“Jill, you’re one of those people who is too busy making cool stuff to write a post about it.” This from my friend, Rachel, on the rare, but beautiful, times when she gets to visit my house. We inevitably walk through my house with me pointing out the various projects we have either started, completed, or are right in the midst of. She asks where the inspiration comes from or how we know how to do it that way or with those materials. The answers I give most often is “I wanted a (table, bed, wreath, quilt, shelf, art, wall color, skill) and I figured if someone else is able to make one, I can too.” and “I didn’t know how to _______ so I Googled it, watched a video, asked an expert, or called my dad.” I am surprised at Rachel’s surprise because it all seems so normal to me. A need presents itself and I find a solution.
That is how I am wired. Enneagram One. Reformer. I don’t do well creating from nothing, but give me an issue and I can find a solution. Give me a need and I can find a way. Give me some found wood and I can make a table. Or a wall hanging. Or a stand for the dehumidifier in the garage. (Well, that last one was Brandon, but you get the picture.)
As I’ve gone back to work full-time as a teacher, I’ve begun to lose this part of me. It’s harder to find time to build, dream, plan, discern, think, breathe, sleep. This is not the life I imagined for myself or for my family. I want to create. To build. To imagine. To emote through a project. To complete something and call it done. Teaching does not afford me this luxury. It is never done. The next lesson is waiting to be prepped. The next paper is waiting, needing to be graded. The next student is longing to be seen and heard, noticed and valued. Teaching is a marvelous profession but I’m not sure it completes me in the way that it completes other teacher friends of mine. I’m learning to be okay with that but it sure can feel lonely and isolating. And confusing.
I’ve been trained for several professions – retail, teacher, counselor, minister, entrepreneur, consultant. I hold a degree in Mathematics, another in Educational Psychology, and a third in Theology. For half of my adult life I’ve raised kids as my full-time work. That work was full of steep learning curves and joyous once-in-a-lifetime moments. I chose to do that work and would choose it again every single time. But as the very wise Justin Luckett says, “Every time you say yes to one thing, you are saying no to something else.” I said yes to raising my kiddos and yes to making homemade playdough and yes to planting gardens to see what would grow and yes to being intensely engaged in the development of these human beings while they are under my care. I am forever grateful for all of the chances to say yes and for all the times I had strength to say yes because they are just plain fantastic human beings. I could not be prouder of them. And at the same time I said yes all of those times, I was saying no to advancing my career. I said no to being licensed as a counselor. I said no to pastoring a church that would be willing to [gasp!] call a woman as their pastor. I said no to tucking years under my belt working for a school or a children’s home.
I came out of raising my kids full-time and found that it was really easy for me to feel embarrassed about my journey. I got easily defensive that I didn’t have much to show for myself professionally. I started a sewing business and tutored and worked part-time at the church that my husband pastored but all of those things felt lesser than the accomplishments of my [friends, compatriots, modern-day equivalents.] How can you compare a sewing business to opening your own counseling practice? How can you compare tutoring to years of faithful full-time service to a school system? How can you compare part-time ministry to full-time ministry, especially when your husband is the pastor (a.k.a., your boss!)? It’s like all of that time I spent pouring into the spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical development of my children was tainted. It was embarrassing. And something I found myself explaining away or apologizing for or getting defensive about.
As my children went off to school, I ventured back into the world of work. Frankly, we needed the money. Pastoring is not a lucrative profession. Especially when you move and have to sell a house and the housing market has tanked. An at-home sewing business is not lucrative either. So I began to look for a job and it was surprising that there weren’t fantastic opportunities waiting for me. I was ten years behind in padding my resume. I was ten years behind on technological advancements. I was ten years behind on networking. But schools always need teachers, especially math teachers.
So that brings us up to speed more or less. I’m teaching math at a local high school with the absolute best administration I have ever worked with and the most hilarious and dynamic bunch of co-workers you could as for. The students are fantastic and I feel like I make a difference when I am there. But it’s easy for me to feel anxious day in and day out while I am there. I think it’s because I’m really more of a project-oriented person. I like to delve deeply into a project and work on it until it is finished. And teaching is never really finished. Ever. This produces a lot of anxiety-available moments for me that I get to do good soul work around to make sure I am living in the now as much as possible and not spinning out of control about what might be to come. I think also the anxiety creeps in because teaching was the first professional job I ever had and I’ve been kicking myself lately at the thought that had I just kept teaching from age 22, I’d be close to retirement by now. And that leads me down the road of second-guessing getting a degree in math in the first place instead of following my original plan of becoming a doctor. And then I begin to question and agonize over all of the choices I’ve made that had negative consequences and that puts me further into the zone of panic and despair. It can be a vicious circle. Thanks be to God for the peace that passes understanding. God’s peace is an anchor for me in the twirling, swirling moments of second-guessing and rueing every decision I’ve ever made. God’s peace will snap me back to the present, invite me to lay my burdens down, take a deep breath and remember “All will be well and all will be well and all manner of things shall be well.”
Lately, in those moments, I hear Rachel saying, “You’re one of those people whose too busy doing Pinterest-y things to post about them.” She has encouraged me so many times to share about the things that I make or do or create. I haven’t shared before not because I was too busy but because I felt like the things I was doing weren’t important enough to share with anyone. Who would care about something I created? Maybe my momma or someone else who was also interested in a similar type of thing, but to share it with the whole world? Why? Just so large amounts of people could ignore it and confirm my worst fear that my life hasn’t really mattered at all, that I have consistently chosen poorly and wrongly and have wasted all my chances? No, thanks.
But I feel a tug lately, an incessant knocking on my heart’s door, to share my story with the world, to reflect Creator God creating in me, to be honest and forthright and plain about my struggles with fear and loneliness, anxiety and hopelessness, to practice the discipline of being silent, to be that which I have always prayed for my children to be in the world – sunshine and light. And I want to be obedient to any and every call God places on my life and to execute that call with joy in my heart. This post is my first step in obedience to that tug I have been feeling. May it be a blessing to all who read it. Amen.
