The Last Few Hours of Summer

  A couple of days ago Sue said to me, "You're the ONLY person I know that bakes in the summer." I think that's a sad statement in a couple of ways. A. That means the only person that can supply her with baked yumminess in the dog days of summer is ME (that's a lot of pressure) and B. Really the only time I have to bake is IN the summer, since I get home from work, I make dinner, and am too tired to bake the other 3 seasons of the year.
  (This sidenote brings me to the whole Julia and Julia movie, where the heroine actually DOES seem to have a full time job, and comes home to a different FRENCH-ish recipe every night. Somehow that makes me feel really inferior.)
  As I sit here today in the last few hours of my perceived "freedom" wondering if I should make some oat and chocolate cookies or some butterscotch cupcakes, I feel like I'm being robbed of creating for another 10 months. I keep looking outside, knowing it's going to be 110 degrees, and I am thinking of heating the oven? Really? I am trapped between trying to squeeze in one last round of deliciousness and the busy preparations for another year of school.
  I don't know what I want to define me, really. I know that yesterday was weird cosmic cross-section of my teaching life. It was one of those days that made me realize that teaching has enabled me to relate to people I might not otherwise would have known. It has enabled me to share in their joys and their pains, in their futures and their ends, in their "dependences" and the "independences", their recreation times and their career times. I also don't know how it's possible to have so many present and former students I am proud of at all at once.
  I hope that I take seriously the charge of praying for them all as God directs. I probably couldn't make cookies and pies and cupcakes for each and every one. Feeding them physically would be a sign of caring, no doubt. Actually I have said that to many of the kids, "I will take you home, love you, and feed you cookies." But feeding them spiritually is a whole other round of ingredients. How do I go into another year and let my faith be evident enough to plant those seeds? How do I show another 120 kids the love of Christ?
  I suppose it does tie in really... the potential I see in those adorable faces to become everything that they are designed for is exactly the same as the chocolate chips in my cupboard. It's exciting to wonder what they will become. And while I have a bit of human control over the sugar and eggs, directing it to come together into something wonderful, I have to relinquish control of the kids to God. I need to merely be the shelf that they sit on for awhile, while God directs their outcome. So a sturdy shelf I shall be. God give me the ability to be a place of rest, coolness, and anticipation.
  I have avoided baking today. I am concentrating and praying and thinking about the year ahead. I guess, I am "preheating my oven".
  Gotta set the timer. T- 10 months.