“Trust the science.” We hear this phrase often, especially in the wake of Covid. However, it's usually framed as though science and faith are opposites—as though believing in God somehow requires abandoning intelligence, reason, evidence, or critical thinking. Christians are often portrayed as people who reject science, while people who “follow science” are portrayed as enlightened and rational. But the reality is much more nuanced than that, because at the end of the day, everyone has faith in something . Follow me with this thought experiment: How do you know Antarctica exists? Only .005% of people have been to Antarctica, so it's safe to say that if you're reading this, you haven't been there. You have never physically stood on its ice, touched its snow, or independently verified its existence with your own eyes. You believe Antarctica exists because you trust the testimony of people who have been there. You trust photographs, maps, documentaries, satellite images, t...

“I’ve asked you three times now to be quiet. If you continue to talk, I will write a referral to the office,” I said to a student today. “But I was just trying to ask him a question,” the student responded. “It doesn’t matter. I asked you to be quiet, and I told you the consequence if you talk again,” I said. “But I’m…” she trailed off muttering something under her breath. I’ve had conversations similar to this with more students than I could count—even with my own children. The need to get the last word in is overwhelming for some of these students. The longer I’ve been in education, the more of an issue it has become. These are what I call “Yes, ma’am moments.” They are times when I give a correction, and all I need is a “Yes, ma’am.” I do not need an explanation; I do not need you to plead your case. I do not need you to talk back. I simply need you to recognize that a correction needs to be made and then correct the behavior. That’s it. The more I watch my students...

I’ve traveled to Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico on three separate mission trips. On each of these trips, I had deep, emotional, and intimate encounters with God. While I was on my trip to Belize, God showed me how being pulled away from distraction, from routine, from technology, and from responsibilities allowed me to hear from my Heavenly Father clearly and grow closer to Him. One morning in Belize, I woke up early and walked to the beach before sunrise. I sat on a nearby dock and watched the waves lap at the beach. At the water’s edge , God spoke to me so strongly, and so clearly. Since those mission trips, I’ve noticed that when I need to talk to God, when I need answers, when I need to feel His intimacy, I have to get away. I have to find a place that’s quiet and away from the distractions of everyday life. When we look at scripture, we see this theme repeated. In Exodus, we see Moses spend forty years in the wilderness before God spoke to him through a burning bush. God ...

Complaining is one of my biggest pet peeves. As a high school English teacher, I hear teenagers complain every day about everything. They complain about the rules, the expectations, the assignments. They complain about each other, about their teachers, about their parents. We talk in my class often about not complaining, because when we complain, our focus is on what is uncomfortable, missing, unfair, or frustrating, when our focus should be on the things we do have and the opportunities before us. Sometimes we need to shift our focus from complaining to gratitude. Our words—whether grumbling or gratitude—shape the way we see the world around us. People who constantly complain eventually begin viewing everything negatively. Every inconvenience becomes a problem; every correction feels unfair; every responsibility feels overwhelming, and every difficulty becomes evidence that life is against them. Complaining changes perspective. When our minds become consumed with what is frust...

Throughout my adolescence, I got in trouble for things that others did not. If there were several students talking in class, I was the one called out for it. If a group of us were tardy, I was the one to get detention. I watched others cheat on tests, and the one time I tried, I got caught. If I talked back, I was immediately in trouble, while I watched other students get away with far worse behavior. This pattern of seemingly always getting in trouble for things that others didn’t followed me into adulthood. I would watch other coaches yell at their athletes, but if I so much as raised my voice an ounce, a parent e-mail was sure to be waiting for me in my inbox. I have watched other teachers break all kinds of rules, but if I so much as think about breaking a rule, I’d be admonished. It has affected me in a way where I am careful to watch myself—my tone, my words, my actions. As I’ve raised my two daughters, they have gone through the same thing I did—they continually were he...

Boundaries. It's one of the most recent pop-culture therapy buzzwords. Everywhere I turn, I see people setting "boundaries" on their relationships and friendships, but more often than not, these boundaries aren't boundaries—they are veiled attempts at control. Boundaries define what you are going to do in a relationship. A boundary says, "This is the line where my responsibility stops and yours begins." For example, if a friend keeps snapping me with a rubber band, a boundary says, "If you snap me with a rubber band, then I will leave the room and no longer sit next to you." Notice how the language is about what I am going to do—not what the other person needs to do. "You're not allowed to have friends who are girls," I've heard a girl say to her boyfriend. "That's just a boundary I have." Except that's not a boundary, that's control. Here are some more examples:  Control: “You cannot go out...

I had to confiscate a phone today. In Texas, there is a new law that says students are not allowed to have their phones at all during the school day. If they are, we as teachers are required to take the phone and turn it in to the office. A girl in my 5th period was on her phone, so I had to take it. After class, she begged me not to turn it in. She knows the rules; she knows what I'm required to do, and she knows I’m not going to change my mind. But she kept asking—over and over again—for me not to turn it in. After telling her repeatedly that my hands were tied, I finally had to tell her to stop asking—I wasn't going to break the law for her. I was initially upset with the expectation of mercy —the idea that she thought she shouldn’t have to suffer any consequences for breaking a law, and she wanted me to be the one who gave her that mercy. Then I started thinking about how so many of my students beg for mercy—for their grades, for me to not take late points off, to...

“You didn’t write this—you copied this from another student,” I told one of my 10th grade English students. He emphatically denied it. I showed him the other student’s paper. I read them both, side by side. He still denied it. The truth  was sitting right in front of his face, and he still held on to the idea that he didn’t cheat. Unfortunately, I’ve had this same type of conversation with numerous students. Now that AI has made it so easy for students to cheat, these conversations happen more and more often. What baffles me is not just the lack of academic integrity, but the lying in the aftermath of getting caught. These students hold on to their lie, and they refuse to take accountability. And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that this isn’t just a student problem—it’s a human problem. Identity Sometimes, refusal to take accountability in the face of truth has to do with our skewed view of ourselves. If your identity is rooted in something othe...