Teaching

This past week I jumped into a teaching job. I work for a third party company that hires teachers to teach computer science in schools. I'm in an elementary school and work 4 days a week. It's only been a week but I love being back in the classroom. My boss prepares the content for me and makes sure it meets the standards so I just get to teach. It's fun:) Kids are still kids though and I think I tallied up that I see somewhere around 250-300 kids a week. It's weird being a teacher but not really being a part of the community. I'm hoping that gets better.

I'm staying with the kids with autism for now. I really enjoy my clients and it would be hard to leave, but my heart is teaching. It's been an interesting week of wondering about that line of being selfish and pushing my way into an opportunity or staying where I'm at. Most people encouraged me to take advantage of the teaching opportunity because it's what makes me happy. This is true, it does make me happy. There's nothing like it for me. But I have felt selfish in the process. I'm not sure that I love the sentence "Do what makes you happy". I guess it makes me wonder about God and where He comes into that sentence.

More than anything I want Him and I guess because of the hardships of this year happiness no longer equals the best for me. So it's amusing to me now that I'm learning to trust that this was truly a gift from Him and not just something that's going to make me happy. God wants my best. Jeremiah 29:11 promises me that. There are many more verses that remind of the fact that He's my father and more than anything He wants the absolute best for me. I often times don't know what that is and shouldn't attempt to pretend to know what it is. So I'm working on walking in the fact that He loves me, enough to bring a job into my life that I truly enjoy.

It sounds so simple. And I know that He loves me. It's amazing to me that even after all I've walked through I can still question His undeniable love for me. That's when I realize how self-absorbed I've become and have to come back to His feet. That's where I find love, in His arms, at His feet, in His word. His love for me is fundamental, the basis of my existence. It's bigger and greater and wider than I will ever comprehend. And yet that is what I'm working on; comprehending a fraction of His amazing love for me and the FACT that He wants to give us gifts.

The Real Me

The real me doesn't want to be here and talked myself out of being here this weekend. I told myself that it would be easier if we just moved home and worked on saving money. I told myself how easy it would be to get a teaching job there and how we could live with family and just be around family again. I told myself it would be easy.

I'm craving easy these days. Everything within me is crying out for something easy. But that's not what we were promised. I've had a day of just living it out and experiencing the pain of not being where I want to be.

Then I remembered. Then I realized. This isn't about me. I would probably feeling very similarly if we were overseas somewhere as "real" missionaries. The grass is always greener on the other side. It always will be.

And God reminded me of when Danny and I were dating; how I ran away when it got hard because it was easier to be in control of that relationship and not be affected like it and have to work through it. I ran away from ESOL too I think. I wasn't ready to push through it. Guess what. Life hasn't gotten easier. Running away from something I'm uncomfortable with doesn't make it easier. It only means that I'm putting it off. This inevitably means that being where I think I want to be right now would really only be just as hard, if not harder, than where I am right now.

That's the real me.