Expectations. My expectation for myself when beginning this blog was to keep a regular update of the happenings in my life. Just as too often in life, I failed to meet those expectations. Luckily for all of us, there is something called grace. Something I have learned so much about in the past 5 years of my life…and even more recently in the past 4 months. To echo one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott: “I do not at all understand the mystery of grace--only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us."
My year of teaching began differently than expected. I walked into my classroom with more confidence than I had left with the year before. However, I was greeted with different students, different behaviors, different coworkers, and different challenges. Without volleyball to worry about, I approached this school year with the idea of perfection and ease. Although having a more structured understanding of the curriculum, I had to deal with behavior issues and the attitudes of this class…something I was blessed to not struggle with last year. I began getting frustrated and tired at the deficit I saw in the students this year compared to last year. My comparison and biased attitude had dug this year’s students a hole that made it impossible to get out of. I spent a lot of the beginning of this year complaining about teaching and not giving my students a chance to prove themselves. Yes they were more challenging and not academically where the other students were—but is it not my job to present them with an opportunity to get to that point? A few months into the year, my feet were taken out from under me without any warning. As a staff, we were informed that an 8th grade student (a student I had 2-3 times a day the year before) had committed suicide. I was broken. I didn’t even know how to begin to process. Not only did I not know how to begin, I didn’t have the time to because it was my job to walk into the school and be the stronghold for 12-13 year olds who had the same questions I did. It was my job to make school a normal environment for them to cope in. I came to school every morning at 7am and my room would fill with 7-10 8th graders to reminisce their loved classmate. In a week’s time, their visits dwindled. And I was left to process. During this time, God’s grace poured over me through my current students. Their understanding and gentle hearts spoke volumes to my brokenness as a teacher. It was during this time that I realized that although they may not reach the hopes I had for them academically, their compassion exceeded my expectations. And for that I am thankful.
This fall I also had plans to prepare and take my GRE before Christmas. Amidst this dream, I met someone to fulfill what I saw as another dream. God blessed me with an incredible relationship that taught me how to be pursued, loved, invested in, and taken care of. I learned what it was like to have my heart in the hands of someone who loved the God I loved and who cherished the broken parts of my life because of where it has brought me. Through this relationship, I had support in the death of my student, I was challenged in my career and in my spiritual life. We have since gone our separate ways, but how evident is God’s grace and provision in my life because of it. "Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue." As crazy as it may sound, I believe God used this relationship as glue in my life. As broken-hearted I may have felt/feel, it feels as though my heart has been revived and my hope renewed. I hold my heart at higher value and my relationship with Christ more so than ever. Weeks before this ended, several close friends and family asked me about the GRE and my plans for grad school—to which for the first time I acknowledged that I had completely dropped. As this relationship closed, I literally felt God prodding me to stop making excuses and act on his calling for my life. Thus, I am scheduled to take the GRE February 20th and will hopefully be accepted into Adam’s State College in Colorado for a dual licensure in clinical and school counseling.
Again, I failed miserably at meeting the expectations I had for the near future, but I was met with the grace of God that turned that failure into his perfect provision and timing.
