Truth #6: Reasons

5:28 PM Edit This 2 Comments »


It is a truth universally acknowledged that sometimes you only realize the message through suffering.

As most of you know, I ended up with a mind numbing set of classes.  I will not go into detail about any of it, so as to shade my professors from any criticism, and, admittedly, it could have just been a bad semester for them.  But these classes, boy, how I have shed tears and struggled to understand why this has happened to me.  ME! A great student, an eager-to-learn student, yearning for education. 

I have hated every second of my semester.  Dance has been the only haven, and I have lost my will to learn anything else.  All I asked for was somewhat stimulating discussion, or even busy work that would let me learn on my own.  Even through all of this, I still received a letter from my community director congratulating me on being one of the top students in the university.  So basically, I’ve succeeded in learning nothing and pretending that I have.

This has all led to something I have tried to push away year after year.  I would be a good teacher.

Ugh, how I absolutely despise those words.  I’d rather swim in the ocean than be a teacher, and those who really know me understand my great fear of open water.  Why would I want to work for the school system?  Why would I want to work for a university?  Why would I want to spend more time at these places that have bothered me and hurt me so deeply?  Why would I remain where I have been most disappointed?

Why, why?  Why would God want me to teach? 

But there it is time and again.  I complain and complain but provide solutions that would help the class be useful.  I say, “Why did so-and-so make us do this when it would have been so much better if they had done that?”…  And then ‘IT’ comes: “You’d be a good teacher” or “You should be a teacher” or “Right, you’re going to be a teacher” or “So, you want to be a teacher, right?”  No! I do not!!!!  And then I need to analyze my own desires.

Desires
1.     To help people
2.     To make things better
3.     To change the world
4.     To provide a safe, loving place for people who need it
5.     To help children
6.     To help people understand the importance of intelligence and love
7.     To help people make informed decisions
8.     To lead the world from behind the scenes
9.     To do wonderful things and pass the credit onto other people
10.  To help people better understand

God has made me to be a teacher, even if that isn’t the overall intention.  Why would He make me so helpful and so good at communicating?  I really have no idea, because you would think He’d couple it with a want to be a teacher.  But I really, emphatically, do NOT want to.  I have no idea what will happen in the future, but I feel like He just keeps nudging me in that direction.  And I have no idea why I am writing this, but maybe I’m admitting that it might be The Path.

If He wants me to, then I guess I really have no choice if I live the way I want to live.  Maybe in the future The Path will be clearer.  Maybe I’ll want to be a teacher, or maybe I’ll find something that is so similar but not the same and it will suffice.  Anyway, I surrender to the possibility that I might have to do the last thing I thought I would ever want to do.  God knows all, right?

"There was certainly at this moment, in Elizabeth's mind, a more gentle sensation towards the original, that she had ever felt in the height of their acquaintance."  (Chapter 43)

2 comments:

Don Flamingo said...

This sings a song in my soul.

My one desire I want to touch in life is to inspire, but I would like to inspire in a less daunting environment.

I know the answer might not ever be there for me, so meanwhile, I'm finding other directions to accomplish through. I would love to be a teacher, but it's just one of the possibilities out there for me. If I keep wandering around, eventually I'll understand a little better.

I think.

Katie Sue said...

You would be an amazing teacher! And it certainly would meet all of your goals! I hope you continue to follow God's prompting, even if it is to a place you least expect.

And while I hate your universal truth, it carries so much veracity. Sometimes I wish there were other ways, but as C.S. Lewis once said "Pain is the megaphone God uses to rouse a deaf world." If only we weren't so deaf sometimes...

Love you! And know you teach, even if you aren't officially in the capacity of teacher :-)