teenagers, all playing on my pianos with their hands and eating in my rooms… it was just a matter of time until my all-star immune system finally conceded and I came down with something pretty good. It’s no H1N1, thank heaven, but I can’t hold on to the same symptoms long enough to take the right medicines for that hour. This too shall pass, but it falls at a pretty awful time, as illness always does. I’m running 3 auditions this week, I have to find an extreme guilt-trip method to discipline a class that went bizerk on a substitute yesterday, and my next job is to figure out how to orchestrate an “all-student narrated Fall Concert” next Thursday since my voice reaches no louder than a whisper.

I feel like I can plug myself in to Agnes Caldwell’s position at times like these -- probably more often than I deserve to. But the ceaseless walking, walking without any tangible destination in view is an all too concrete metaphor in my head; running beside the wagon in hopes that it’ll be your saving grace tends to get tedious and I don’t think I often have Agnes’s stamina and self-discipline to keep the pace up. And then, just when it feels like you’re ready to kick it down one notch and stop trying so hard, you’re grabbed by the arm and forced to run just a touch faster on legs that you’re not even sure are still attached to your little body. I think my favorite part of it all is the trying to figure out what exactly I’m being ‘saved’ from part. More likely what I’m being prepared for. Most likely, what I’m being humbled for. There’s an awful lot to improve on. Looking at my track record though, I’m glad to know there somehow always seems to be enough of me to go around—things always get done, though not always in my timetable or of the quality I had in mind but I do find success at the end of the week. Or season. Or year.

It’s been a little while since I was taken and wrapped in that blanket on the bottom of the wagon… I’m beginning to think that’s a moment reserved for when I die or something… in the meantime I’m grateful for prayers and for family and for roommates who make me tea. My meds are kicking in, I’m off to sleep. I’ll be stopping by the store on my way to work to grab me some Purell in the morning, you can be sure of that.