But Instead;

But Instead;
Alyssa Joy Bleitz
It was the summer after my freshman year of college and my future had just arrived in the form of a blinking email from an ad on Craigslist. My quest for a perfect summer job was over. I had just finished my first year of studying elementary special education at Taylor University and  I was thrilled. Instead of flipping burgers or stocking shelves at Walmart, I had spent the last few weeks of school searching for a summer job that would prepare me for my future as a special education teacher. Wiser voices had warned me against the possibility of finding a job that had anything to do with what I was studying. Still, here it was, less than a week after packing to move home for the summer: a part time job working with a thirteen year old boy with autism, playing games, doing fun activities and practicing academic and social skills. Despite all odds, within a few days, I heard back and drove down to meet the family. Every door and window and ceiling vent was thrown open to a real job that I was passionate about, that mattered, that would prepare me for a lifetime of doing this kind of work. That Sunday night, I fell in love with David, a thirteen year old boy with the physique of a football player and the tender innocence of a young child, as I chatted with his dad and  younger brother, as his mother talked me through his schedule and his needs, as her eyes and voice spoke of her deep love for her son. I realized that night that I had found more than a summer job--I had come face to face with my dream and the promise of an ongoing relationship with this family that had the potential to last well through summer and holiday breaks. The possibilities were endless, and on the long drive home, my only thought was a prayer: Oh, Jesus, I want this.
That first Friday afternoon, I paused for a second in their driveway, expectant, terrified, breathless at this new opportunity that had fallen into my lap at exactly the right time. My dreams felt like they were falling into place, a well paved road to a neat row of spectacular years, of living the dream and doing work I was fiercely passionate about. By no accident  I got to spend two months' worth of Fridays with David and his family playing games, reading books, doing puzzles and riding bikes. I loved it. I loved him, his brother, his parents and how fearlessly his mother fought for him, how his brother teased him, how his father came in and touched his son's head with a rare combination of tenderness and strength. All of this was true--every word, every risk of faith, every bold and audacious step taken---and at the same time, the dark underbelly of everything that I was experiencing was this; I was completely, totally, out-of-my-mind terrified. Until this point, I had little to no real experience with children with special needs. Most of the experience I had that year or through high school was in a classroom, watching and observing teachers with years of expertise.  On my very first Friday afternoon, David happily sat in the kitchen completing a puzzle as his mom showered upstairs, having just finished showing me his schedule, his snacks, and the essentials for our afternoons together. 
As we finished the puzzle, I turned away to clean up the puzzle pieces and he kicked the table over and began to rock back and forth. Shocked, terrified, I stood frozen as his mom heard what was happening, calmed and sent him outside as I stood in the corner. She turned to me afterwards and asked, "Sure you're ready for this?"
Heart beat in my ears, stunned, but convinced that God had brought me here, that He wanted me to do this, I heard myself saying, "Yes, definitely!"
I worked hard to be ready, to live up to what I had promised David's mom, pouring over old notes, taking classes on CPR and respite care, talking to anyone and everyone about my perfect summer job. Every Friday for two months, I showed up and smiled and poured everything I had into David and those who loved him and on the drive home, I threw myself on the God who promised to replace my fear with faith, my weakness with strength. I bathed my time with David in tears and prayers. I was both bold and terrified and most of the time, during this season, I could tell no difference.
When the end came, it was a beautiful late July afternoon, and the walk from the front door to my car felt like an eternity. With shaking hands, I opened the door and slid into the front seat and shut the door. For a second, i just sat there, stunned, watching myself from somewhere outside of my body.
The sun cast long shadows of an oak tree across the sidewalk, settling in for a perfect summer evening and here I was, shutting the door, revving the engine and turning out of the driveway to begin the long drive home for the last time. I saw the roller coaster of the last two months, pulling into their driveway for the first time, the fear and courage and joy of Friday afternoons swinging and riding bikes and counting coins with David, but mostly, my mind was on the people who had been so happy for me, so excited with me at this summer job. Back home, in a blur, I closed the front door after me and headed directly for my room, carrying a disappointment that I couldn't even put into words and a fear that I had let myself and my community down, that I had missed my chance at what I deeply longed for. I walked in the front door and went directly for my room, and as I was about to shut the door, I heard my name.
"Alyssa,"
My mom was climbing the stairs after me, and without a word, she knew, but I said it anyway. "It's over." 
The long string of what was expected and what happened instead, the way unfolding neatly in front of me, the open doors and windows where they were least expected culminated in this, the great "but, instead;" that seemd to destroy everything that had come before and I didn't know how to handle it, how to explain or process it, how to make peace with this moment. As my mom pulled me in close, I felt something in my chest; with this opportunity taken away, a door had closed, a line had been drawn and I didn't know how to fight for what I had lost that hot August afternoon. Later that night, with that dread of conversations about what had happened that week heavy in my chest, I wrote a long post on Facebook about what had happened and trying to put words to what I thought I was learning, and instead of the disappointment, the silence I had expected, I received words of grace from people who loved and believed in me regardless of what I did, what I felt or whether I believed in myself enough. Instead of carrying faith, carrying courage, that was the first time I really allowed the faith and courage of my Papa and my community to carry me. Around that time, I began really listening to words of songs I had spent a lifetime singing and heard the heart of a Father drawn to the neediness, the weakness of people and committed to the daily walk of becoming strong in them.  As I sit here writing this five years after that hot August afternoon, just out of college with a degree in special education and working with kids like David, I have landed  in a similar season, asking the same questions with greater intensity, and leaning on the same Jesus I encountered that summer and building a history together.  I am learning to lean fully on this truth; I lack nothing and because of this, I am free to experience this moment fully, as different as it may seem to what I expect or want or would choose for myself without fear of losing anything. I am secure--He is closer than my heartbeat, than the skin on my arms and the hair on my head and he props my heart against his. There is beauty in this process,  because He is there and He surrounds and doesn't leave us, especially in the wilderness. I am learning to walk gently, to draw more closely to God's heart through this season.  When I don't have the answers, in the places I feel confused and without words, I am cradled close and whispered over, cried over, prayed over and my healing is coming because He fights for me. He restores and lifts up and provides beyond what I could create or imagine for myself. My breakthrough is coming, but if I had to choose between the clarity I long for or my Love walking next to me, I choose Him. Every time.

