My wonderful friend Kaitie does something on her blog at the end of each month where she looks back on a few things she accomplished and then looks ahead to set goals for the coming month. I love it, so, I'm doing it too.
In January, I... 1. Started this blog I love writing but it can give me a lot of anxiety at the same time. I don't know if it's the perfectionist in me who is never quite satisfied with many of the things I produce, or if it's because I'm afraid of letting people down who have told me that they love my writing and want to see more of it. Honestly, it's probably some combination of both. But having this space to make my own has been wonderfully liberating so far and I'm excited for where it's going as I continue to build and shape it! 2. Registered for a half marathon Okay, technically my friend Jen registered me for it but whatever, the point is it that I'm running 13.1 miles in October! I'm so excited to get back into running. I've been doing CrossFit for almost 10 months now but haven't trained for any serious road races in a few years. I can't wait for the weather to warm up so I can start training. Obviously I could start now but I'm a wimp in the winter. Not trying to catch that terrible winter chill that never quite leaves you once you've got it.
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I'm running a Spartan race this year and a half marathon.
Just let that sink in. Okay, maybe that last line was more for me than for you. I'm actually going to have to try really hard. Push myself and not give up. If you read my last post you know that this is not going to be easy for me. Now, don't get me wrong, I love running. I got into running when I was working at the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and I was training for the Miami Half with Team in Training. But I'm not someone who can just start running and put a couple miles behind me without even realizing it. Oh, how I wish I was one of those people. Running comes easily to me to a point, then it gets really hard - and I want to just cut my losses and give up. Clearly this a cross-cutting theme of many areas of my life... But training for that half helped me learn how to start to believe in my ability and celebrate little victories. Each run would be better than the one before it. I'd make it a little further each time before feeling like I wanted to collapse. The only problem was that I wasn't able to actually do that race or continue my training because of a knee injury. I got this piece of paper in the mail yesterday. My dad said that I should be proud because I worked hard for it. Which, to his surprise, I retorted, "Not really." "That's because everything comes easy to her," my mom commented. It's true. Okay, of course not everything comes easily to me. But most things do. Except for math and a few other things where I just cut my losses and move on. My mom was right in this case though. Getting this piece of paper was not hard for me. According to said piece of paper, I am a master of the art of teaching. Um... LOL, is the only response I feel is adequate here because if there's anything the past six weeks have shown, it's that I am far from having my job mastered. Most days I'm just hoping someone doesn't punch the kid next to them and that at least one person learned something that day. One month. That’s how long it took me to start loving my students. Like, really loving them and seeing them for who they really are instead of defining them by the less than wise choices some of them make everyday. It was a rough first month of teaching. By the end of week one I was questioning every decision I’d ever made about my new career. I was questioning every prayer I had prayed. I drove myself crazy trying to remember the exact words I had prayed when I interviewed for this job, wondering if I had pleaded for something stupid out of selfish desperation. I’m someone who generally sees the good in people no matter what. I usually see the good before the bad and tend to overlook the bad because I believe so much in the good in them. And I will search and search and search for those good pieces with relentless certainty that they exist. But some of these kids though. They were [still are] hard to love. Everyday for a month on my half hour drive to work - and I literally mean every. single. day. - I prayed the entire way, “God help me love them. God help me love them. I don’t even know what else to say other that just please, please for love of You, help me love them.” At the end of one of those days, as I was finishing dinner, I walked away from the table and actually declared, “Well, I guess it’s that time again to go work hard for kids who don’t deserve it.” I didn’t mean it, but that is how I felt.
I was weary. I was worn - from headaches and 12 hour days. From a handful of my kids who would in plain defiance just refuse to work, or would sit and engage in some sort of purposeful disruptive behavior as I would try to carry out the instruction that I had put so much effort into. The instruction that I planned and then re-planned and then re-planned again in hopes that each student would be able to connect with the content in a way that worked for how they each learn. And even then I wondered, what is this all for? Are they even learning anything when I teach it? As the days went by there were kids who genuinely made me want to be there. Kids who were respectful, who worked hard, who honestly cared about their work and the people around them. Kids who made it all worth it. But there were others who were just so unlike any other ten-year-old I’ve ever met that I was just at loss for what to do. No matter how many other teachers in the school told me that they were “just a tough group” and not to worry because they all had issues with them too and, “it’s not just you,” I still could not understand why I could not love, or honestly even really just like, some of them. It was hard for me to love them coming from the last group of students I had in the Fall when I was student teaching. I was trying not to compare, but it wasn't easy. I missed those kids in the worst way. I still do. But, last week we had a snow day and, in a dramatic turn of events, I found myself sitting at home actually missing my class. Like, my whole entire class. Every. Single. Student. I must be losing it. They’ve made me crack. I’ve gone off the deep end. No. I realized that I actually do love them. All of them. Even the ones who are so openly rude and who test my patience to the bitter end. I love them. I see their worth. The work I do to help them learn is so, so worth it. In all honestly, I still feel like I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing but, I love them. That’s a good place to start, right? Even through what I feel confident labeling as one of the hardest months of my life ever, God was moving. He heard me. I mean, duh, of course he heard me. I realized that he was changing my heart toward my students the entire time, but I was too focused on my circumstances and on what I had done or hadn’t done to deserve the class from Hell (okay that may be a little extreme but…) to see what he was doing. God reminded me that love isn't supposed to be easy. That's it's going to hurt, and be frustrating, and require the kind of patience that only He can give us. Most importantly He reminded me that we're obligated to love even when we feel like people don't deserve it because, uh, something about a cross and a sinless Savior and the greatest, undeserved but freely given love of all... yeah, I think there's some really big, life-changing, societal-norm-defying story about that or something... Anyway, half of my kids are still off-the-walls crazy but that’s okay. Because I love them. I believe in them. I’ve been telling them that since day one but now I actually believe myself when I say it. Now when I encourage them, my words don’t feel empty and rehearsed but like they are actually coming from deep down in my soul. The same part of my soul where I hold all of my strongest convictions. Now, they are all worth waking up early for. They are all worth working for. They always have been. But now, I actually find joy in laboring for them. And now I finally know in that deep part of my soul and not just in my head, that it’s not our circumstances, but rather the state of our heart that dictates our peace, happiness, and our impact. |
Author4th grade teacher. Writer. Justice-seeker. Encourager. CrossFitter. John 11:40. Archives
July 2017
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