Real Talk- A Time to Rest

It’s that time of year again….the point in the school year where everyone asks anyone in a school setting what they are planning to do in the summer.  Being a teacher, I am not immune from asking nor receiving this question so what am I planning to do???

Some answer comes falling from my lips….gaining professional development hours to keep up my NH Teacher Certification….writing letters to people….visiting friends and camp….resting………..

Ah, rest.  What a loaded and needed word.  According to an Oxford dictionary, rest means “cease work or movement in order to relax, sleep or recover strength…..allow to be inactive in order to regain strength or health.”  One of the definitions in Merriam-Webster says “peace of mind or spirit.”  After this particular school year, I feel in desperate need to search and find rest.  This year I have put myself out there more than ever before as a teacher, it seems, and have experienced great joy in building better and deeper rapport with my students all the while fighting in the midst of the most vivid battles for my mind and emotions.  I know I have connected with several students individually in the ways I have prayed about for so long and yet, now that they are that close, my own hyper awareness of my flaws is exacerbated and I don’t feel good enough. 

All year I have wrestled with giving up in so many ways.  I have actually sat down and had conversations with my bosses about me resigning and stepping down for the good of the school.  The nature of my roller coaster and my inconsistency is not what these students need.  They deserve a life modeled and lived by faith and quiet trust in the midst of the storms knowing that God’s got this.  They don’t need to worry about is today going to be a good day where we can laugh with Miss Chambers or a day where we need to be quiet and careful because she just may break.  That’s not a fair burden for anyone to have to carry.  And so I have fought with the idea that maybe stepping away is what is best for everyone.

I still struggle there.  If I am so broken, maybe I’m in a place where I need to step away to get whole again before trying again in ministry to others.  To be a little selfish and as Lori Brown Harris said, “I’m going to learn how to breathe, not so I can teach someone else to breathe but because I need to breathe. And it’s the same way about approaching God’s Word… it’s not so I can teach it to someone else but it’s because I need it.” 

So what will I do this summer…rest, recoup, and maybe seriously look at getting into some sort of counseling.  The school year is extremely hard to get into that because of the hours I spend at school overlapping directly with available office hours.  So maybe this summer, it’ll be investing time there. It’s not the first time I have thought about it and certainly has been suggested by people who are close to me, but listening to a podcast with Lori Brown Harris, may have been the two-by-four across the head to bring the suggestion home.  She said, “Yes, you need therapy.  You need someone else speaking into your life who doesn’t need you…Yes, I had a lot of people in my life and I could share with them but I needed someone who didn’t need me.  Someone I could dump a load on and just walk away…someone on the outside to make sense of my puzzle pieces and help me put them back together.” 

I have too much sense of obligation and too deep love for my students to not finish out this school year and I just really pray that these six weeks of school that are left are ones that I take the time to take care of my own spiritual journey because it doesn’t have to wait until summer to begin.  This April break, I got real with God and asked Him to help me be willing to make changes in some of my routine to help.  I know someone who recently cut sugar out of their diet for a time and they shared with me how much it improved their mentality and such and though I don’t plan to cut sugar, I do plan on cutting out some of the forms of needless entertainment to make time and space for other things that are more edifying and profitable.  I think that will help.  There are times I want to spend with God, podcasts I want to listen to, books I want to read and I said I didn’t have time, but I simply was wasting the time in other less than ideal ways.  So for now I want to reorganize and redirect my energies and this summer, I want to work on the deeper layers of my life that need some major threshing. 

That’s the plan….I just pray I have open hands to follow through with it.  Thanks for reading and for praying alongside.  What’s your real talk?  Where are you at in your journey?  Feel free to write me a line here or in a message so I can pray and know we are not walking alone. 

Until next time,

In Christ,

Joy Lynn