a word on mountains and valleys

Moments of joy never come without what lies behind, and I want to take a second to share this journey I have traveled. This has weighed heavy on my heart this week--this sense of being in the valley for so long and suddenly finding all of the pieces finally fit. There is considerable joy in this,and yet, there's part of me that feels a little like wrestling that joy to the ground, because what just happened? Why NOW? What changed, God? I've found myself wrestling with that joy...because I just got out of a hard season and the intimacy and self awareness it brings, and actually this feels a little lonely. Maybe part of me liked being in the valley, the intimacy, the self awareness, the pure dependent survival mode...I don't know... but right now, if you're there in that place, this is me leaning over, grabbing your hands and saying, "Don't. Please don't. You're not alone and I refuse to leave you here. I see you. I'm with you and for you and let’s keep walking together."

Y'all, go read this first. I read this this afternoon, and something in me said "It's time."


Link


The reason it's a little hard to digest the sheer crazy of today, this week and this job, is that it is only an (amazing, rocking, dream come true) part of the story with a community and a job beyond anything I could ask for or imagine. God is good, amen? But sometimes it feels like acknowledging his goodness now is only a reaction to the fact that things are finally going well for me. He is just as good on the other side of the story---in the last six months as I wrestled with my purpose, my identity, and watched my plans, my way of doing things crumble. Last night, I couldn’t sleep. I closed my eyes and watched scenes from my time student teaching—the eagerness of the first day, the time spent getting to know the incredible community of teachers and students, and the words that I wrote as a blog post came back to me…about grace, about worth and value, about how Jesus sometimes comes closest when you take the longer way around. I realized that, yes, I wrote all of that and believed it as truth…but the biggest lesson I learned from that whole semi-hellish fall was that I thought of myself as having a deep, functional faith, an awareness of who God is, a growing understanding of who I am…but when it came down to it, there was still a part of me that didn’t believe what I wrote at all. I thought it sounded nice, I hoped it was true, but somehow there was a disconnect between what I claimed as truth and what drove me when those truths seemed to fall apart around my ears. 

