A Lost Year in Math

Allie's 7th Grade Math Project
2010

 Scale Model
She Gets her Math Brain from her Dad

Psalms 96:12 NIV

"Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy."

I suppose I could solve math problems better if it hadn't been for the location of the desk in the large old-fashioned classroom with steam radiators nailed along the wall painted white just like everything else. Even the dying potted plants on the wooden window sills didn't liven up the room. 

Technically, the size of the window the desk was placed beside was a concern. The window stretched all the way to the fourteen-foot high ceiling revealing the whole outside world. 

Maybe the fault belonged to the ancient maple tree as it beckoned and waved to me outside the second-story window my desk was placed beside.

Or, it could have been the road that curved up the hill away from the school in Greenhills, Ohio, beyond the reach of the maple that captured my imagination and took me to far-away places around the corner of the bend.

Perhaps it was the swim club across the street from the winding road, where mothers brought their children in the spring for swim lessons.

Actually, I think the one-story shopping center, including the bowling alley and soft serve ice cream shop down the sidewalk from the library with wooden chairs and tables and a polished hardwood floor with a librarian who looked over her glasses from her desk and said "Shhhh" to me if I talked too loudly probably kept me from my math work.

It's not that my teacher wasn't good. She did a nice job with the overhead projector and black marker, and I could see the screen, even with my glasses from the back of the room. But the problem was the window. There were more interesting objects to look at outside the room than inside it.

Seasons unfolded with the maple.  I watched a fall cavalcade of colors fade to brown covered by snow and ice until spring thaw brought buds into colorful blooms and leaves. I watched a microcosm of life take place with the tree, the road, the swim club, the shopping center. I longed to be a part of it.

As the seasons passed me by that year, so did 8th grade math. But all was not lost. God used my weakness in math for a blessing later in life.

As I rushed to finish calculating grades for a college class, I added one wrong. Had I been a better math student, I would have caught my error; however, John Durham called me once grades were released to check on his incorrect grade in the class.

After clearing up the details of my error, he asked me a second question: would I like to go out with him?

The only request he has made of me during our almost twenty-year marriage is to let him do the math in the family.

That's fine with me! I'd rather look at trees anyway!
---------------------------------------------------------
Lord, thank you for turning my weaknesses into blessings.