Nine years ago a fellow teacher gave me a shoebox covered in bright wrapping paper with a sticky note labeled "Galations 6:9 Do not grow weary in doing what is right..." She told me to keep special thoughts, notes, pictures, and cards inside to counter thoughts of giving up on teaching. Everytime a student or parent wrote a "thank you" or "I love you" I slipped it inside the shiny, light green cover. After the first year, I put it away in a cabinet. I hardly ever remembered I even had it as time passed. Whenever it would catch my eye, I'd smile and imagine all the good thoughts that were insided, but I never looked.
This year has been full of change, but looking back, the past nine years have been constant change. And, today I sat and wondered if any of the change has been positive advancement. What do I have to show for the past nine years? Nine years ago I was scraping for pennies as a private school teacher and newly married. The future looked bright and life seemed to be settling in perfectly. We knew every year we would be further along in our successes. Marriage would bring a family with children. One day we would own a house. And, mabye I'd get to be a stay at home mom that kissed her husband good-bye in the morning while I drove in the car pool to school and shopped for window treatments. As we moved to the pituresque, "Pleasantville" community of Celebration, FL it was so easy to envision dreams coming to life. Less than two years later our family grew to three with a baby boy. I was even a stay at home mom in our new house.
So where did it grow wrong? Oh, right...it all went terribly wrong the February morning he walked out. A marriage, a house, a big move, a baby...but that's a different blog for a different day. Let's skip that nightmare for a second and look at where life has brought me today. Well, I'm still scraping for pennies at a private school, wondering if I'll ever be able to buy my own house, and dreaming of a husband that I can kiss good-bye in the morning while I car pool to school and shop for window treatments. So much change, yet nothing has changed, and it's time.
This summer I've thought over and over about my career. Is this still what I am supposed to do? Can I still afford to make a job out of what is really a ministry? Is this where I need change? Walking aimlessly around my house as I was thinking, I caught sight of the paper wrapped shoebox. For the first time in nine years I looked inside. What a trip...there were cards from parents expressing their overwhelming gratitude for the change in their child's life, and notes from kids that documented I was indeed the "world's greatest teacher." I laughed out loud remembering each child and how much I loved them. I found letters from past students that remained in touch with me long after I was gone from their school. There was even an article about my first teaching year stating that I love to write. Maybe that was the real reason I was drawn to look inside...to remind me of my passion, my purpose, my direction.
So maybe life hasn't brought much change to me in the past nine years, but hopefully I have brought change to the lives of the people in that box. And perhaps that box will bring change to me.
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