Pearls & Perfection Pending

I did it again.  An angry, irresponsible Mom called me this morning at 7:55 informing me of every reason under the sun that I am a horrible teacher.  I dealt with this last year and read a lot about how to come off conqueror this year.  I told myself all about how angry people need validation.  They are angry for a reason and I need to show empathy.  I need to remember that they, like myself, have this poor kid in mind when they turn on the spigot of ignorant and unkind nonsense that pours freely out of their mouths  speak.  Yet, when I picked up the phone and listened to insult after insult, my defenses kicked in and that kind, validating woman I'd hoped to be hightailed it out of there.  The sassy, "oh no you didn't" version of myself came out and I couldn't stop myself from thinking horrible things about this woman whom I have never met. I tried to make it through the conversation calmly, especially since my entire class was listening...

I suppose I have probably been thinking about the chaos in our world a little too much lately. It is hard to ignore when I go to school every day and am reminded of the jeopardy my job is in. Many days I have to remind some of my kids to wash their hands or brush their teeth because it is obvious that they have not been bathed in days. We turned on the news in class yesterday to watch some snippets about a massive 8.9 earthquake in Japan and the resulting tsunamis; natural disasters that seem to become more and more familiar to us. While all of these things swirl in and out of our information-driven society, I had a thought the other day that gave me comfort. The Book of Mormon is example after example of societies that chose to ignore the counsel of the prophets. These societies all faced destruction, captivity or some other major events that caused them to repent or be destroyed. This cycle that we read about took place every few decades or every hundred years. In some ver...