Love Letters

With a Bachelor’s Degree in Technology and Curriculum Instruction and a Master’s in Technology Integration, Amber Teamann focuses on transparent, collaborative leadership as the principal of Whitt Elementary School in Wylie, Texas. She is one of my dear friends and I am grateful to share her wisdom and energy with you today.

Amber Teamann led her team of 70 students and over 600 students and their families through a global pandemic with grace. And in the absence of a pandemic playbook to help when people would panic, the core values of leadership were (and still are):

• Relationship
• Communication
• Authenticity
• Collaboration
• Realistic Expectations
• Connection
• Faith

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.

1 Corinthians 9:24-25

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Amber has so many resources to offer educators and administrators as we head into a brand-new school year with unknown conditions to navigate. 

Book: Lead with Appreciation

Website: Technically Teamann

Twitter: @8amber8

Facebook Group: Principals Staff Appreciation & Motivation

The blog she mentioned about grace:

Expecting vs extending grace as a leader

A blog specifically for principals in a pandemic:

Strategies to avoid the principal panic in the pandemic 

Jennifer Green is a Christian and an Enneagram teacher. She has spent years exploring her faith by removing the flawed lens she saw the world through and also learning how to teach the enneagram to Bible study groups, church staff, corporate settings, school staff, and more. She sees one way we can remove the old self, as described in Ephesians 4:22-24, is to identify the personality we have created.

When we discover our number on the enneagram, we can identify specific patterns of sin that keep us from Christ-likeness. The goal is to make room for the Holy Spirit in us to respond instead of us reacting to the world around us out of our personality.

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

Romans 7:15

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Ephesians 4:22-24

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Ephesians 2:10

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.

2 Timothy 1:7

The Road Back to You

Self to Lose, Self to Find

Suzanne Stabile Teaching on Loving Others

Email address for Hope Fellowship Enneagram class:

[email protected]

Jennifer on Instagram

Amanda on Instagram

Like marriage wasn't hard enough for some of us before coronavirus, self-quarantining, N95 masks, social-distancing, and shelter-in-place orders. Phil and I had both been divorced before we got married. We were not good at marriage. But God moved in and taught us what marriage is by showing us His design for it. He changed everything and, for us, it started with forgiveness. If you are interested in attending ReEngage (the marriage ministry we talk about) then please visit their website to find a church near you who offers it!

Trust in the Lord with all your heart     and lean not on your own understanding;

 in all your ways submit to him,     and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

To read the blog post of mine about marriage that went viral, visit my website by clicking HERE.

Find me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @amandafromtx or on my website. See you every Monday this June, July, and August as we test-drive this ride to hear stories and see God's love in our lives.

Here on Love Letters, we are going to do more than talk about the love we feel, we are going to talk about how to walk love out in our lives. And we are going to explore what God says about love and what He does in love, what He tells us to do with our love, and discuss how- actually how- the practical ways we can fulfill the two greatest commandments He has given us: to love God and to love others as ourselves.

Find me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @amandafromtx or on my website. See you every Monday this June, July, and August as we test-drive this ride to hear stories and see God's love in our lives.