'Tis the season

I know it's not that season anymore.

But it has been a long season.  A long season of simply not putting pen to paper (or the hands to the keyboard) because the effort in cataloguing this journey seemed simply too tedious.  Well, this is still the case.  But after a week like this one, I can’t not remember.  And I can’t not share. And I can’t not try to explain this weepy mess sitting in front of my computer, in my empty classroom, with a heavy heart.  Avoiding alexithymia. 

The seasons are changing.  A lime green form sits on my desk with the words “Educator’s Intent to Return” glaring from the top right corner.  But sitting on my heart are two acceptance letters from grad schools in different states.  A changing wind for something…else. The details are not important here, just simply that the winds are changing.  For the first time, my restless heart isn’t actually restless for this change.  The Lord is stirring something beyond my own desires—the added items to my list of  “God, I’m never going to…” are being crossed off by a Creator of all things good. All things better. All things best.

I don’t know what the next year will hold. In fact, I don’t know how many more “nexts” I will be given. This week has been a reminder.

A student attempted to take his life last week.  On Monday, his older brother did the same.  The oldest brother was successful.  And I sit and I worry and the same questions go through my mind that did when a student took his life my first year of teaching. What should have been said? What if that was the last conversation we had? What if that was his last time in this room? His friends stop by my room to check on me before I can ask about them. It takes me too long to recognize the depth of understanding they have about the condition of broken hearts.  The broken pieces together make a more beautiful, stronger new picture. Perspective shift.

A class of freshman walk into my room.  My lively little monsters are bouncing off the walls and a girl sits quietly at her desk.  She is shaking uncontrollably as the tears roll down her face.  She is too scared to worry that others might notice. No one does. I pull her aside. Anonymous texts, voicemails, and names shouted at her as she walks through the halls.  Her biggest concern is not her own safety; she’s more concerned the single dad who raised her will worry too much when he finds out. So we sit, and we work out a plan so she’s never alone in the halls.  Safety and refuge. Isn’t that all we really need? 

A boisterous noise in the hallway interrupts my usual Friday routine of getting out of the building by 3pm. WHERE THE HECK IS HER ROOM NOW?!  He gets louder and louder and finally in walks a student I haven’t seen for two years.  Now a high school graduate, a fighter, a warrior who wasn’t going to let the foster system get him down. I can hardly conceal my smile as I joke, “you aren’t in jail!” Everything in me is fighting happy tears. We laugh as we remember the busted lip he tried to hide, the pranks he’d pull on foster homes, the week he was on the run but still managed show up to our 8^th period because what if he missed something in Of Mice and Men?

These are only small glimpses of a week filled with visits from students who have stolen my heart, tears shed and shared over losses, confusion and exhaustion in just trying to figure out where my feet are supposed to land next.

But maybe it’s not about where my feet are supposed to go. Maybe it’s about making sure my heart is invested where the Lord has placed them now. God’s voice is gentle in the everyday and I remember Esther’s call for “such a time as this.”

As Jim Elliott said, “Wherever you are, be all there.” And despite the ups and downs of how inaccurate my job description actually is, I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be right now than right here.

And really if my God is the same God yesterday, today, and tomorrow—what’s there left to worry about anyway?

::For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:: Ecclesiastes 3.1

::Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever:: Hebrews 13.8