"The greatest adventure is what lies ahead..."

            I’m beginning a new adventure. 

            I should know better, having been warned decades ago by Bilbo Baggins that adventures are “nasty disturbing uncomfortable things” that “make you late for dinner.” Still, I find God’s call even more compelling than Gandalf’s, which Bilbo couldn’t ignore.

            So I will pack up all my teaching tricks (after I figure which boxes I packed them in less than a month ago and unpack them) and take them and me to Sunbury Christian Academy, where I will be a smaller fish in a bigger pond. 

            I’m pleased to announce I can now find SCA on Route 11, although I’m not confident I can locate my classroom after entering the building. Hopefully one of the kind bigger fishes will point a fin in the right direction. 

            What will the first day of school be like? I suspect it may be like the first chapel of my fifth year of school at WCA, in August 2003.

            My first ever homeroom, my kids from freshmen through senior year, had graduated in May. I had a new homeroom to get to know. I thought I was okay with that until we had our first high school chapel. 

            The music started, and as I stood up to sing, I looked at the worship team, and it was all wrong. D.J. wasn’t playing piano. Cammie and Sherrill weren’t singing together at a microphone. Other musicians from the Class of ’03 were conspicuously absent. 

            I couldn’t sing. I bawled.

            So it’s entirely possible that I may tear up when I survey my new class of juniors and the Maccabees (my WCA homeroom boys) are missing. I may sniffle when the seniors come in lacking the familiar faces and voices of McKayla, Tessa, Caitlyn, and Tyler.

            But I know I’ll be okay:  In 2003 I learned my love could expand to include new students while praying for the older ones embarking on their next adventures.