A high school senior fixated on\nlanguages and literature, I\u2019d just finished enacting the witch scene from\nMacbeth, the one in which a spell is cast; and as I was so very close to the\nend of my K-12 student career in our relatively small community, I\u2019d acted that\ninfamous scene out without inhibition\u2014feigned accent, corny cackles, cauldron-stirring\nhands. I was shameless from beginning to\nend, and my teacher seemed to absolutely love it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember hanging out much longer\nthan usual after class that day. After\nall, the very last thing I wanted to do was give any of my classmates a chance\nto say something to me about my performance. \nI remember too that my teacher looked at me, after everyone else was out\nof sight, and asked me if I was doing okay; and as she waited for my response,\nshe smiled and told me that I was a great Macbeth witch. It was like she somehow knew I was a little\nembarrassed that I\u2019d gone so deep into the part, that I had let it take me over\nin front of my peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think I\u2019d just really like to be\nthe pretty one for once, not the smart one or the theatrical one, but the\nbreathtakingly beautiful one,\u201d I told her rather suddenly, wondering inside of\nmyself what in the world had happened to all of my teenage inhibitions. In the span of less than half an hour, I\u2019d\nturned myself into a Shakespearean witch in front of all my peers and then\nbared my soul to my senior high school English teacher. I remember thinking that I\u2019d found my way to\nthe proverbial Twilight Zone\u2014and I wasn\u2019t at all sure how to feel about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also remember hearing my teacher\nsay the most remarkable thing back to me that noteworthy day. \u201cYou\u2019re wishing for something you already\nhave, Angie; you are beautiful. So, don\u2019t\nsell yourself short. And please try to always\nremember that brains are breathtakingly beautiful too.\u201d Never in my life had I had a teacher say such\na thing to me, such a lovely thing, such a needed thing. Yes, that day in that unexpected zone, I was encouraged,\ncommanded really, to be exactly who I was and to try to stop worrying about who\neveryone else around me was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a game-changing moment for\nme. While I do still waver at times when\nI notice the lives of others who seem to be so much more together than I am, I\nknow I can always go back to those words my teacher spoke to me. And as I went on my way that day, I heard her\nsay something else to me like, \u201cGod made you you for good reasons, so don\u2019t ever\ngive up on you, ok?!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If my teacher did this for me, I can\nonly imagine what she did, over her many decades of teaching, for other\nstudents who came before and after I did. \nWhat a gift she was and still is! \nI thank God for her, for Grace, because that\u2019s her name\u2014and a perfect\nname for her it is; and as Grace battles an illness she was recently diagnosed\nwith, I know she\u2019ll do so with the very same kind of grace she embodied with me\nthree decades ago. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A high school senior fixated on languages and literature, I\u2019d just finished enacting the witch scene from Macbeth, the one in which a spell is cast; and as I was so very close to the end of my K-12 student career in our relatively small community, I\u2019d acted that infamous scene out without inhibition\u2014feigned accent, […] <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6VlK3-grace","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":570,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions\/570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.angeladentonfoss.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}