Stuck in the Middle

Thanks to ohgelie for the photo. It's perfect.

One of the toughest places to be, in my opinion, is stuck in the middle. Right now I'm stuck in the middle of being able and not able. I've been on a medical leave for the last year, not able to work. I'm now at the point where the act of not-working is exacerbating the situation, making my condition worse. However, I'm not yet well enough to go back to work full time.

To make things tougher, I'm a teacher. There are very few teaching opportunities that are part-time, especially for someone who has a continuing contract. Like me. There are days when I love my class and have so much fun teaching - days when it just clicks. Then there are days when I come home and bawl my eyes out, wanting to quit. Now, I can hear the other teachers out there saying, "That's just normal, honey, it's called being a teacher!" But this is more than that. This is feeling swallowed by despair because you feel like you're inadequate. Incapable. Untrustworthy. I'm not talking about a Really Bad Day. I've had those. I've been teaching for 6 years. I'm talking about honest-to-goodness despair. Now that's scary.

Now comes the "stuck" part. I love teaching. I love the kids. It's everything else that overwhelms me. Submitting year plans and professional growth plans and discipline plans. Paperwork out my wazoo. And then, there's this: I truly believe God called me to be a teacher. I feel like I would die without the opportunity to teach. "Then why do I feel so useless? Why does this overwhelm me so much?" My head and heart argue with each other, and I end up in tears. It happens so often, I'm sick to death of it.

Today's one of *those* days, obviously.

I've started looking at other teaching options. Tutoring. Being a home school facilitator. Teaching online. I keep thinking they'll be less stressful. It'll be easier to work a flexible schedule and not deal with 6 different groups of 30 rangy hormone-driven kids each day. You know the problem with them all? It takes me out of the classroom. And so I don't know. I'm stuck.

If you're reading this, I'd appreciate some prayer.

The Humility Project

www.popgoesthereader.com

I've recently been reading a chick-lit book called The Rosie Project. Cute love story, a little too free with the sex (and language) for my usual tastes, but a cute story. I would recommend it. In fact, the cavalier presentation of sex is partially addressed in the book - infidelity - and faithfulness in relationships is held up as the more rewarding option by the end of it. This irreverent approach to sex didn't bother me until I watched an entirely unrelated movie.... Her. 

www.louderthanwar.com

Her is a unique movie, I would recommend it to very, very few. It, too, approaches sex casually. Beyond just depicting casual sex, it includes phone sex and sex jokes in its portrayal of a blossoming romance. It isn't trying to be funny - it is actually quite tasteful by worldly standards. It is nothing like the sexually crude comedy I can't stand to watch. Its goal was to be cute and romantic. But.

Watching Her coloured my world in a very negative way. It coloured my intimacy (not just sexual) with my husband so that I felt dirty. It coloured the cute book (The Rosie Project) I was reading so that the portrayed relationship felt more sexual than it was actually written to be. It really put me off. It bother me, a lot, that society takes such an off-hand stance when it comes to sex. Intimacy is supposed to be highly treasured... 

When I was talking about this to my husband, who was wanting to know why I was so "off" that day, my explanation put him in mind of the movie 50 Shades of Grey that is set to release this spring. He noted that we are becoming more and more like the ancient wealthy societies who had nothing better to do than wallow in their own depravity. I'm thinking Romans and Greeks. Then he made an interesting point...

What was Christ's response to the depravity of the world around him? He mourned. I'm thinking of the well known "I long to gather you together as a hen gathers her chicks..." spoken over Jerusalem in Matthew 23.  He didn't rant and rail against the evils of the world (I'm thinking of the many blogs and articles I've seen decrying 50 Shades of Grey and those who are entertained by it), but rather spoke love in humility and mourned. 

I need to learn how to mourn rather than rant. 

Magnetic Poetry I

Magnetic Poetry I

Herein doth grace
Sanctify a mortal dream
This perilous melancholy to make light
And thus
Shall my ghost yield me
To love and mercy vouchsafed

A poem I wrote a few months ago using the Shakespearean words magnets on my filing cabinet. :)

16th Day of Lent

photo courtesy of davidsmommy.com

I didn't grow up observing Lent; it's a fairly new idea to me. I should rephrase that - taking it seriously is a fairly new idea to me. As a child I had friends who would give up things like chocolate for Lent and my inward response ran along the following lines: 

"What a silly way to show one's devotion! As if giving up chocolate is actually going to help them understand Christ's sacrifice any better... I don't observe Lent, and I have a great relationship with God... Are they just giving it up so they get 'brownie points' for heaven? What a silly, works-based idea that is!"

Judgmental, I know.

Lately I've been taking another look at the traditions of the church and have been able to see the value in it all. The act of disciplining ones self to daily thematic readings; meditating on the purpose of the cross; self-examination; making a concerted effort to pray about specific church ministries; all these suddenly have value to me. While I haven't chosen anything to sacrifice for Lent this year, I do love the spiritual discipline of the season and find myself drawn to the idea of doing more to observe it for next year.

Today's post is going to ramble a little as I have another topic I wanted to talk about, too.

photo courtesy of ubdavid.org

Today's reading was from John 3:1-17, the section where Nicodemus meets Jesus up on the roof top in the dead of night to ask him questions. It's obvious from the beginning that he admires Jesus, calling him "Rabbi" from the very first. What struck me today was how flabbergasted Nicodemus was by Jesus' description of being born again - born of the Holy Spirit.

