Maybe I should be saving this for tomorrow, but because I will be occupied for the majority of the day, there is literally no time like the present.
2010. I remember thinking, "People said that 2009 was a really bad year... but what makes them so sure that 2010 will be better? It won't be."
Here's what I get out of that mentality: "Better" is relative. Better than what? On what level? Emotional? Financial? The list continues. My point is that the concept of "better" usually hinges on subjective happiness. What does this mean? It means that what makes us happy is not always what is best for us.
For instance, this year was not a better year on the level of subjective happiness. It was a hard one, full of difficult situations and heartache. On another level, the objective happiness level, it was a better year. Seemingly paradoxical, it is true. This year has provided multiple opportunities to strengthen my relationship with God and I have learned so much. I have grown.
Here are a few of the things that happened:
-Lived in England for a month (Incredible learning experience for loving those who claim to have the same values as you but they really don't)
-Health scares related to my mom (History of breast cancer and we thought it came back along with a case of shingles)
-Broken relationships with people who were/are close
-Student teaching (one of the most intense emotional experiences of my life so far)
-Weddings and engagements of friends
-Living in an apartment for the first time
Obviously that doesn't cover the entire year. Honestly, I feel like 2010 is a year of brokenness for me. The beautiful things is that I know I'm being reconstructed by my Creator so that I am able to glorify him better. I can honestly say I am stronger from the me that stepped into this year. There are things that I struggle with more intensely now but I stand upon firmer ground. As I transition into 2011, the year I will graduate from college, the year I will hopefully find a teaching job, I am stepping into another world of unknown things yet I feel as if I'm being slowly, albeit painfully, prepared for it.
I am not going to say that 2011 will be a better year because I know that I will be hoping for the subjective happiness. Rather, I am anticipating more brokenness and healing that only happens in Christ. Broken trust and broken hearts do not mend with a snap of fingers. They don't fix themselves when the human decides he or she is done hurting. We have to press on and ride it out. I pray for healing. I pray for the restoration of trust. I pray for guidance.
Ok, 2011. You heard it. Now stop dawdling and arrive, already!
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
Two steps forward, one step backwards
I would say that the past fall semester consisted of two steps forward. Now, I find myself in a familiar place, meaning I took a step backwards. Maybe it is the rhythm of life that will never change or maybe it will once I move beyond this stage, whatever it is. Needless to say, I would rather rewind to my life one month ago. I felt like I was making progress. As a friend put it, "I got my swagger."
Ok. Maybe I didn't have swagger, but I felt a semblance of being a real person. I felt like each interaction I had with people was useful and meaningful on numerous levels. I donned professional clothes. I ate leftovers I made for lunch in the teachers' workroom. I came home tired but still looking professional. I graded papers. I talked to at least 40 different people each day. I was treated like an individual who had the ability to run a group of students. I looked in the mirror each morning and evening and a person with a forming potential stared back at me.
Looking into the mirror isn't quite as interesting anymore. The "quick-service restaurant" uniform is just as unflattering as it has always been. Lunch is free food, usually a salad eaten in a humming food court around 2pm. I come home covered in coater and sporting hat-hair. It may be nice to not have any work to do outside of work, but my mind yearns for that occupation. I am so thankful that student teaching revealed how much I love teaching, but I can't help but be a little resentful that the desire to teach cannot be fulfilled right now in my terms.
Surely there is a better way to spend my time at home. This period of my life is just beginning. I can't spend it wishing I was at Taylor or still doing student teaching. I have to move on even though I don't want that. Contentment is something I have to pray for constantly because I always seem to want what isn't best for me. It is a grand game of tug-of-war which God always wins but not before he lets me tug my way for a couple minutes. I feel like there are things dragging me back to this situation for a reason and I don't care to put my finger on why because I would make myself crazy if I did that for everything that is happening.
So, even though I feel like I'm taking one step backwards for two steps forward, I do not care to try and pin down reasons why.
Ok. Maybe I didn't have swagger, but I felt a semblance of being a real person. I felt like each interaction I had with people was useful and meaningful on numerous levels. I donned professional clothes. I ate leftovers I made for lunch in the teachers' workroom. I came home tired but still looking professional. I graded papers. I talked to at least 40 different people each day. I was treated like an individual who had the ability to run a group of students. I looked in the mirror each morning and evening and a person with a forming potential stared back at me.
Looking into the mirror isn't quite as interesting anymore. The "quick-service restaurant" uniform is just as unflattering as it has always been. Lunch is free food, usually a salad eaten in a humming food court around 2pm. I come home covered in coater and sporting hat-hair. It may be nice to not have any work to do outside of work, but my mind yearns for that occupation. I am so thankful that student teaching revealed how much I love teaching, but I can't help but be a little resentful that the desire to teach cannot be fulfilled right now in my terms.
Surely there is a better way to spend my time at home. This period of my life is just beginning. I can't spend it wishing I was at Taylor or still doing student teaching. I have to move on even though I don't want that. Contentment is something I have to pray for constantly because I always seem to want what isn't best for me. It is a grand game of tug-of-war which God always wins but not before he lets me tug my way for a couple minutes. I feel like there are things dragging me back to this situation for a reason and I don't care to put my finger on why because I would make myself crazy if I did that for everything that is happening.
