and the adventure continues

Hey friends!

So I just got home after a really, really good, much needed conversation over brunch, and I'm realizing that I'm sort of walking on holy ground. Monday night I landed back on American soil after  an incredible month in a breathtaking country that has worked its way indelibly into my heart, and this particular Thursday night, I'm just beginning to process everything I've done and seen and learned in the last few weeks, and not sure where to start. Be warned, friends--this does get long, and, actually, it's probably only the tip of the iceberg

Because here's the thing. The impossible actually happened, and I'm not really sure what to think.

My eyes were opened, lies were called out, and I'm well on my way to becoming a teacher. I'm beginning to believe that this is possible, that I'm called to teaching simply because this is where my heart is, and it's all because of these seventeen kids and their sweet teacher.

And here's another thing. If I were completely honest, I really didn't want this experience. I would never have chosen to be in a classroom of more than a few students if I had my way. Going into this trip, I saw the notion of spending time in a classroom as separate from my real calling in special education. Special ed is closely, closely tied to my testimony, my heart, my slow journey of growing into myself, making sense of my story, and is in every way my first love--and I was TICKED that I didn't get to spend my time in the special education classroom at CCS. I was insecure and angry and madly jealous that my prayer partner (an amazing, godly guy) got the chance that I didn't to experience special education in the classroom. I wouldn't trade my experience or my kids for anything now, a month later, but leading up to the trip and when we first got there. I saw my time in the classroom as a disaster to be, something that would set me up for failure and cause me to doubt even what I knew. I was coming out of a difficult placement in a kindergarten classroom and I was almost 100% convinced I would never survive in an actual classroom. So I arrived in the Philippines dreading the idea of actually teaching, scared out of my mind, and coming out of a particularly rough few months. And then I met these guys.

Aren't they beautiful?

And---how do I even describe what happened in that tiny classroom? First---I did what I was convinced I couldn't do. I taught almost every subject at least once. I spent fourteen and a half school days with these beauties in their classroom. I learned names, ages, favorite subjects, who they were and what they loved. I prayed with them before school. I taught multiple times in one day. I made posters and came up with activities and carried out my plans, asked questions and got the kids engaged. I did an impromptu art lesson one Friday (yeah, I was especially surprised by that one), gave devotions for the teachers one morning before school, did another brief devo for my class another morning, gave my testimony before the whole school--and somewhere in there I stopped believing that I could never be in the classroom full time.

 I think it started with a realization that somehow, I loved these kids immediately and fiercely with a love that didn't ever waver. However tired I was, however jet-lagged or discouraged or lost I felt, these kids breathed new life into me whenever I saw them. I was refreshed by them, and they never failed to make me smile. They were a source of energy, of constant delight and encouragement and fascination. I found life in absorbing their hearts into my own, in knowing that they were my heart and I would do just about anything for them. And then came the morning of my first lesson, and despite discouragement and frustration with myself (trying to make signs for an activity, the process of making name tags for my kids, and then taking the wrong bag to school right before my lesson started), I did it. I taught a Bible lesson on Colossians 3:23 and we discussed it and did a memorization activity (that WORKED--they totally remembered it two weeks later when they were quizzed on it!). And then they kept coming--a science lesson the next Monday that I taught in all three sixth grade classes, an English lesson the same day, a bunch of impromptu math and science lessons filling in when a teacher was running late, and then the health lesson I taught three times, which also happened to be the very lesson on which I was observed that second week AFTER I had given my testimony in chapel that morning. 

