Day One: Grateful

My iPad and I are becoming fast friends. The applications available for this thing are incredible, and will seriously impact how I teach. I am in awe of the technological breakthroughs that are available for teachers today. Thanks to the Internet, almost any information I need is almost instantly available. I can show movies, find music, download videos of my guitar heros demonstrating what it is that makes them so incredible. I can find and put together what amounts to a masterclass with Joe Satriani, Steve Vai - anybody - thanks to technology and the internet. I have the worlds libraries at my beck and call. Truly amazing.
      But as incredible as all that is (and it IS incredible), do you know what amazes me even more? Do you know what brings me so close to tears and in awe of what my God does? It's the text message conversation at 1:30 in the morning with a former student of mine who is facing a truly huge life crisis. After four years, I am the first one he calls. It's the phone call from a 
weeping mother of one of my current students, who after having a conversation with her daughter, called to tell me (thru her tears) how grateful she is that I am her daughter's teacher. It's the cry of delight as my grandson cries "Boppa!" when I come to his house. It's the realization that at home, as my wife and I watch a movie together, I look over at her and realize that after 34 1/2 years, I still love this woman.
      I have managed, with a great deal of skill, to avoid fame and fortune. And I suspect that will continue to be the case. But - I think that I wasn't put on this earth to be famous or rich. I believe I was put on this planet to be a husband, father, grandfather, friend and teacher. The world may assess my life and find it wasted and in want. But I suspect and in fact believe that the God Who placed me on this mudball called earth places more value on my being a husband, father, grandfather, friend and teacher than He does on my bank account or hits on my YouTube videos (Good thing, too. If YouTube hits were God's measure of success for me, were I to die right now, I think I would be consigned at least to the fifth level of Dante's Hell).

So here I am- at the end of a wonderful week, digging out from under the winter storm of a decade, just home from a church I love, after hearing a message from one of the kindest yet steadfast old-school Baptist preachers I know. My bride is out shopping, and I am getting my mind and heart ready for this next week teaching at four academies. I am so grateful to my God Who has brought me from the hinterlands of Alaska to establishing three generations of Garwoods in Georgia. I am grateful to be given the task of teaching music to the next generation. I am grateful to be known by Him. Yeah - this is a good day to be me.
                                         Mr G