{"id":6391,"date":"2025-05-01T03:32:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T03:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6391"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:31:54","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:31:54","slug":"slow-dawning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=6391","title":{"rendered":"SLOW DAWNING"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s funny how slowly my life&#8217;s &#8220;big picture&#8221; sinks in to me sometimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For instance, at the end of my weeklong introductory trip to Haiti, our small mission team sat in a circle and gave each other affirmations &#8211; which is somehow both highly cheesy and deeply moving. When tasked with describing each of our teammates with a single word, one man said his word for me was &#8220;teacher&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I thought, &#8220;Really? I have never thought of myself as a teacher.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This was about 7 years into my stint of teaching high school English!<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These days, I recognize teaching is at the very core of my being. It&#8217;s a major part of what God created me for.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My latest realization &#8211; as fresh as today &#8211; and dawning only after &#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Two years putting together weekly sermons<\/li>\n\n\n<li>1,994 blog posts on this site\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Two marketing emails each week for Mission Resource over the past month for a major fundraising campaign along with the weekly email newsletter the previous 30 months<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8211; Is this:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am a writer as well as a teacher.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In fact, I write <b><i>professionally<\/i><\/b>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I <i><b>get paid<\/b><\/i> to write.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And tonight, this dawning thought &#8211; &#8220;I am a writer&#8221; &#8211; seems poised to throw new color across the landscape of my 50s.*<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*Maybe I&#8217;m one of those pretentious, melodramatic writers.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lord, I hope not.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s funny how slowly my life&#8217;s &#8220;big picture&#8221; sinks in to me sometimes.\u00a0 For instance, at the end of my weeklong introductory trip to Haiti, our small mission team sat in a circle and gave each other affirmations &#8211; which is somehow both highly cheesy and deeply moving. When tasked with describing each of our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6392,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6391\/revisions\/6392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}