LIFE RIGHT NOW â—½ YOU
If you’ve ever thought the English language was confusing, imagine teaching a roomful of inquisitive first graders about homographs. Talk about bewildered faces! Reading sentences like, “The black bat flew by the boy’s bat at the ballgame.” Or, “We need to park the car so we can play at the park.” Huh? Learning about words that are spelled the same and sound the same, but don’t mean the same thing is actually quite fun! We would draw silly pictures to show things like a fan (an admirer) of fans (appliance that makes wind) to help visualize the different meanings.
Speaking of homographs, we (my husband and I) recently visited the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona (which, if you haven’t been yet, it’s a must-see hidden gem), where I stumbled upon a real-life homograph. Wandering around looking at the petrified pieces of quartz, agate, and opal I thought back to that lesson with my first graders (Okay, full disclosure, the first thing I did was belt out the opening lyrics to the 70’s hit “I Will Survive” …look up the lyrics if you don’t know it). But then I thought, here are these beautifully petrified geological formations that have nothing to do with Gloria Gaynor’s definition of petrified.
As we ventured through the Petrified Forest and read the informational signs explaining how each piece came to be, I realized just how much we humans are like these solidified fossils. There are four mandatory conditions necessary for wood to transform into stone. It’s a complicated process, but basically it goes like this: with the absence of oxygen, the presence of certain fluids, a high-pressure environment, and an extensive amount of time, the tree is no longer a tree. All the organic materials that filled the tree are no longer present in the wood and have been replaced with silica materials, leaving a beautiful stone that will last forever. How did I turn this into a stone/human homograph, you ask?
In the dictionary, petrified has two meanings. Frightened or changed. See, that’s just like us humans. When we face the scary stuff (and we will), we can either live the first meaning, remaining frozen in fear, or we can choose to be like the petrified stone. Changed. Transformed. Different than we were before.
We can choose Jesus. With Him we can face our fears.
Public speaking is one of those things (along with heights, snakes, crossing bridges, buzzing insects, the nightly news, and a number of other things…) that gives me the heebie-jeebies. There was a time when I first began teaching, that I could be found crying in the teacher’s lounge, moments before speaking about curriculum to a roomful of parents, because I was paralyzed with fear. Talking to a room filled with kids was one thing, but talking to adults? Yikes! Eventually I was able to power through this yearly torture, but was so relieved when I retired knowing my public speaking days were finally over! Except, they weren’t over.
My recent endeavor into publishing children’s books meant I was asked to give a presentation to a women’s group. And there was that fear again. Why did I agree to do this? How was I going to muster the courage to speak in front of a roomful of accomplished ladies? What in the world could I possibly say that would hold their interest? I wanted to crawl inside a hole and cry like I did as a beginning teacher facing a roomful of parents. But I prayed. I asked God to give me the words and the confidence. And guess what? I survived! In fact, a few weeks after giving the presentation, I was invited to join this women’s group – how cool is that? In the words of Gloria Gaynor, “At first I was afraid, I was petrified…”
Like the tree that is transformed into petrified stone when conditions are just right, accepting Jesus into our hearts will leave us transformed from the inside out. If we’re not careful, our fears, worries, and anxieties can devour our calm. But, growing in God’s Word, means we’ll no longer have room for that debilitating all-consuming fear. Oh, it’ll still creep up every now and then, but when we choose Jesus, we’ll be filled with His peace.