Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. (James 1:2-3)
Dude. You are racking up the perseverance. Am I right? Are
you feeling the tsunami of perseverance wash over you as you face trials of
many kinds right now?
I’m not really one to make jokes using scripture – well, yes
I am – but this is no joke. The two weeks before school starts are, in my book,
the “trials of many kinds” to which Paul is referring. That veteran teacher
who, in a meeting of 140 people, raises her hand in response to the “If there
aren’t any more questions, we will let you go for the day” only to ask when the
A/C is going to be turned on in room 208. Trials. The announcement that the 800
stacks of pads that you have fully stocked in your desk – office referrals,
nurse’s passes, library passes – will be tossed and replaced with new ones. Oh
goodie! Trials. The six hours a day of sitting in a plastic chair in the
cafeteria watching really bad Powerpoint presentations. Trials. Oh, and then
the team building exercises. Lord have mercy on my sour attitude soul, but
those are trials. And the poor administrators who are equally as beat down by
the requisite rules and obligatory presentation of said rules. They too want to
just see the kids and get going. It’s what we all want, but instead we are
racking up the perseverance.
It’s not that I hate team building or updates to the system
or questions (I am a teacher after all, and “there’s no such thing as a dumb
question”). I just hate the way my mind is working while enduring the meetings
and the questions. I just want to work in
my room. I have a checklist of checklists going. I’m so excited to get
started that I can’t stand to sit. And I’m full of hope that this year is going to be the best year
yet. And I’m even more confident that I, yes I, can do it! I can, with my own strength (and just the right
amount of checklists) DO. THIS.
I frequently field the question, “Why expo markers?” as
people read my blog. (Amusingly, no one asks, “Why wine?”) And my reply is
always the same: I need three things to successfully navigate a school year –
Jesus, wine, and expo markers. And in that order.
I think heaven will be full of new school supplies. Am I
right? Sharpened pencils and fresh notebooks – oh the glory! For me, the
ultimate school supply is the expo marker package. So many colors. Such bold
ink. It’s a new, fresh start every year, and I love a fresh start.
But this is what happens. I take my favorite one – purple –
and I make the most beautiful strokes on the clean whiteboard. It’s art for me
to display my “essential question” in bold, brilliant expo. And that purple
holds out for weeks. It really does. But occasionally between class periods, I
forget to put the cap on. Or I use so much ink on the first three weeks that it
starts to fade. Six weeks in, sometimes sooner, and I’m angrily chunking the
marker in the trash, mad that my favorite color is gone. Mad that I spent
twenty bucks on that package and we have a man down. Realistically, that marker
isn’t made to go forever, but I’m mad that it didn’t. Logical? No. Honest? For
sure.
As teachers, keepers of these precious, young souls, we are called
to exude love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness
and self-control every single day. (Gal. 5:22-23) All of those? Daily? Get
real. We want to shout out to God, “But have you seen my classroom?! My
responsibilities? My kids?!” And God patiently and calmly replies, “Yes, I
have.” And then He says this:
God’s grace. God’s power. And not – hard for us doers to
hear – our own. As for us, we use up all
of our caffeine-inspired joy before second period. We expend all of our patience
on little Lacy. We get overwhelmed by the stack of papers to be graded. And
then, exasperated, we angrily throw in the towel because we can’t do it all. Sometimes,
we get distracted by the demands and we forget to put the cap back on,
metaphorically speaking, of course. If we don’t care for ourselves properly - resting, re-energizing, refocusing our true purpose - we burn out too. All
too quickly. And that’s okay. For in our weakness, His power is made perfect.
In fact, I would be so bold as to say that He’s glad when our energy and enthusiasm
wain. That’s when we finally let Him join us in our work.
When Paul receives the promise that God’s grace and power
are his to claim, Paul responds with this:
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)
Point of clarification: Delight in weakness, insults, persecutions
doesn’t mean complaining. And it doesn’t mean using them as an excuse. It means
own the weakness. Say, “I can’t do
this.” We love it when, after watching our student bang his forehead and tap
his pencil and wallow in anguish, he finally says, “Can you help me? This is
really hard.” When we own the weakness and ask for help, that’s where the
real progress begins.
So I encourage you to join me. We can start off this year with 2
Corinthians 12:9-10 as our anchor. When we finally admit that we can’t do it
all, we’re on the right track, so we might as well start now. Let's move over. Let's let Him do more. We can’t do it all, but together with Christ, we can do more than we ever
imagined. He promises that:
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to HIS power that is at work within us (Ephesians 3:20).