A couple months later we moved. I interviewed and accepted my 3rd placement for a teaching job. The inner city again. In that placement I trained under an amazing consultant, Glenna Tabor. She changed the way I taught math the rest of my years as a teacher. I from then on was hooked on Tabor Math Rotations. I left that school and spent my next 5 years at EBE where my daughter would be for Kindergarten and First grade. Of all the schools I taught at-I got to work with the most accepting, loving, caring, compassionate, friendly, supportive staff at that school from the principal to the entire staff.
Interview process again for fellowship. Match day again less ceremonial this time. Nashville. This time I was set on one school. The school my children would be zoned for and an amazing reputation in the Green Hills community. I absolutely adored and admired the principal there. Ironically she too had moved from Chattanooga. The assistant principal was a God send who helped me get the position in the midst of a job freeze on new hires. He later was key in me keeping that position when we lost a position in our grade level.
My kids went there. It was great. Soon new administration, new responsibilities. My close friends were moving away.
Change again.
Have you ever been in the dark with anyone close by? You tend to veer together in closeness navigating the dark. Maybe even squeezing one another's hands? Or grabbing their arm with a death grip? It's frightening.
But having someone is comforting.
I have written much about my desire to stay home and enjoy my children. I surely have been doing that. To the point of exhaustion!
I have had the privilege to attend class events-Nothing but fun day, trade day, author's lunch, field trips to Biz Town, Farmer's Market. I've gotten to be the driver for trips, serve teachers, volunteer in the schools.
And yet I am here on this day, the day before Fall Break on the phone with my son chatting away in the back seat at 8AM in his school parking lot, with the assistant head of schools being offered a job and me accepting it. I don't know how I got here. It was a chain of events really that started months ago. An email to me. A meeting. An interview. Another one. All the while me too conflicted to really talk much about it. Too confused as to what I should do. Praying mostly for clarity. After a Bible study one morning I read a passage in my Frazzled Female devotion about a woman offered a job and she was acting from fear not faith. I realized I am obviously NOT in control. Things were happening that I did NOT plan or seek out. But I felt there was a purpose in all of this. I just didn't know it! Maybe it was to help pay off the staggering med school loan that showed up unexpectedly in our budget this year. Or maybe it is to teach me a lesson on trusting that God knows more than I do and walking in the dark holding-no clinging to Him as he leads the way and not me.
But now I look back to me mourning not being in the same school building as my kids at the end of last year and all the while God giggling at me or smiling reassuringly that he had a different plan for me. I just didn't know it. So when January comes, I will actually be entering my 14 year in a row of teaching-only this will be a half year. I will be part time not full time (which is a sigh of relief for me) and I will be teaching 4th grade my all time favorite grade for the tenth year in a row until the end of this school year. And in the building once again with my little boy.
Next year? I can't say. It is in the dark. No plans. I have no idea what I will be doing. Part of me hopes I am staying home and going to every event my children have. Part of me is feeling God may again have a different plan. I've gotten a few foreshadowing comments that maybe others have a plan for me that is not fully known yet to me.
I hang on to the fact that if I don't want to do something I have the right to say no. I wish I could say the adventure of this unknown turn of events is exciting and exhilarating-I can't. It comes with a little fear and a ton of faith.
I have this uneasy feeling that God has some ultimate plan for my gifts and talents and that every placement, every position, every child I learned from teaching was part of something greater. Something bigger. Something I didn't plan. I guess I will have to wait and trust and let things in my life play out as I always have. I've got butterflies to be in my 6th placement and in a school situation, probably the only one I haven't experienced yet-private school.
Maybe when we are comfortable things need to be a bit ruffled up. Maybe when we think we have things figured out we need a reminder that His plan is greater than what we can hope for ourselves. Maybe we just need a good dark tunnel to walk through so we hold on a little tighter. We shall see. As of now I am praying and trying to be faithful and obedient to what God places on my heart-the good, the frightening, the ongoing adventure.
And now I am off to basketball practice. M is trying a new sport, with a new group of peers. I know she is a little frightened but wants to follow her heart and try something brand new. I completely get her :) I know how she is feeling.
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