I don't ever want that kind of shallow living. I don't want to claim a truth that is only true when I feel like my story sounds good...to the point where I don't wholeheartedly embrace what I believe. That's the beauty of the last six months--that somehow at the end of my rope, I found that the world didn’t end—but part of that grace was the tender revelation of the ways I was still hungry and lacking something good. I found nuances of thought and speech and action that pointed to the thousand ways I needed God to move still deeper into me. Through student teaching, I saw that my sense of self was still so wrapped around what I did for a living that a lesson gone awry would cause existential crises, that I depended on being useful and right in any and every circumstance. I was terrified of failing and shaken when all of the effort I put into my lessons still wasn't enough. Every single strand led me back to some strand of who I understood God to be and how it had twisted. That Sunday, that fall, that whole senior year of college (and arguably much of what came before) was the beginning of a series of circumstances that hadn’t changed but stretched to make room to breathe. I was bruised and bleeding and fractured into a million pieces as the result of this long, slow unraveling, and then. And then. Through a thousand faces and careful circumstances, God created a space around my heart for me to breathe, told me that it was never about performance or putting on a face but rather the simple fact that He loved me and that his heart was broken for my twisted and fractured and bruised and battered one. I am not without fear for this next chapter of my life, because anxiety is NOT part of my personality, but it is an ingrained habit…but I know that God was faithful last Monday and last May and last summer and I know that it is safe to step forward into Him.


This year chewed me up and spit me out in a thousand ways that left me a shell of who I was, and yes, I would now 100% sit across from anyone and tell you the whole story if it helps you on your own road...but the long and the short of it is this: I lay in the mess, shuffled around trying to pick up the pieces, fell over them, threw them, spit on them, hid them, did everything I could think of to make sense of how my life--SIX YEARS of dreaming and hoping and investing---had come to what felt like a big cosmic joke. He was there as I questioned anything and everything these last four years at Taylor University and endured my identity as a disillusioned special education major, my passion turned thorn in my side, as I questioned and cried and spent a considerable amount of time crumpled on the floor, angry and wondering if He had left me, if any or all of this was wasted. This apartment, this job, this church come despite (not because of) anything I am or did. A MONTH ago, y'all...I dreaded graduation, resisted people who were at all excited or prepared or had any answers whatsoever for the months after graduation. There were days, weeks, months where it took all of my energy to get out of bed in the mornings and show up to class and act civil and He was there when I cried out that it was all too much. How do I know all of this? Because I woke up on the mornings I didn't want to, because my roommates and apartment mates found me when I couldn't stand, because when it felt like I couldn't get out from expectations I had coffee with a professor I had always wanted to have in class who told me my story was still worth telling. And that's not even half of it... (There is a special place in my heart for those who made room for my growth there…you know who you are!)

In the midst of all of this, there came a Sunday where the band played NEVER ONCE by Matt Redman and I crumbled, saw how I had frantically been trying to scoop up the pieces and tried to write a story that fell short of what He had for me. I asked Him to pick up the pieces, to begin where I ended. Obviously, given the windy, longwinded nature of this post, grace does not always take the path of least resistance or go straight from point A to point B. It bounces off people and circumstances, and in the right light, grace can be seen in even the most difficult places and faces. Papa God delights in kneeling to our level, lifting our chins, and saying "I know, dear heart. I know it hurts. I know it's awful and difficult and the worst. I'll let you be angry-- I can handle it." So. I came to this point when they played NEVER ONCE in church one morning where I was just tired and done with everything, with moving forward and the work it took to show my face when it felt like every step was a face-plant. I will never say that moment changed everything (like, what, those three minute testimonies? God's just like oh, honey, you don't even know...) BUT I did this simple act of lifting the pieces to Him. That's it. Everything I've said here, messes I haven't even gotten into. I just sat there on the floor and curled my heart around these things and said everything I could think of to say about them...and waited. Said, okay, God, I've tried and I'm done and I'm in the middle of all of these unwon battles. I feel them, they hurt, and I need you to lift these pieces and fit them back together. Your way. Your story. In your eyes, what is my story going to be? 

The answers?

Again, did not come quickly or easily or instantly

Still the same times and places and faces

But it started with this:

You are loved

You are enough

You are a writer--(and for the love of ME, would you stop brushing that under the rug?)

