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I was expecting something different—though I'm not sure what.

Friday was my last day of my first year teaching 9th grade English. I anticipated some major, monumental something or other. I still haven't imagined what that might have been, but something different than what actually happened.

I finished with my last final at 10:00 a.m. Then I went home to get Max, who finished school on Thursday. We came back to my classroom, where he played X-BOX 360 on my LCD projector (the reward for keeping me company) while I did a hundred odd-and-sundry things: turn in textbooks, grade papers, blah, blah, blah. It brings back tension just to rename everything I had to do.

When school was over at 12:25, I had several students come back to try and dig their grade out of the dumpster. Then, I went and ran my semester finals through the grading machine, delivered more books, picked up my kids from school, and entered grades in my grade book. Yes, it was as boring and as tedious as I'm making it sound.

At 4:00, Scott and our son Mark came home from a field trip. The rest of us took a break to greet them, and then I came back to the school to do more tiresome and torturous stuff.

At 8:00 p.m., Scott and our home-grown work crew came up to my classroom to help close the deal. We stacked the desks and chairs and carried boxes of old papers to the car for recycling.

We pulled away from the school and went to our favorite low-budget Mexican place for dinner. No horns blasted, no bands played, no ticker-tape fell.

The realization doesn't often meet the expectation. Graduations, weddings, birthdays—they don't often pan out with the fanfare we might have otherwise imagined.

Last week, I read a fascinating passage in II Corinthians. Paul writes: "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know - God knows. And I know that this man… - whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows - was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell."

Maybe he was not permitted to tell because we could never have believed what he said. Maybe our small minds can't even conjure up the images he would have described.

My final Friday was very boring, believable, and anti-climactic. The expectation far out-shown what actually happened. Maybe that always-so-far-fetched set of expectations I have is really heaven calling my name.

After a long day at life, I think the heavenly party will be more than we could ever have expected. I'm pretty sure that for once, I won't be disappointed.

"The Way" from Kevin Pauley

A World of One