So, even though I feel like I'm taking one step backwards for two steps forward, I do not care to try and pin down reasons why.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Hearts are fragile
Situation: You're cleaning a wine glass made from some of the finest glass in the world. The stem makes a knife look clumsy. You are holding it as carefully as you can, turning it while wiping the inside with a dish towel. Then, all of a sudden, the glass shatters in your hands. Shards log themselves into your flesh and all over the sink and counter. Your nerves send shock waves up to your brain and your vision flickers as the pain registers with the rest of your body. Now you look at your hands, colored red, and you don't know what to do.
Translation: You try to handle your emotional heart, one of the most precious things we have as humans, with care. It is the well-spring of life. Each relationship affects it. You "tend" to it and keep it sheltered from certain things, like dishwashers (or in this case, a shallow relationship), yet something happens to make it break. You have no idea how that happened because you were not being careless and there was reason to believe that you were doing exactly what you should have been doing. Regardless of the reasons and the logic, you are stuck with a mess and you are mystified.
I'm not just talking about romantic relationships. You all know that backwards and forwards. There is another aspect of the relationship that I was referring to, which is the relationship with the people you interact with every day. There is a fear, an underlying fear that paralyzes us from truly talking with someone or investing time in someone. We would much rather know what we will gain from a relationship at the beginning than not know anything. Here is the challenge: what if you spent less time worrying about what you'll get from something or someone. In the day-to-day relationships, you will get "shards of glass" in your proverbial hands. Good news, though. The glass comes out and you heal.
This is what I am scared of, though, as my student teaching winds down. How will it affect me when I realize that I will not be in these people's lives anymore? How will that affect my ability to pour into future students and co-workers? I guess as my college experience begins to close, I realize that no relationship is a given. I will not have a campus full of people for the next four years, nor will I have a classroom full of the same students. I can't have it all but I know that I am called to love. Even though my heart is fragile, it can be made stronger... I have to let the work be done.
Translation: You try to handle your emotional heart, one of the most precious things we have as humans, with care. It is the well-spring of life. Each relationship affects it. You "tend" to it and keep it sheltered from certain things, like dishwashers (or in this case, a shallow relationship), yet something happens to make it break. You have no idea how that happened because you were not being careless and there was reason to believe that you were doing exactly what you should have been doing. Regardless of the reasons and the logic, you are stuck with a mess and you are mystified.
I'm not just talking about romantic relationships. You all know that backwards and forwards. There is another aspect of the relationship that I was referring to, which is the relationship with the people you interact with every day. There is a fear, an underlying fear that paralyzes us from truly talking with someone or investing time in someone. We would much rather know what we will gain from a relationship at the beginning than not know anything. Here is the challenge: what if you spent less time worrying about what you'll get from something or someone. In the day-to-day relationships, you will get "shards of glass" in your proverbial hands. Good news, though. The glass comes out and you heal.
This is what I am scared of, though, as my student teaching winds down. How will it affect me when I realize that I will not be in these people's lives anymore? How will that affect my ability to pour into future students and co-workers? I guess as my college experience begins to close, I realize that no relationship is a given. I will not have a campus full of people for the next four years, nor will I have a classroom full of the same students. I can't have it all but I know that I am called to love. Even though my heart is fragile, it can be made stronger... I have to let the work be done.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Rewards and the 3 "C"s
Inserting the key into the doorknob, turning it 360 degrees to the right, and pushing the door open ushers me into the room where I have been teaching since August 12. Friday did not show me any signs that it would be different than any other day. My routine is simple: Write up the agendas on the board, try and shake off the dark cloud that hovers over my head after working with the middle school students, enter more grades, and make copies of handouts and worksheets. Then, fourth period starts and my students help me forget that I was even at the middle school earlier. The class full of 26 enthusiastic students, though not always enthusiastic about learning French, makes me laugh and sigh- all at the same time.
Fifth period came around and I could tell something was up. One of my students had IMed me the night before, asking if I liked red velvet cake. This is not a random question that does not arouse suspicion, but I brushed it off. It was probably for one of my last days at the high school.
After lunch, I came into the room and was putting together material for the next class when 5 of my students marched in carrying a huge box of cupcakes, a cake, chocolate chip cookies, soda, and a gift. I was speechless. They had been lamenting that it was my last day as their teacher, but I didn't know that they would do anything on that day! I was a little bit speechless. Remembering back to the beginning of the school year, I remember my frustration at the challenge I thought would be my French 2 class. Now that I've made it through, I can say, fondly and honestly, that I learned the most from my French 2 students. Rough days happen and no one is ever perfect (And they know I made enough mistakes to prove that) yet the experience was one of the best. It's amazing how little things like cake, cupcakes, and cookies can brighten your day and give you that warm fuzzy feeling and you float around on a cloud for about 2 hours. They were such a blessing to teach. That probably sounds pretty cliché, but it's true.
