.feet.

i HATE feet.

As a child with abnormally large feet (thank you, family genes), I was always super self-conscious about them. I still cringe remembering going to the bowling alley with my youth group, asking for a pair of size 9 shoes, and the attendant (who I am sure was no more than 16) saying, "Wow. Big feet." Ugh.

My feet aren't a model's feet. I can never buy "cute" shoes on sale because they never have my giant size left over. My toenail polish is always chipped, and I have huge callouses from running. I don't exactly like to flaunt them. And, frankly, the thought of a foot rub makes me want to gag.

My foot phobia made Thursday night even more humbling than expected. It was Maundy Thursday, and as I walked through the prayer stations our pastor had so lovingly and creatively set up around the sanctuary, I reflected on the life of Jesus, the ways in which his love is manifested in our every day world, the last meal he shared with his disciples from which the gift of communion was born.

Maundy Thursday is always a humbling time, a time to reflect, a time to remember. Every year as a part of these stations, the one I always skip is the foot washing station. I fear judgment and ridicule. I hate the feeling of someone else's hands actually touching what I find so ugly about myself.

But this year, I couldn't turn down the invitation. Walking in that night, I was perfectly content skipping right past the station with no plans whatsoever to sit down in front of our intern pastor and offer my feet up to be washed. But as I made me way through what I thought was my final station for the evening, I saw our intern pastor sitting in front of the giant bowl of water, towels and pitchers surrounding her, head bowed as she read the Bible. This picture touched me. And I wanted to take part in the spirit of what was happening over there.

I walked over, sat down, looked her in the eye and said, "If you promise not to judge my feet, I'll let you wash them."

Teri's eyes smiled as she reached over to hug me. She grabbed a towel, I lifted my naked foot into her hand (my hear pounding the entire time), and she began to pour water over one of my biggest insecurities, and tell me wonderful things about this body part that fills me with so much anxiety.

She told me that my feet were beautiful feet, that God loves these feet and made them beautiful, and made me beautiful, and blessed every path these feet touched. She reminded me of where these feet have been (offices and schools and churches and streets and homes). She told me that these feet had been to holy places.

As I listened to her talk, feeling the warmth of the towel cradling and drying my holy feet, I realized that these feet are a gift. No, I still don't think they're very pretty. And, no, I will still never let my husband give me a foot rub at the end of the day. But these feet are holy feet. They are a gift. They equip me. They allow me to move forward--physically and spiritually.

Foot washing in Jesus' day was a dirty task. Sandels and bare feet on dusty roads meant that feet were literally in need of a wash, a bath. It wasn't just symbolic. Physical dirt was removed in this process. And Jesus (God) humbled himself, put himself below that of his disciples (physically and spiritually) on that first Maundy Thursday night to take their dirt-caked feet in his hands and wash them.

This was a humbling experience for me as a recipient of such a gift. I had to lay aside my fears of judgment in order to do this. And it reminded me that my feet are beautiful, that they are a gift, that they do walk in holy places.

Foot washing is a part of the service experience of Samaritan's Feet, a wonderful organization providing shoes to impoverished children. Shoes. How many pairs are in my closet and yet there are children who long to have just one pair--a pair that fits, a pair that will protect them as they walk to school or do their chores. When volunteers from Samaritan's Feet deliver the shoes to these children, they wash their feet. They humble themselves and caress the dirty, calloused feet of this sweet children as a gift, a reminder that they, too, have beautiful feet, worthy feet, holy feet.

So, remember your feet today. Cherish them. Be reminded that they are holy feet, no matter where they might take you.

new year, new...

I do believe this is my first blog post this year. It's my first post in at least 6 months. I almost forgot it even existed until I was reading another friend's blog (who herself had not written in awhile) and was reminded that I eagerly hopped on the Blogger bandwagon some time ago and had left it in an utter state of stagnation. It almost seemed pointless to write again...nearly embarrassing to have the audacity to post after such an unexplained absence. I mean, there's a lot of pressure for this post to be really, really good. I mean, what if no one has noticed or even cared that this blog has gone into hibernation? What if my readership of one actually gets excited to see a new post after several months only to be met with disappointment that all insight I ever had is gone?

To take the pressure off, just a little, I decided to ease back into bloggerdom with a post on my resolve to revive this blog again--and why even after a 6 month hiatus, I still think it's worth it. Here goes...

I hate New Year's resolutions. I've made them in the past and never kept them for longer than a month. They seem arbitrary to me. I get the concept--new year, new you kind of thing, I suppose. I just see the New Year's resolution as an excuse. We make them. We break them almost as quickly as we made them. September rolls around, we examine where we are in life with our health, weight, career, family, {insert whatever here} and we think, "No, it's not where I'd like it to be...that will have to be my new year's resolution this year" and continue to keep doing whatever we want to stop doing (or don't do whatever we want to start doing) until January rolls around. We attempt the resolution, realize it's too much, fall off the wagon once, and throw our hands in the air thinking, "Well, at least I tried." And thus the cycle begins again.

OK-maybe it's not like that for everyone, but for me it is. I find that if I can't get it perfectly right the first time, then I'm just done. I tried, it didn't work, so I'm going to chalk it up to failure and move on to something else.

This new year, though, I'm trying to approach these mishaps, failures and tries in a different light. Take this blog, for instance. As my husband just so appropriately reminded me, "You haven't written on your blog for like 6 months." Yes, dear, I know. But I can start again. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

One the greatest ways I am learning this concept this year is through teaching my first college class...well, teaching my first class period. I came in raring to go. I was giddy with excitement at the end of my first day. This was going to be an amazing semester! I found my classroom without any glitches. I didn't stumble over my perfectly prepared lesson plan. My students were participating on day one. They seemed eager. They seemed to like me. I couldn't wait for class #2.

And then came class #2. The "first day" goggles were off, and suddenly I realized I was standing in front of a group of students looking to me for the answers. I was the "expert" in the classroom. I was handing out their grades. I was giving them the information that would be the foundation of some of their career paths. That was a lot of pressure!

Sometimes they had questions that I couldn't answer.

And sometimes time ran out before I could finish my carefully planned lesson.

And sometimes that carefully planned lesson just didn't go like I expected it to.

And one time an ice storm cancelled class entirely...and while my students were no doubt thrilled, I was just a little bit heartbroken.

All of my lessons have not gone as planned. Sometimes I pose questions, and my students just stare at me like I have two heads. And sometimes I fumble over a statistic or get so distracted by an unexpected question that it takes me a very visible moment to get back on track with where I want to be headed next.

This semester has not gone perfectly. But each week has challenged me in a new way. My students have challenged me. They haven't always felt their grades were fair. As a people pleaser, I have had to take this all on stride and not let it get to me.

As I look towards the last 2 weeks of the semester, instead of focusing on all that hasn't gone well, I'm focusing on what I've learned, the improvements I can make for next year, and the fact that I am actually doing something I have wanted to do for a long time.

I'm focusing on how, as a professor, I was able to ease the mind of a typically well-prepared student who told me she just found out her brother had stage 4 cancer. I'm remembering the day one student's reading response grade jumped 20 percentage points because her writing had significantly improved. I'm focusing on the day that I sat among my students (rather than standing at the front of the room) and we talked about what "home" meant to each of them...

This is a huge step for me--a step in the direction of not always worrying about being perfect or being "the best" and learning how to love the journey. Perhaps that has been my unspoken New Year's resolution...a new attitude. A new perspective. A new way of...life.