Mustard seed faith, for teachers only.

This is a tiny jar of mustard seeds.

It sits on my desk in my home office. One of my closest friends hosted a woman's day at her place of worship years ago, and they gave these away.

This jar hearkens back to the notion of having the faith of a mustard seed, that this amount of faith is all you need to overcome your obstacles.

The seeds are very tiny, maybe .2mm wide each.

Sometimes, this really is all you need to make it through the day…because some days, this is all you have.

That's why I keep this on my desk, to remind me when things get rough, I don't need to have this grand display of belief. I barely have to do anything at all. I barely even have to believe. All I have to do is just look for a teeny, tiny light, any teeny tiny light, and try to do a teeny, tiny thing that'll get me a teeny tiny closer to it.

Rest counts as a thing that gets me closer to my goal.

From one teacher to another, from one performer to another, I recognize that this might be the most difficult time of the year for you, between finals, recitals, performances, the holidays, the stress that comes with all of that, sobriety issues, money woes, loss, daylight hours waning, and the general state of the world.

If all you do is survive today, you're during great.

If you're hanging on until holiday break before you can have your full-on collapse on the sofa from which you won’t move for three days, you're doing great.

Sometimes it's like that.

Just think of how tiny this seed is, breathe in, and know you're not alone.

We gotchu.