You are not what you do or say or who you hang out with

You are not your compulsive need to do everything right

Look! Look what I have for you--are you ready?

Come tell your story--and fall apart just enough to be caught and held

Come bring dark thoughts into light--and watch their darkness flee!

Come name death grips evil has on your heart and mind and hand them over to me

Come name what you need and see that death is exchanged for life

Come be held. 

Come see.

Okay, I whispered, but first will you

come (farther) in?

In the process, I bumped into men and women who didn't have to know me ten minutes before loving me in a way that fit the pieces back together. To my new family at the Gathering...you all are numerous and irreplaceable and I still cannot quite believe the gift that is getting to call you all home now…

Thank you for treating me like an old friend when I was a little more than a stranger, for being first to step with me into the darkness I was overwhelmed by (Meagan),

for telling me that I was seen and heard and treasured in a moment that, for me, was the pinnacle of insecurity. And, you know, bringing Malachi Sherck into my life at exactly the right time (Stephanie) 

Malachi and his family...a whole other story in and of itself. Somehow through this guy, God found the softest, most responsive part of my hardening, angry, bitter heart and laid it open. It was Malachi who tossed me a life raft when I was drowning in performances and expectations in student teaching. It was Malachi who drew me in when I didn't want to show up, didn't want to do anything besides distance myself and retreat and protect myself from more interactions, more people. He was the one who got me to name this voice in my head who always had to get it right, do right, be right and led me into the center of a community of people who saw me as already enough.

Leo Flores, I'm looking at you :) Thank you for asking why I was doing what I did and taking no as an okay answer, showing me that I didn't fall apart when my calling did.  

Andrea Repogle, for seeing my restlessness and anxiety and general discomfort with 20/20 vision and making room for me to breathe..

Renee Cruea... for walking a similar journey as mine and helping me see the next step and showing up every time.

Joshua Brandt for being unlike any pastor I have ever known, for taking away my fear that my problems weren't big or significant enough for someone who stood on stages for a living to be bothered with, for loving every person in your church as if they were the only one. That...is supernatural and it breathes room into hearts. 

...and the list goes on, because He is just that good...

So here’s my goal, and, yes it sounds simple, but bear with me—to live what I believe. To claim the truth that I have tried on for size. To step fully into the truth of who God is and who that makes me to be, to cling even closer when shaken, knowing that I am secure and in Him and there are no surprises that can change that. To live generously, with open doors and let abundance make me brave. I want to get to the end of this year, the first year on my own, and can say that I became more fully myself, that I prayed harder and believed more and lived bigger and loved more fiercely because I know who and Whose I am. This process is hard and there are details to nail into place and things that I need to figure out, but I'm going, not as an independent adult but as a trusting child held fast by her doting Father. Come travel with me?

on untold stories and falling quiet

Sometimes, because God knows my love for metaphors and words and allegories and such, a word or phrase will begin to jump out again and again in a given season. Sometimes they are comforting; other times, they are confusing and, admittedly, a little frustrating, like this particular phrase. Through sermons and songs and blog posts, this idea of telling your story has been repeated over and over. Anyone who knows me well will smile, because this theme is usually so much a part of me. I love telling stories, hearing stories, matching words to thoughts and feelings and images. So much redemption and hope has come into my life through broken people sharing their real stories, the ways they have met God in the valley. But I surprised myself last week when my pastor posed this challenge to tell someone your story by Thursday afternoon at noon,because I, the self proclaimed word nerd and story junkie, got angry and fought it with every fiber of my being.

 Right now, I am really, really frustrated with the direction my story is headed. I am angry and hurt because my dreams not only haven't turned out the way I planned but are threatened by factors I cannot control. I'm not ready to tell my story yet, because the middle has dragged on forever and caused me to question parts of the story that I thought I loved. Because I'm tired of this part of the story, I have found myself guilty of questioning and even devaluing what has come before,
what I thought I knew about my purpose, my value and my calling. Sometimes I think I hate this part of the story, this season I find myself in, but my hope is not found in the immediate outcome of this situation.

