It was a hard summer for a few reasons, and I will try to share this with as much clarity as I can. I left school, having been told by three professors that I was emotionally unstable and professionally inept. PHEW. It didn't make sense to me either. How does one take that?? I didn't know how to take it and felt completely misunderstood. I remember that their culminating opinion (and I wrote it down) was that "Mary Sue, it's not your teaching or your ability to write lesson plans or your love of kids. Its that we don't think you are emotinally or professionally ready." I didn't even know they could do that! I was totally blown away - I had never had a bad relationship with a professor or teacher. I am pretty sure that I was depressed this summer because of it. These statements were taken from a few situations and blow way out of proportion. They didn't even know the full story from any situation they addressed. All the while that events were shaping the course of my student teaching experiences, I was keeping them updated, along with family and close friends -- and they were all a buzz trying to figure out why my professors were making the claims that they did, too. So, I went home with a huge hole cute out of my head and heart, trying to weed out the truthful things they did say and the false things that their impressions lead them to believe. I felt terrible because every day it was like I started at square one again - never really getting anywhere. Nothing made sense. And, my parents were the first to hear of it all, every day. They bore much with patience and love. I owe them a great deal. I owe others a great deal, too. The weekend I was to graduate, some very dear family friends came to visit us and they told me it was my day and we could go and do anything that I wanted to do. Ha. What is there to do in MI? But, I appreciated the sentiment. We camped out in the living room with a movie and pizza that night. Others from church offered their sympathies and bemusements, as I tried to explain the situations and the various accompanying reactions.
All summer, I struggled with purpose. What did God have for me now? I had planned on retaking student teaching, but was I really supposed to? I had never failed a class in my life (not that I couldn't have - by God's grace, I did well). How do you go back and fix and re-learn what you thought you knew? How do you battle the bitterness derived from ignorant people who didn't have to pay the cost of returning for yet another semester? ARG. It makes me angry thinking about it. What will I say when I see those professors again? I have nothing to say to them. I want to react well, but how?
A most ironic part of my summer, being so down in the dumps and feeling purposeless was my job at the youth home. I have NEVER shared the Gospel MORE than I did this summer. I was placed on a Sunday schedule, and literally attended church with my family twice the entire summer. I had never worked Sundays before and my parents had always raised us to live so. However, this job is kind of like a hospital. You cannot just lock them up, turn off the lights, and return at 8 a.m. So, I took the Sunday schedule. It was AMAZING. God fueled my time with the ladies there and because it was a consistent schedule, I was able to do so much and they were enabled to prepare themselves for my shift. God fueled my time with a few really great things. First of all, He gave me this awesome vision of teaching these girls life skills, self confidence, and the Bible. So, as He inspired lessons and activities, I wrote and taught them. It was so great! I grew to anticipate my Sunday shift with them. I was able to lead two girls to Christ, who are both recovering drug addicts (PRAISE GOD!) and able to teach various aspects of Biblical culture (what I learned and knew I taught them). MAN, it was just the coolest thing. I love those girls.
So, you might imagine my slight confusion at the success of teaching there and the train wreck I was in the previous months. I can hardly explain it. Now when I look back -- and this is such a HUGE understatement -- my teaching experience this fall and this spring is night and day difference. It is, so much so, that I really feel like there was a greater power at work. I don't why it happened. I know I have changed and grown up a lot from it. I am still bitter towards my professors when I think about it (which you can pray for me about!). If only they knew me, knew my experience at the youth home, knew that I was not at all what they thought -- that their few short impressions were not at all truth. Man.
SO NOW, here is my major update. I am student teaching again and this time -- it has been completely different. It is absolutely amazing! This was the semester I had hoped for last semester, the experiences that I desired with students. I am not kidding! I just stand back and my jaw inwardly drops at times. I have a wonderful supervising teacher, two new professors (who are my advisors; I do not have the ones I had last semester), and I have begun this semester so much more confident and ready for the tasks that I know lay ahead. I praise God, for He is my strength and provision! Also, He provided a place for me to stay, with my cousin Lara, only 10 minutes away from my schools. Crazy, right?!
From all of this, I have learned some really important lessons and am continuing to learn them.
I have learned that:
- When I give voice to my insecurities or fears, they wrap around me and choke out any confidence that I might have. When I start voicing my fears as if they are reality, then I give them the freedom to linger longer.
- I can only do my best for this day. This day He has given to me. I will rejoice in it.
- Not every claim made against you is valid, even when the claims are made by trusted advisors.
- God knows, He loves, He cares. He knew I needed to go through this tough time. He knew I needed to be challenged. It hurt a lot. I wish I could be totally humble in this situation, yet I still feel like it was not all my doing. Circumstances were incredibly odd.
- I cannot push my will onto God. I dreamt about China for four years, and was convinced in many ways that was where I was supposed to be. Deep down, there were areas that were not so sure, outside of the normal curiosities or questions.
- Hiccups aren't necessarily just tests that God wants you to push through to build your faith (although He does use them for that, too). They can also be ways that God communicates a need for change in direction. There were many, many hiccups before China. MANY. All the while, I just thought that God wanted me to push through them and I voiced my dedication to this trip and His "calling" more than to my relationship with Him. Man, it stinks to be wrong with something like that.
For now, I am trying to learn to rest back in the Potter's Hands. This post only scratches the surface of what I have learned and what I am learning. I am learning to trust God again. I am learning to just have faith -- which sometimes you have to struggle without it to understand how awesome God is when you do have it. I am learning step by step, and consider myself a spiritual baby again, in some ways. I do need my Father.
Pray that God would help me to be faithful to Him on a daily basis. I need Him more than I need any job or friendship or just anything.
I may not understand why all of this had to happen, but in the end, I will be refined clay. I just know it.
