Love is not all you need.

Or maybe it’s just that I don’t feel very loving.

I spent today oscillating between white hot rage and tears of despair.

My students need a lot of love.  In fact, during the day, they need all of my love.  I don’t mean love as in happy feelings and good times and compliments.  I mean real love.  They need me to will above all else their good.  At every moment I have to put what is best for them ahead of any discomfort they may feel, or resentment towards me that they may harbor.  It’s a running joke at my school that my students kind of hate me.  Or, if not hate me, are at least put out with me most of the time.  And every day I have to decide what is more important to me: whether they “like” me or whether they develop into good human beings.  Ideally these things wouldn’t be mutually exclusive, but right now they seem to be.  At the end of the day of staring down glaring faces and insisting that everyone sit up straight, I have to comfort myself with “someday they’ll realize it was for their own good.”

That’s cold comfort, because they probably won’t.

I don’t say that to be pessimistic.  I say this because God loves me more than I could ever love myself, he only wills what is good for me, and every single fucking day I throw a hissy fit and toss it back in his face.  If I am willing the eternal LOVE that animates the universe is available to me, and I make continual choices that close my will off from that love.  So how can I expect 8 year old to act better to me than I act towards God?

Clearly I need some grace to go along with that love.

(1 Year and 56 Days Sober)