 No, I'm not ready to tell the story yet, because it's still so raw and reeks of failure, but in the midst of this, I am also learning to find hope. Because, actually, my story is not a success story. This is a love story, a story of me learning to live into who I am already named to be. My story is, in the words of Hilary Yancey; "When I could not move toward God, he came running to me." This is my hope, my story, what I cling to as I wait for the pieces to come together and fall into place.In this place of doubt and frustration, I am named beloved. As I wait and pray and rage and cry, I am working my way deeper into my Father's heart. Not because He loves me more when I am in pain, but because in this place, I am woken to the ways I am already loved, the position that is already mine in his eyes.

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September 15, 2016: where I realize that I'm in the right place

Today started…very, very interestingly. I woke up tired as usual, painfully reluctant to leave my bed, even heading to a place where grace reigns, where knowledge is celebrated and where I spent the day with kids I am most definitely enthralled with. Exhaustion can cloud many things, including gratitude—and, apparently, how to make a cup of coffee. After my usual routine of setting my stuff in the room and printing the lesson plan and other tree killers for the day, I decided I probably needed caffeine for the day. I started the process—k-cup, turn on the machine, push the button, and got distracted momentarily by two things; creamer and a conversation with another teacher. As he turned to leave, I turned back to my coffee—and realized that I had completely forgotten to put a cup under the stream of coffee that was now coming out of the machine. I quickly rectified my mistake and learned within a matter of minutes that the best way to clean that weird gutter thing was probably to pour what little I could salvage into my coffee cup and then clean the collateral damage.  Cleaning up that mess, I was suddenly struck by a feeling that was actually quite familiar to me—a feeling that it would be an interesting day, that I would be fighting a battle for faith, for steadfastness in believing I was who I was named to be. 

For whatever reason, when these things happen to me, I find myself believing a lie that I present to myself—that it is possible for a particular incident to disqualify me. That x incident proves that I am incompetent, unworthy, that someone is bound to jump out somewhere and go "Ha! You really thought you could do that?". That because I can’t seem to match two pieces of clothing without my roommates’ assistance, because I can’t keep track of my keys and my phone, because I find myself frustrated or elated by the smallest things and some days are a roller coaster, my strengths are canceled out. But as persistent as that lie is, as often as it crops up over days and weeks and months and years, I am always supplied with sufficient strength to stand against it. Jesus is gentle with me in my doubt, and oddly enough, the incidents in question turn into stories that make people laugh, that make me into someone students and teachers and parents can feel safe around.

Sometimes, in my more rational moments, when I sit down and look at the work He does in and through me, I realize that this is what He’s doing. In these weaknesses, in awkward moments and those times I’m sure I just can’t, he is making my heart soft enough for others to enter in. Half the time, I doubt and shame myself for these moments that constitute so much of my life, but these moments are strength. They are making me soft, pliable, clay in the Potter’s hand. They wake me up to grace, to roses the secondary students were handing out today in assembly, to hugs from my kids and the day my teacher brought Starbucks for me, to knowing looks and shared laughter at incidents that would once cause me to dissolve into tears. They lead me to know and value the deep questions and aches of kids who are brave enough to share their hearts with me. I understand my students better through these moments of childlike need…because that’s what they are. These moments that I have are a heaven sent reminder that I am child and He is Father, and without Him, I can do nothing. They come when I am preoccupied and consumed with tasks and checklists and good enough and He levels me with a reminder to turn to Him. And I am stunned, as I look back, to see that there is hardly a day that comes without something—a reminder, without doubt and the resulting grace—and somehow, I am learning to see it as a sign of God’s faithfulness. That is my Beloved pursuing me, pushing me toward the hard parts of my heart, that it is in my best interest to break and then strengthen. Today happened to be a good day, a day of realizing that He is close and knows me intimately and has set me in this place for such a time as this—and I need these days. I need these days to boost morale and motivation and strength—but I also need them for the hard days. I need to hold to what I find on the mountaintop and trust that it is still true in the valley, and stories like this are my reminder: I am called to this. My heart is to know students, to help them see their value, their potential, their inherent belovedness and lay my life down for their example.  Don’t be afraid; don’t be discouraged. He is near and you are loved, and you love what you do. You love that you get to remain childlike, that you get to take joy in clean notebook pages and coloring and the smell of a brand new book. You love that Scholastic is still just as great of a deal as a teacher as it was as a student, that you get to walk through hours and days and weeks watching small humans with huge souls grow more intelligent, more courageous and kind and stronger than they were  on the first day of school, You still get a rush when you figure out a math problem or finish a unit and start a new one, and because God is good, that won’t go away. You will never lose your childlike wonder, because you will never stop being someone’s child…and it is because of this truth that you are a teacher.  Fear not--you've been in the right place all along. 

