- Yesterday (Saturday), Daniel and I rearranged our house! It's still in process (aka we have some cleaning to do...), but we will post some pictures soon. =)
- Today church was just really fun. We both continue to enjoy and feel nurtured and loved by our awesome church family at Central Christian. I especially enjoyed our "post-church church" today -- we almost always eat together after the service. We are looking forward to hopefully being able to host "post-church church" at our place sometime soon!
- Teaching is... well, teaching. I would say that overall I've been feeling better about how teaching is going... I had kind of a hard, negative stretch around Thanksgiving there... but I'd say December has gone a bit better. However, I'm still continuing to struggle with discerning whether this is something I'm called to long-term. I know there are a million variables -- it being my first year, there being lots of new initiatives and such, yada yada -- but I still wonder, even though there's no way for me to actually know right now. Questions that I would appreciate the answer to: How fulfilling is your job supposed to feel/be? Is it possible to be both an introvert and a successful middle school teacher? (If so, how do you do it??) How can you tell the difference between God challenging you with hard things to overcome and God making something hard/gross as a message for you to stop it and look elsewhere?
- In slightly less existentially confusing teaching news, I'm excited about opportunities for more awesome collaboration and teamwork with my fellow Language Arts (and other) teachers! There have been a lot of exciting ideas and plans floating around, so I'm looking forward to continued discussions and seeing some of these helpful collaborative ideas come to fruition!
- Daniel and I have been doing pretty well just in terms of ourselves also, I think. We've been continuing to work on things (individually and together), and we're hoping our new furniture arrangement will help us to spend more time together while we're working (moved my "grading couch" up to the office). We are totally also looking forward to being able to spend time with both sides of the S-J family this Christmas! Yayyyyyy! Recently we were really moved by a cool article where a 5-year-old asked why, on Jesus' birthday, we give everyone but Him presents, so we're looking into how we can make this holiday more about doing things for Jesus (via "the least of these") and less about what material things we want for ourselves. (see our "Christmas list" here.)
So that's the round-up, more or less! Plotting Christmas travel and counting down the school days (but only for my kids' benefit, of course...). Hope you and yours are well and wishing you all a fantabulous Christmas!
~Rebekah
How can you tell the difference between God challenging you with hard things to overcome and God making something hard/gross as a message for you to stop it and look elsewhere?
ReplyDeleteSuper hard question. I wouldn't say that there's really any way to know for sure. I guess staying prayerful is the only way to do it. And if you're not hearing back (or think you're not), just use your own judgment. I've struggled with very similar things before. I would say that first of all, God gives us our own intuition, as well as our own free will. It's not just up to God, but rather up to us to let God work through us in whatever we do.
And I know you said you know all of this stuff, but I'm going to remind you, because it bears repeating. It's your first year teaching! They're middle schoolers! It's ridiculously, ridiculously hard! It does get better as time goes on. My mom began teaching middle school at 50. She hadn't been in a classroom since student teaching 25 years before that. There were many, many days she wanted to quit. To be honest, there are still days she wants to quit. But only if you really give it the chance to work itself out do you actually find out if the rewards outweigh the stress. You're no good to anyone if you're so frazzled by work that you're not doing a good job (either there, or in your outside life). But at the same time, you can't expect to change the world and make everything better in your first year.
You are an amazing, gifted, wonderful person, who is going to find out what God is calling you to do. If it's teaching, it will get better. If it's something else, you'll find out sometime. But either way, you're going to be great. It just takes a lot of work. Remember, there are a lot of people out in the world who are rooting for you, and who believe in you. Yay Rebekah!
--DLick
You almost made me cry. Thanks -- I really needed to hear that right now. =)
ReplyDelete~Rebekah