It was a great Friday. I love all of my French 2 students. I am sad to let them go, but I have to. I can only imagine how hard it's going to be to let go of all of the students. We'll find out, I guess.
Fifth period came around and I could tell something was up. One of my students had IMed me the night before, asking if I liked red velvet cake. This is not a random question that does not arouse suspicion, but I brushed it off. It was probably for one of my last days at the high school.
After lunch, I came into the room and was putting together material for the next class when 5 of my students marched in carrying a huge box of cupcakes, a cake, chocolate chip cookies, soda, and a gift. I was speechless. They had been lamenting that it was my last day as their teacher, but I didn't know that they would do anything on that day! I was a little bit speechless. Remembering back to the beginning of the school year, I remember my frustration at the challenge I thought would be my French 2 class. Now that I've made it through, I can say, fondly and honestly, that I learned the most from my French 2 students. Rough days happen and no one is ever perfect (And they know I made enough mistakes to prove that) yet the experience was one of the best. It's amazing how little things like cake, cupcakes, and cookies can brighten your day and give you that warm fuzzy feeling and you float around on a cloud for about 2 hours. They were such a blessing to teach. That probably sounds pretty cliché, but it's true.
It was a great Friday. I love all of my French 2 students. I am sad to let them go, but I have to. I can only imagine how hard it's going to be to let go of all of the students. We'll find out, I guess.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Oh by gosh, by golly, it's time for nostalgia and holly
Adapting a title of one of my favorite Sinatra Christmas songs is the best way to describe this phase of student teaching. I anticipate the end of the semester, like most students but I am looking back, wondering what I did with the last 16 weeks of my life.
I will give up my first class at the end of this week as I begin to phase out. At the beginning of the semester, I could not even imagine being here. It felt a world away, to borrow a phrase of a certain blog title. I don't know how I got here, to this world where I am comfortable in front of students and collaborating with other teachers, leaving the life of a student (somewhat) behind. It's like reaching land after a long and tumultuous journey only to find that you have to be leaving again, even though the land looks very livable. This is something I find frustrating about college: the constant planting and pulling up of roots. Life is lived in 3 month increments. It was fun for a while, but I would really love to be in one place longer than 3 months... although I feel like as soon as that happens, I'll yearn for the variety of the nomadic pattern of my college life.
Moving on implies scary things... like trusting other people with the work you've spent hours brainstorming for and creating, or accepting that you might never see these people again in your life. I'm sure many people identify with this situation. I know I am not the only one who knows this sensation.
Sometimes I sit here by my tree and I mourn for the relationships I've lost and will lose, but then I'm reminded that God provides the love from somewhere other than my physical being... which means I can continue fostering relationships, old and new. That sounds exhausting and I do not want to mourn the loss of the day-to-day contact between my students and my student-teaching self. I know I will, because that is a part of life, but I'm not looking forward to it. Spending the last 3 to 4 months with these high school students has brought me from one world to another. Like the analogy I used earlier, it was a rough journey at times, but now that I'm here, I look around and I thank God for his mercy and omnipotence. He could not have given me a better place to grow nor better people to grow with.
I have about 6 days left of teaching and then I fade into the long line of student teachers who came before me. 6 days doesn't seem very long at all and I'm sure they will fly by, but I am thankful for the time I will have with the students, even if I get frustrated.
I will give up my first class at the end of this week as I begin to phase out. At the beginning of the semester, I could not even imagine being here. It felt a world away, to borrow a phrase of a certain blog title. I don't know how I got here, to this world where I am comfortable in front of students and collaborating with other teachers, leaving the life of a student (somewhat) behind. It's like reaching land after a long and tumultuous journey only to find that you have to be leaving again, even though the land looks very livable. This is something I find frustrating about college: the constant planting and pulling up of roots. Life is lived in 3 month increments. It was fun for a while, but I would really love to be in one place longer than 3 months... although I feel like as soon as that happens, I'll yearn for the variety of the nomadic pattern of my college life.
Moving on implies scary things... like trusting other people with the work you've spent hours brainstorming for and creating, or accepting that you might never see these people again in your life. I'm sure many people identify with this situation. I know I am not the only one who knows this sensation.
Sometimes I sit here by my tree and I mourn for the relationships I've lost and will lose, but then I'm reminded that God provides the love from somewhere other than my physical being... which means I can continue fostering relationships, old and new. That sounds exhausting and I do not want to mourn the loss of the day-to-day contact between my students and my student-teaching self. I know I will, because that is a part of life, but I'm not looking forward to it. Spending the last 3 to 4 months with these high school students has brought me from one world to another. Like the analogy I used earlier, it was a rough journey at times, but now that I'm here, I look around and I thank God for his mercy and omnipotence. He could not have given me a better place to grow nor better people to grow with.
I have about 6 days left of teaching and then I fade into the long line of student teachers who came before me. 6 days doesn't seem very long at all and I'm sure they will fly by, but I am thankful for the time I will have with the students, even if I get frustrated.
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