One of the biggest pleasures I have had in my entire life has been teaching all three of my daughters during their middle school years.  Since I teach in a Christian school, and since I teach my students to juggle and perform to share the Gospel, I have not only been their teacher during the all important adolescent years, I have been their primary spiritual teacher and their ministry coach during that time of their life.  I'm just beginning to understand what a special opportunity this has been.

Jo, now 21, was the first of the girls to be in my class.  She came to middle school with some basic juggling skills and a huge love for the spotlight.  I remember one of her last shows with her classmates on a trip to Connecticut.  The kids do a routine where they juggle, throw one ball into the audience and, when the audience member returns the ball, they catch it and continue juggling right in rhythm.  In this particular youth group, there was a very cute boy with long red hair - something that has always taken her breath away - so she threw the ball to him every time.  After leaving eighth grade, she didn't juggle so much, but in high school she spent a month in a Kenyan orphanage and apparently juggled at the market for some Rastafarians one day.  Now a missions major, she did a missions trip to Cambodia and juggled clubs for kids outside Angkor Wat, one of the seven man made wonders of the world.

Naomi, now 19, also learned to juggle in middle school.  Less of a showman than her older sister, the truth is,, she was the better juggler, moving on to machetes and torches at an earlier age.  On that same class trip to Connecticut mentioned above, she learned to pass diabolos with Jake, her 'special friend' throughout the middle school years.  Like her big sister, she has not juggled so much since she entered high school and now college, but two summers ago she performed in a local talent show - a routine that included sickles, machetes, fire balls and torches - and easily won the $100 first prize!  Last summer she joined me on stage once or twice to juggle fire once again.

And now Rose, the little sister, is in my middle school class.  She has also come to my class with some basic skills, but in the last two weeks or so the juggling has really taken off for her.  Last night I took her to juggle together after school.  She is especially skilled at diabolo, and picked up several new tricks almost immediately.  She is doing three balls easily, and starting to add tricks to her repertoire and starting to work on clubs.  It's fun to watch and coach her and wonder what opportunities will come her way because she has learned this art form.  Mostly, though, it's  fun to share something I love so much with someone I love so much.