Today, May 3, is officially National Teacher Day.  The National Education Association describes it as “a day for honoring teachers and recognizing the lasting contributions they make to our lives”.  The teacher who had the most impact on my life was my fourth grade music teacher Mrs. Martin.  I already loved to sing but it was she who encouraged me to try out for the Dallas Girls’ Chorus.  My first concert I performed at SMU and that very night I KNEW where I wanted to go to college.  When I think of all the things that have happened in my life because of one woman’s encouragement it simply cannot be measured.  A lifelong Methodist, ironically I became Episcopalian at Southern Methodist University.  The Episcopal church I would join some years later would lead me to meeting the most handsome man I had ever seen besides my daddy.  That same sweet, incredibly intelligent, impossibly handsome man, a cradle Episcopalian, would propose to me to me one year later.  We would marry in that church and have our precious baby girl christened there as well.  It is with no small amount of shock that as I write this I realize because of the interest one remarkable woman took in me at the age of 10 I would declare my alma mater which would lead to my church home, finally finding the man of my dreams, and, by the grace of God, having our precious miracle child.  It is mind-blowing thinking about it … God’s plan, how it works, and how He uses others to guide and shape our lives in ways we do not always even know.  I have very few regrets but how I wish my beloved Mrs. Martin were still here so I could tell her and thank her.  I kept up my singing until college and I still sing for pleasure.  My little one is starting to sing and she seems to love it, too.  Today Maris will carefully sign her name to cards chosen with thought for the teachers in her life.  I feel the cards and flowers just do not seem adequate.  We as a society must place more emphasis and recognition on our teachers, nurses, fire fighters, and more who so generously give of themselves to help others every day.  At one time education was for the elite and in some countries it still is.  We must pay our educators more.  But we cannot do that until we truly value and appreciate them and all that they do.  My daddy always told me the one thing no one could ever take away from me was my education.  That is what I am trying to instill in our daughter.  American journalist Henry Brooks Adams said, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”  I know that to be true.