on teaching and breaking ground

I was lying in bed this morning thinking over the week—the good, the bad, and the ugly. On Friday, I completely botched this spelling test at first and got insanely frustrated. My teacher told me afterward that she had made both mistakes I did (going WAY too fast and misnumbering the words, thus completely and thoroughly confusing the kids), and I had been turning that over in my mind along with the week’s lessons and adventures. I was thinking about being at peace with teaching, with where and who I am in this classroom, with the lessons I teach that go great and the ones that bomb. I was examining myself to figure out exactly what part of all this it is that makes me restless, what led to the continued anxiety I feel, even in a healthy, balanced, supportive school environment. Logically, it makes no sense. I love my teacher; I love my kids. I love that we have coffee and snacks in the teacher’s lounge and I get to have so much one on one time with my teacher. I love that I get to school early, how quiet the halls are first thing in the morning. Sometimes I think I’m reaching one of my biggest goals for the semester and finally falling back in love with teaching.

So the fear is not in the environment—it’s a part of me. It’s part of how I think, how I interpret what’s happening in the classroom. This fear comes with anything new, anything unfamiliar, and it’s something that only goes away with time, with continuing to step out, to give myself little by little to these students and these teachers and watch them handle my heart with grace. It comes with having truth spoken back to me and the sloooowwww process of learning how to speak it to myself. This brokenness in the way I think, the way I see and interpret my circumstances, is what I need to bring to the feet of Jesus time and time again, to set aside and walk away. I need to trust my teacher, my students, and my own ability to do this, to shoulder the learning of these fifth graders and whatever comes next. I have to trust that what happens now is preparing me for what’s coming down the road, that lit circles in my real classroom will be so good because of what I’m doing right now. It’s like plowing a field—every piece of grass and stone has to be removed, dirt has to be broken before it can be reshaped. It has to be planted, watered, picked over for bugs and protected from animals, and to some extent, part of it is forever out of your control and squarely in the hands of God. Even in this process, the farmer does not see the ground as broken, but as having been prepared for harvest. 

So that’s my hope right now—that the kinks are being hammered out of me, that I am being taught how to see details and anticipate needs and maintain attention and focus. I’m trusting that I’m accumulating exactly the skills and strength and perspective I need, that what I do today prepares me for tomorrow, and this week will prepare me for next year. This will add up. It will come together, and there are things happening in and through me that I can’t see or understand right now. For now, I just get to take the next step and be caught and held. Things are working out—I’m having small victories. Lit circles are going better, and ever so slowly, I’m getting an idea of what will work. I’m beginning to figure out what my students need and how to use my time wisely. Of the two students I was worried about, at least one is actually getting into their book and I see no changes that worry me. I still have to figure out how to grade lit circles, what that looks like, and now I’m completely without excuse because I know how to work the grading system. I take on about two more hours of teaching this week and about thirteen transitions that occur in that time. I’m beginning to see that my mistakes are a beginning, not an ending, and they get to act as a milestone, an Ebenezer to where I’ve been, where I’m going and the One I’m following. How else can I find grace but in the places I fall short?

false starts and new beginnings

Oh goodness. I feel pulled in many directions—adjusting to apartment life, grocery shopping and doing dishes and negotiating roommates who are decidedly different from each other; life at school, getting to know the kids and lesson planning and trying to write fast enough on the board to keep up with what I’m saying. (I’m finding that is an art form.) Somehow in the span of seven days, I have said goodbye to the church that I’ve attended since freshman year of college, survived a tornado warning that lasted an entire night, realized my entire lesson plan was falling apart, and, as the culmination of the week, forgot my bag in the classroom and had to call my teacher to let me back in—barely making it out of the parking lot only to get pulled over for speeding. I’ve spent a lot of time this week wondering what I’m doing, how I even think I can handle myself in the classroom and the real world. My teacher put it beautifully when she said, after I had told her at least part of what I was thinking after a frantic, rushed lesson last Tuesday, that this pull I feel is because I’m thinking so hard about everything that is muscle memory to the teachers I’m around. Everything takes time and energy and feels new, and for now, my goal is to make it step by step and somehow see the beauty of this week. Because it was there, and sometimes, the hard and beautiful parts of this week were mere minutes apart.

