Back in May when I graduated from school, everyone kept asking me if I felt any different.

Not so much.

My library was bigger. I was a better writer. I was smarter. But it wasn't as though a switch flipped on graduation day that filled me with relief and warm fuzzies.

The root of the problem was that I had been in school for a long time. From age 3 (when I started preschool) to age 28, I had been in school every fall with the exception of 2002. That was the year I took off after Stacy and I got married. But even that year she was finishing school, and I was working at a college. I was still entrenched in the culture of academia, even though I wasn't a student.

May, June, July and August all fell off the calendar. An entire quarter of the year. And my senses finally started to come alive. Friends would talk about how they were heading off to class. The kids I work with started school. People were setting their gmail chat status to "studying".

And I was kicking it. Watching soccer with a big bag of pork rinds, a box of junior mints and a gallon of chocholate milk. Not pounding out an assignment.

Now we find ourselves nearing mid-October, and I finally feel like I'm not in school anymore. It's a nice feeling. There is space in my life. I am starting to enjoy reading and writing again, after a four-month detox.

I just need to remember this when the itch strikes me to apply for Doctoral programs. Not like I'll be doing that anytime soon. I promised myself I'd wait at least 5 years before even entertaining the idea. And whenever the subject is broached, Stacy gives me "the eye".

But still.

Renew and Restore

Sometimes it helps to have a little distance from a tense situation. Space can allow for truth and reason to shine through. It’s easy to become irrational when one is in the middle of the drama. Hyperbole takes over and you can literally talk yourself to the polar extreme of an argument as you work to make your point.

And so I was thankful for this article a couple of weeks ago because it gave me perspective. I almost didn’t read the article because our prolonged discussion about race lately has me a bit fatigued, but I’m glad that I dove in. I think I’ve read it three times now.

The article reminds me that we have come a long way. We have a ways to go. But more than that, it highlights people who are thinking outside the box and coming up with creative solutions to the problem of communities that do not value education.

As I look back on the past year of ministry, this is one of the questions that we have wrestled with the most. We made some strides, but we have a lot of work to do as we strive to create a culture where educational success is a normative value. It’s a tough fight, because we are going against the grain of what popular hip-hop culture is preaching, and we are also working with a population that doesn’t have a whole lot of faith in the city’s educational system.

If you are also worn out by the discussion on race, gut it out for one more article. You won’t be disappointed.