Math Anxiety

I teach math...sometimes. And I have to admit, the idea of ME teaching math is really quite scary. I was never good at math. I think it must me some "right brain/left brain" thing. I think it all began when I was an innocent little first grader. Mrs. Bice was my teacher. One day, as we were all working on our math worksheets, she walked up and down the aisles checking our work. Then she abruptly stopped at my desk. For some reason she felt the necessity to ask me (in a VERY LOUD voice!) if she needed to put mittens on my hands. Apparently I had one of my hands on top of the desk and from her vantage point it appeared that I was committing the deadly sin of counting with my fingers. My poor little 6 year old cheeks grew hot with embarrassment. When I became a teacher, I vowed to do my utmost to never make a student feel like I felt that day. I was not counting on my fingers!!!!! And so what if I was!!!!! Anyways, it has left me with a permanent case of math anxiety.

The other day I linked to a blog that my friend reads. The title of that day's entry was "God's Math". The author talked about the importance of "one". So often I will think, "Well, I only did it once", or maybe I get down over the fact that I only received one comment on a blog post that I thought to be quite profound.

The blogger proposed this scenario: suppose he was watching his two little girls while his wife went to the grocery store. His wife gets home and is greeted by little Janie, but doesn't know where little Mary is. Her husband calmly explains that while she was out shopping, he accidentally lost Mary. Lost Mary???? What are you, nuts???? Why aren't you looking all over for her??? Once again the husband is astonishingly calm as he replies, "Well, it's only one daughter that I lost. We still have another!"

Suddenly the concept of "just one" takes on a whole new look, doesn't it? And I think that is the kind of math that makes sense to God. He is always concerned about the one. He showed that best in the parable of the Lost Sheep...that shepherd could account for 99 sheep, but as long as one was missing, the shepherd would go out and search for that one. And the same is true for us. We are only one out of millions, but God cares for us and loves us as tenderly as if we were his only child.

And that reminds me of something I once saw about the value of one. Here it is:

To Realize The Value of One (author unknown) To realize the value of one year: Ask a student who has failed a final exam. To realize the value of one month: Ask a mother who has given birth to a premature baby. To realize the value of one week: Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper. To realize the value of one hour: Ask the lovers who are waiting to meet. To realize the value of one minute: Ask the person who has missed the train, bus or plane. To realize the value of one second: Ask a person who has survived an accident. To realize the value of one millisecond: Ask the person who has won a silver medal in the Olympics.