One of the beautiful parts of this week is the gaggle of eleven year olds with whom I get to spend a rather large proportion of my waking hours. I can already feel my heart binding to the beautiful fifth grade souls placed in my care. I am finding that it is possible to both be incredibly annoyed with a child and also love them fiercely—in two weeks, I have felt both at the same time so many times. I have felt what it’s like to not want to be anywhere else and also what it’s like to be this close to running for the hills. I have acted incredibly strong when I felt achingly weak and cried in a bathroom only to come out and grin at everyone around me. This is incredibly hard and complicated work. Who knows it would be so hard to teach one subject, let alone five or six every day? I love these kids enough to embarrass myself every day trying to teach them, to do what’s best for them when they groan and sigh over the books I spent hours scrounging for. I want to give my students the world but on their end, it just looks like more homework I pile on top of them. I want to please people. I want them to like me, to recognize what I do for them and my desire for them, and I’m realizing that I really need to set that aside for these kids.  I switched groups around for them once this week because it felt like half of them, including my strongest readers, hated the books I chose for them—and I still got complaints. I still got two kids who somehow misheard the directions to rank their books 1 through 4 from most to least preferred, did it backwards and got the book they least wanted. On Friday, I realized that I’m not going to please all of these kids all the time, and that’s not my job. My job is to teach them, and sometimes I will have to do so in less than ideal circumstances with books and knowledge and tools I would do anything to exchange. I have to make the best out of what I have and pray that God will fill the gap.

Another week of the good, the bad, and the ugly is behind me now, and I’m looking at a new week, a new beginning. This week, I get to welcome some of my favorite people back home on campus. I get to dive into four books I think are really cool and see whatever projects students bring in that will be so much more fun than any role sheet. They get their time to show off their talents and talk about a book that, who knows, they might actually really like. I have my concerns—a kid who is new, who apparently had quite the past and didn’t get the book he wanted. My fear is that he will withdraw, that he will close up after having adjusted so well to a new school because he didn’t get the book he wanted. I’m afraid that exactly the same thing will happen this week that happened last week, that the class will decide AGAIN that they don’t like the book they chose and expect me to cater to them again. I’m afraid they don’t take me seriously or see me as a teacher yet. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to discipline well, that I’ll get behind on my lesson plans and disappoint my teacher, that my apartment will not be able to handle five very different women living together…but I don’t live under fear. These fears that I have are not the end. Maybe they’ll happen, maybe they won’t, but I know that I am equipped with the strength I’ll need for the day. I know that my God will show up in unlikely places and broken people, that sometimes the unyielding strength comes from crippling weakness.

It’s been a good weekend, and with a new week comes a new beginning.People have been moving in and it feels like coming home. I’ve been reminded that I am surrounded by people who care, people who look a lot like Jesus and seen by a God who knows my needs before I know them. I am carried and graced and highly favored. This week, my goal is not to get it right. My goal is not to have all the answers and master the schedule and time management and do the right thing all the time, but to show up and let myself be drawn to need. To sit in it, to sit with students who don’t understand, who are frustrated and tired, who are finally feeling the effects of a new school and all new people. The honeymoon period of a new school is ending—I can feel it—and my goal this week is to not shy away from that. My goal is to lean into weakness and brokenness, to hear hearts and act accordingly…even if it looks completely different from what I think I’m “supposed’ to be doing. There is always more going on than meets the eye. I don’t see everything and I don’t know everything, but I’m here, and, right now, that’s enough.

when not enough...is enough

So this week my new life as a college senior started--in the span of several days, I have packed up my life in Michigan, arrived and unpacked in a brand new apartment, and met a large percentage of the school community who will be such a huge part of my life for the next two months. 

My first morning in my new school opened with meeting twenty something people in the span of several minutes, followed by these words in a prayer from the school principal:

God, we are not up to the task…and that is a good thing.

