This post will deviate a bit from my past two posts, but it is on my brain as I reflect and evaluate myself and the job I did this year as a teacher.
My weakness as a teacher in my own room has been classroom management. No, my kids didn't run all over me and they learned and they did their work, but I did not effectively engage them the way that I wanted too. I guess more appropriately, I don't felt they bought in to me as their teacher.
I know there are some teachers that don't care about that, it is their classroom and their way or the highway. That is one approach that is not wrong, but can be tough to create a safe, engaging environment. I felt myself pushed into that role, but it is not the classroom I want.
I feel that your students must buy into your teaching philosophy, your compassion for them, and they must trust that you have their best interests at heart so that they not only feel safe to learn, but feel safe to confide in you or to ask you for help. After all, we as teachers are called to not only teach them their core subjects but to prepare them for life after school, and not being comfortable or confident enough to ask for help will cripple them.
I didn't earn that kind of trust this year.
I am int he process of looking for a job, but instead of being down about needing a job, I am going to use my downtime to reflect, learn, and grow. I want to be ready when I do get my classroom, again.
So my goal for the summer is to learn, read, watch, listen, ask questions, and create a plan that encourages not just student engagement and success, but student inquiry, trust, and leaves them feeling as if they can ask me or tell me anything. This is more important than any knowledge or content I could possibly teach them.
If you have any good tips or resources or ideas or experiences. I would love for you to share them with me!
So, at the end of my last blog post, I simply asked that God show up and that he begin to mend my heart and soul and put me back together.
Oh man, did he ever show up!
It's so funny the way he chooses to show up. It's never how you expect it or would probably choose. One of my roadblocks is not believing I am love-able or worthy enough and the other is believing that he truly can care about little parts of my life especially when my sin is so great.
But man did he bust through that.
1st way:
My son's baseball team experienced some drama. (come on all my sports mommas out there, you are rolling your eyes, because you know!) The problem is that this drama seemed targeted. For some it went from normal drama to personal attacks. But then God showed up and he just opened my eyes and the eyes of the others on the team. We all saw it for what it was. Satan was attacking our families at every side.
I am telling you, everyone was experiencing drama that spoke to their greatest fears, weaknesses, and insecurities. That is not a coincidence. We were being torn apart. It worked for a couple of weeks. But it was like a veil was lifted and multiple moms were just coming out and saying they felt the enemy attacking us. (I have chills up and down my body right now)
God does care about the little things.
2nd way:
Me and one of the moms were talking about how we all have a past. Broken marriages, divorces, teenage pregnancy, gossiping, drugs. No one is immune. But Jesus, He is the answer and His blood frees us from our past.
This morning I was listening to a live version of Blessed Assurance, there is a part that says this is my story and this is my song. It hit me like a ton of bricks. You would've thought that my air was blasting because I had chill bumps and something just washed over me. I experienced God.
This is my story. My sins, my past, my dysfunctional childhood. But these moms, my church, my family, my freedom. THAT is my story too. The one that Jesus wrote. Because through all of this baseball drama, I realize that not only is God writing a new chapter constantly, but he has redeemed us and He loves us no matter our mistakes.
I had a friend tell me yesterday, I am proud to call you my friend. She doesn't know what those words washed over me.
That one sentence spoke all of these words over me too:
I am redeemed by God.
I am love-able.
I am good enough.
I am beautiful.
I am His child.
He cares about every hair on our heads.
He is all powerful and all knowing.
He hold us and our future in his hands.
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God cares about even the smallest problems. He used baseball drama to draw a group of people together in his name, claiming Jesus' blood and claiming that the devil must flee in his presence.
Only God could take bickering, lice, gossip, and animosity and reveal a battle of the spiritual realm and draw people to stand together in prayer and claiming His name.
I have written blogs before, but I always hold a little back. Not to say, they aren't truthful, but I am always careful to stay just above the surface of what's really there. I think we all do that in life, because we are scared or because we believe that our feelings don't matter or maybe because we don't like who we are.
I am going to be honest, I fall in all three categories. As much as I try to avoid that deep stuff, you know THE deep stuff, it keeps coming back. Imagine that? It seems to find you in every song you hear, every sermon you hear, every book you read, its like that three year old that says mom, mom, mom, MOOOMM? You can't ignore it, you eventually have to turn around and snap back, WHAT?
Well, that deep stuff has been gnawing at me for a while now, really years, but back in December it yelled that final MOOOMM and I could no longer ignore it.