"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit." John 3:8 (NKJV)

The Holy Spirit works like the wind - you can't see the wind itself, just its effects. Jesus outright explains the working of the Holy Spirit to Nicodemus, and he is floored by such an awesome mystery. And yet I take our gift of the Holy Spirit for granted... for shame!

I'm humbled by that realization today, and my prayer is that the Lord would make me more like Nicodemus. I want to sit at Jesus feet in wonder as He explains His mission to me. I don't want to take Him for granted anymore.

  

Grace and Compassion

Ps. 145:8 

The Lord is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and rich in love.  

This afternoon I had the (slightly less than current) worship song in my head, spontaneously, as an outpouring of my heart to God. I've been stretched, like a rubber band, these last two weeks. "I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter over too much bread." That was Bilbo Baggins from Lord of the Rings. I can empathize.

Hark.com; Bilbo Baggins

This week the Lord has been gracious. I have seen his compassion. Time after time, commitments melted away in front of me. Either something was cancelled unexpectedly, or it was moved to another time or date. The expected "chicken with its head cut off" feeling never came. I not only "survived" my week... I enjoyed it.

Once more I feel as though I've been granted a boon. Despite the looming tidal wave of marking (There are days when it really does pour off my desk!), and the deadline for report cards, the upcoming budget and staffing meeting for the church, the frustration of absent students and seemingly apathetic parents, the lack of groceries (I haven't had enough time to go shopping, so we've been eating cobbled-together meals for the last week and a half), a driveway with too much snow and not enough traction, and the general sluggishness that comes from being cold, dark, and snowy.... I'm content. That's a long list of things that should be bothering me. I'm dwelling on it because normally (Is that really the word I mean? Perhaps I mean traditionally?) that would be overwhelming me. But God has gifted me with that "peace that passes understanding" (...down in my heart!).

I have a great class of students. I am loving teaching leadership. I have a small "fan club" in the younger grades (they recently found out I play Minecraft.) I have some adorable grade 8 Filipino girls who are shy and quiet but brighten up and say hi to me every chance they get. I have an amazingly understanding and supportive husband. I have creativity, and snugness, and seem to have found a rhythm to my evenings - no more scrambling and feeling like there isn't enough. It's inexplicable. Entirely. I am blessed.

Know what was really cool today? We were discussing the Protestant Reformation in class today, and one girl stayed behind to ask me more about grace. I was grinning inside.

Mourning, Grief, Fear, Loss

How often can a heart break
Mend, knit, heal,
Only to reach out "too soon."
Tear open the freshly healed wound,
Bleed out,
And find itself broken again.

My eyes are weary of their own -
Tears, redness, exhaustion -
Surely I have nothing left to cry,
My heart is empty,
Yet
My spirit groans within me,
Giving cry to that
Which my mouth can no longer express.

Wash of mercy,
Wave of faithfulness,
Tide of grace.

The hand of the Lord upholds me.
He looks with
Mirrored sorrow
On my burdened heart,
On my burdened family.
He catches and treasures each crystalline tear
In a bottle.

Be the daily portion and prize,
Sustainer,
Healer,
Redeemer,
Almighty God.
Be my sufficiency.

What is Faith?

I've been reading Mere Christianity (CS Lewis) slowly ... paragraph by paragraph sometimes... in the mornings. Recently it's led me on a journey into what faith is, the different types of faith, what it means to live by faith, etc. Part of it relates to what I've already been learning about humility and being "poor in spirit." In this particular chapter Lewis talks about coming to the point where we realize we've done our utmost and are still incapable of attaining righteousness. This is the point at which we need to say, to God, "I can't, you need to do this for me." That is, we need to give up. He then continues to explain that this means leaving all our trust in God; trust that He will cause things to turn out all right in the end. I think my favourite quotation from this section is as follows: 

There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first gleam of Heaven is already inside you.

I found that a very apt summary of the ragtag thoughts & feelings I've been pondering over the last while. I love finding succinct quotations of something that I've already been learning and discovering... it's very encouraging. 

Pride

"... it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind." - C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

What a thought. No wonder God saw fit to bring me down a notch or two, I was trying to compete with Him. I was useless for what he wanted me to do. I was a clay pot who thought she knew enough about pottery to try her hand at repairing other clay pots, and too foolish to realize I didn't have any hands. Clay pots don't have hands. I was a clay pot. How often did I look in the mirror and fail to see the pot for the clay? What a gift to be able to see clearly now what God has brought me from.

Praise God that I'm a silly little pot who's learned to rely on the Master Potter and not herself!

Tossed

To feel oneself drifting,
tossed about
flippantly
on winds of abandon...
waves of expectation.
Tossed, with loss of dignity,
as a dwarf tossed by an elf.
And yet.
Yet.
I can feel an anchor.
Oh, but it seems a slender cable
in the tumult of life.
But
my anchor holds,
and though I can no longer see shore
for the driving rain,
I am not lost.

Dichotomies and Trichotomies

So, I've been thinking a lot lately about my di/trichotomy of an existence at this juncture in life. Teacher, wife, gamer, writer, church leader, and medievalist... which of these is me, which was me, and which will I continue to be? Some are easy to answer. I'll always be wife and teacher. That's just a no-brainer. But I've begun to lose the writer because of the teacher, and the medievalist because of the gamer... Can I actually keep elements of all of them? Can I be happy without elements of all of them?