And somehow in all of that teaching that second week, in sweating in a classroom and pouring myself out and seeing these kiddos smile and respond and love me so well, I realized something incredibly important. I was literally the only one around me that believed I couldn't be a teacher. Out of my teammates, my team leaders, my students, the advising teachers at our school, not one single person looked at me as anything less than a future teacher. Actually, we all called each other Teacher (our first name), even after school hours, so I was literally Tr. Alyssa ALL THE TIME, and how do you tell the (maybe not so) little one in front of you with big eyes that you are NOT  a teacher, to stop calling you a teacher because you are NOT and will never be a teacher. It was part of who we were, the role we played in this classroom, and it was either accept it...or accept it...and this brought me to the realization that, like it or not, I no longer had a good reason to refuse the role of teacher anymore. Maybe I never did in the first place. The excuse of not good enough was completely silent under the weight of the crazy things I was doing, let alone what I believe about Jesus and how he promises to be the absolute strongest at my absolute weakest. Using my mistakes and my incompetence and utter inadequacy didn't work anymore, because no one else seemed to believe that they disqualified me. Because this weird thing happened--life went on, and people kept looking at me with love and grace in their eyes, and we just kept loving and being loved by each other. And as I continued to think and pray and teach my students, I realized that if my heart really was in this and my mistakes didn't disqualify me and I had a God and a cloud of people around me who are avidly, decisively FOR me--why the heck not teach? What was stopping me--other than myself, and who was I to stand in my own way? When have I ever been right about what I can (read: can't) do?

And then GOD got in on the act and I couldn't argue anymore. Because everywhere I looked, I saw how He promised to be strongest when I'm ready to break, how He pursues me and accepts me and uses what little I can give and somehow it is more than enough. I saw Jeremiah 29:11 over and over again--in how He's tucked people into my life who feel like home, who hold me when life feels hard when I can't stop complaining, when I don't know where home is anymore and how people keep leaving...and yet I'm never left entirely alone, and maybe my home is everywhere and nowhere on earth all at the same time because He is here,leading me home. More and more, I'm learning that truth is something I can grab onto when I feel myself falling, learning to weed out the lies that paralyze me and tell me to hide, and seeing that,more often than not, I am so wrong about the world in the best way possible.

One more story before I close: I want you all to meet Arvin. This little guy is in sixth grade, and I honest to goodness think he was my Jesus-with-skin-on for the few weeks we were there. Even before we got onto the airplane, he was pretty much the stuff of legend. Three guys from the trip (counting my prayer partner who happens to also be a special education major, as well as male) had been to the Philippines on the same trip the year before, and even before we left, I heard stories about him, how he hit and bit and didn't talk. Kind of a bully, actually, but I so wanted to meet him, and this was part of why I was so mad at first that I wasn't in a special education classroom. I prayed I would at least get the chance to meet him--and I did. Every time I was feeling afraid or insecure or inadequate, this guy would show up. For the first few days, he showed up without a uniform--apparently he stopped attending school for a few months--but the second or third day, he appeared in full uniform and he was back. He would walk up, slip his hand into mine, his arm around my waist. If I was sitting down, sometimes he would just plop down in my lap, or put a hand on my shoulder. One morning, I got to build wacky sentences with him with one of those puzzles that have the adjectives and verbs and nouns color coded. He showed up on the street outside our compound where we stayed, at the boys' basketball games, and every time I saw him, I got this indescribable feeling of peace. Seeing him was almost like God's way of winking at me, patting my shoulder, reminding me of His pride in me, that I was doing just fine. 

So here I sit, graced and flawed, so able to see and so blind all at the same time. Friends, I have so much growing to do. I'm glad I have these moments of clarity every once in a while, these revelations that wash over me and change me, these gems of truth I can hold onto--because I fall into lies so easily. Talking to a dear friend just now,  after having told her all the wonder and miracle of this trip, my realization that I can do this, I slipped almost unconsciously, almost immediately

 into lies, into jealousy and comparison and wanting someone else's story, someone else's life, and she caught me on it. Because how is that fair, wanting another story? To me, to Him--immediately after recognizing and celebrating the beauty of my own story, of this sudden realization?

Life isn't easy right now (is it ever?). I came back to loneliness, to an empty corner where there used to be a dog bed, to relationships that are confusing and hard and beautiful and redeemed all at the same time, to culture shock and jet lag and millions of questions, parts of this story that still don't make a whole lot of sense. But there's still hope. There are still safe places, moments where I can sit and breathe, alone or with others, and know I'm not alone in this story. There are places where I can see beauty where I had before only seen ashes, times I can speak into other lives knowing I've been there, and He is making all things beautiful in His time. It doesn't make sense now, but I'm finding that that was never the point anyway. The point of everything is grace. The point is truth,knowing that somehow it's all okay and I'm safe and held and beloved, and I might even be a teacher. The point is learning that I can't explain everything, accepting it as fact, and embracing the wonder of it all anyway.