You know, its the strangest thing to be sitting here at a , for lack of a better cliche term, crossroads and be so hyper aware of it. You know that you can't go back, but you can't just keep moving straight forward because you do have to choose a path, the road is forking and a decision has to be made. So I sit here at this fork (kinda hungry actually right this second at the mention of all these forks) and I realize that I can't make a decision until I talk about it. Sure, I could call a friend (which I have done) and just vomit it all out, but it didn't seem to help. So I am returning here to something I truly enjoy doing, writing.
So here it goes (obviously I need to work on not getting distracted). Back in December, Pastor Steve, did a Christmas at the Movies themed series and one of them was on How the Grinch Stole Christmas. We all know the story and everyone loves it when the Grinch's heart grows three times bigger and he finds love for Cindy Lou Who and the town of Whoville and of Christmas again. Well, it was like a bullet to the gut when Pastor Steve began to talk about that part.
Some people, including Christians, yes even the ones who raise their hand on Sunday and are smiling all the time, have allowed their heart to shrink. For some they choose it intentionally because they don't want to get hurt and some it happens to over time before they ever realize it.
See, I have experienced quite a lot in my short 27 years on this Earth. I struggle, there are people in this world who have it far worse than I ever will and who experience things on a daily basis that my mind can't even fathom. But as true as this is, it doesn't make my hurt any less and it has taken me a long time to believe that.
In my 27 years, I have seen a hospital room more days than I wish to count both as a patient and visiting my dad and I now need my toes to count my surgeries. I grew up in a dysfunctional family, yes I have family who love me to pieces, but it didn't make it any less dysfunctional. I got pregnant in high school and married. I don't remember what a two parent house hold feels like. My mom walked out before I could really even talk and the next wife ended up doing more damage to my dad and my world. I grew up from four years old till 7th grade in a house in which I was given a path to walk and was told not flush the toilet because we might run out of water. I was left at school by this woman because the meat in the back of her car might rot in the extra few minutes she had to wait. I watched my Dad and my Aunt fight for their lives every day with a terrible disease. My dad is still fighting, and my Aunt won her battle and is with her Savior. I have been sexually assaulted. I have watched people that were supposed to love me and supposed to be there to hold me up, take pieces of me without looking back. See, I was always told I was too trusting, and that I have too big of a heart. Well, after enough people and circumstances broke it, I guess it got smaller.
So here I am sitting in Church, and the term I have heard all my life at Christmas (His heart grew three sizes that day) hit me like a ton of bricks. It was then I realized that I have shrunk my heart to avoid pain and heartbreak for so long that I had successfully shut out my Savior. I didn't trust him to be good to me or to take care of me. I had decided so long ago that I was not worth anything really that I had come to believe that God thought the same thing. See I took all that stuff I just talked about and put it all on me. Everything bad that has ever happened was because I must have screwed something up, I must be guilty. It is true that some things like my pregnancy are a consequence of my sin, but see I have deemed myself responsible for all of it. People always leave. I have come to believe that and that I will always mess everything up.
So, for the last few months I have been chewing on this, not moving and not healing, just chewing. Then Pastor Steve starts a new sermon series in April called "Who Needs God?" and another truth hit me and knocked me on my butt. I don't believe in the God of the Universe. (Hold on, I am not done, don't freak out over that line) I have come to believe in a God that I have to live up too and that I have to do everything right for and that if I am perfect, maybe he will show me some sort of favor. See, I have the mentality that for every time I screw up he is going to punish me for it. Which would be all the time, because lets face it, I am loud and brash and emotional and I tend to push people away over little things. I let my emotions get the best of me and end up hurting people around me. I don't think I deserve to be loved by anyone and I feel that I have to earn friendship and love. To be painfully honest, I don't believe that anyone would ever actually love me for me, so I try too hard. So this God that I have been worshiping is not the God of the Bible. He is a perverted version my circumstances and blinders have created that leaves me feeling worthless and unloved and like a perpetual screw-up.
Now, I know y'all are expecting some big revelation and that I am free of this and healed, but unfortunately this way of thinking and these broken pieces are still here. I am no where close to healing. I am working on trusting God, the real God and trying to figure out who He is, the one of the Bible. I believe in him and I believe he died for my sins no doubt, but right now, my prayer is the he be small and reveal his real self to me so that I can get to know the God that loves me unconditionally and knows how many hairs are on my head.
So there it is, all layed out and honest. I do believe this somewhere in my tiny heart that God has a hope and a future for me and my family and that will have to be enough for a now. Because one thing I have become sure of in all of this, He will never leave me nor forsake me and he doesn't require us to be okay all the time or to be wrapped up nice and pretty with a bow. He just asks us to come as we are. So here I am, just me, everything else faded away, praying for my broken pieces to be healed.