The rest of the prayer was great from what I heard—it’s amazing to hear people you don’t know pray out loud in a genuine, loving way—but with those thirteen words, an invisible weight was lifted from my shoulders that I hadn’t quite realized I was carrying. I have come to believe something I heard said once—that everyone has a particular burden to carry unique to them, their temperament and experience—and part of my unique battle is this fear of being not enough. This plays out in a variety of ways—in my academics, relationship with my family, friends, roommates, colleagues, and as of late with my students and the work of becoming a teacher.  This fear is in no way helped by the fact of who I am—the klutzy, absentminded part of me who is always dropping, spilling or breaking something. Basically, I often take the harder road and spend a lot of time climbing mountains and feeling really stupid when they turn out to be molehills. When I got here yesterday, I unpacked my car over the span of four hours because I got some stuff out of my car, went to Subway to get lunch, only to realize that my wallet was not actually IN my purse. Immediately, on the verge of a panic attack, I turned around to come back to campus, called Walmart and Campus Safety with no luck, tore my apartment apart, wondering what kind of senior/student teacher I would make if I couldn’t find my wallet. I lifted a box a few minutes later and found it exactly where I had left it a few minutes earlier.

I am very much a work in progress, and I’m coming to terms with my strengths and weaknesses, recognizing that God made me exactly the way he meant for me to be—but some days are easier than others. Walking into a building where I knew no one beyond a few emails and texts over the summer, spending eight hours in a room full of almost strangers is a bit of a stretch. I’ve grown a lot and I’m much more trusting and optimistic about these situations now than when I was, say, a freshman, but even without knowing it, walking into school yesterday, my hackles were up. Without a single conscious thought or acknowledgement, I found myself walking into that school with a determination to prove myself worthy. It affected what I chose to wear, what I brought to school today, how I presented myself. I don’t think it showed or negatively affected anything that happened, but that opening line in a simple morning prayer took me aback and adjusted the way I approached the day. It took me several minutes to find my way out of that hackles up, defenses at the ready mindset, that determination to show the world that I am good enough, and I think I have to talk myself out of that daily. After twenty something years in this skin, coming to terms with who I am—the good, the bad, and the messy—involves a long process of leaning into and learning from my insufficiency without letting it define me. To acknowledge without putting myself down that I still have a long way to go; in my desperate grasp for control, for appearing confident in a new situation where I am anything but, for occasionally failing to ask questions until it’s too late. I still don’t know how to show anger or hurt or sadness in front of a group of students in a way that is healthy and spurs growth. Not to mention I don’t know this school or these people—names, where the gym or cafeteria is, what the schedule is like.  

And yet, after admitting weakness, unpreparedness on his part and that of the school, what came out of the mouth of this man next was a reminder that God shows himself most clearly in my weakness. Entering that school this morning, next week, next month, in anything other than weakness, an acknowledgement that in and of myself, I am not sufficient for the demands and challenges of this year is a way of deceiving myself and others, and I’m realizing that I don’t want that. It’s not fair to me, the teachers and staff I met today, my roommates, the kids I’m about to meet on Monday, and it breaks the heart of God. Because my God chooses the weak, the meek, the mild to do his best work, and I always forget that. It is the weak ones, the ones who come to God and whatever situation with hands empty and open who become key players in God’s redeeming work. I was never intended to get through this life on my own strength. I sing it, pray it, say it, but I’m praying that this year and beyond I believe and live it. God does his best work in and through men and women whose only relevant qualification is that He chose them. They needed nothing other than that knowledge and the wisdom provided to them. Even in writing that, I want to qualify that statement with affirming again how important pedagogy and details and preparation is, and to some extent that is true, but it’s not the foundation. The heart of what I’m about to do, the work of my hands and my mind this semester will be that in Christ, I am enough. In Him, I find the resources, the strength, the experience and content knowledge that I need to do this well. Anything else is a bonus. That, I think, is what I love most about my new school. Even before the kids walk in the door, the first thing the principal does is acknowledge that they are not ready, that they will be surprised and challenged and stretched. That they will come up short and be carried by grace. For whatever reason, this is both incredibly hard to swallow and immensely comforting to believe. I sit tonight simultaneously humbled and graced in my weaknesses, and with Paul, I can pray over this semester that my competence comes from God Himself (2 Cor 3:5).