Still Waiting...

I’m stuck deep in a creative rut right now.  Words don’t want to form into sentences, ideas resist being crafted into essays…most days it is easier to close the laptop and do the day-to-day tasks that keep piling up.  There’s always dishes, if I have a spare minutes.  I feel like life – progress -  has screeched to a stop.  If my hope is based on things on earth, there’s not much cause for joy or hope. 

But God says our hope is in him, and He does not change like shifting shadows.  When my heart breaks over my marriage, God is still good.  When my mind tells me I’ll still be sitting in the classroom – and my kids will still be sitting in daycare – in five years, God is still good.  I can’t tell you why He is good, but He IS, and I look for joy in that. 

That my mind and emotions are so scattered all over the map tells me that I’m not really looking to God for help.  I have not a single, tangible thing to offer as evidence that He will answer my prayers and fulfill my hopes.  In some of these hurts: my husband’s work ethic and his (in)ability to love me, answers have long been absent.  Yet the only possible hope I have for change is God, and I have no guarantee other than His word that He’ll come through.

Every morning, I whisper a Psalm to Him.  I tell him He is great, He is a conqueror, He is my protector.  I tell Him He is worthy of praise.  I praise Him for rescuing me from to pit.  And I hope that in time, my heart will begin to believe.  Then I lift weights, take a shower, make breakfasts and lunches, and dash off to work…late again.

And I surely hope He is all those things He claims. And that He wants to be those things to me.

A Long Run

I’ve been working on lots of projects lately: supplementary materials for a college textbook, lesson plans for the children’s ministry at church, posts for the Moms blog.  Between those good things and the daily routines of life and work, I haven’t been doing the sort of deep, expository writing that I helped me grow learn and grow through the months I was only working part time.  It doesn’t mean I haven’t been seeking; I just haven’t made time to process it all.  True to February fashion, I find myself tired, overwhelmed, and discouraged, without a clear picture or direction for yet another year.

On one hand, I am so grateful I didn’t take a risk on Cincinnati State.  Their enrollment has dropped yet again, and I certainly wouldn’t have had the number of classes needed to cover our budget.  My heart wasn’t in that work, as much as I wanted it to be, and it was right to walk away. 

But, I’m still here.  Still spending 1.5 hours each day driving and dropping off kids.  Still rushing, all the time.  Still giving the best of my energy to a classroom…to kids who aren’t my own.  I know all the rationales of why what I do is important, but I can’t seem to convince my heart.  There are bright spots, sure.  And work is important.  But as much as I’ve begged God to change my heart if He wants me to stay in the classroom, I still find myself unable to give my full heart to this profession.  In spite of the security, the need for me to provide financially, and the lack of a better alternative, I cannot convince myself that this is the purpose God has prepared for me.  I just wish I knew what that purpose was, and how to pay the bills in the meantime.

I think I am ready to step out and take a risk, but I don’t even know how.  I’ve exhausted the steps I know to take, and I just want to curl up in bed for a very long time.

I’ve started training for a half-marathon, sort of by accident.  It started with a text: “In the spirit of the day (New Year’s Day), how about a run?” and sort of turned into an excel spreadsheet populated with training runs.  I may have contributed to this decision, but I don’t remember it.  Anyway, I am not as young as I once was, and I do not remember running being this painful.  The more I try to hurry and get it done, especially if I’m on a treadmill, the more pain I feel in the ensuing days.  I am reluctantly learning that running has to be about the journey: making it to the top of the hill, peeking in the windows of the house they just built, finishing the conversation with my friend, dodging the lumbering black lab that just might turn into a foaming monster when I step on the wrong square of the sidewalk.  (True story: said dog barked at me, and I fell over in terror.  Literally, fell right into a street sign and had to grab on to keep from hitting the ground.  I am so good at this running thing.)  I think I could be OK with the metaphor of this life being a similar journey full of hills, twists, turns, and occasional dogs if I wasn’t watching my babies get bigger every day.  And they do.  This time I’m spending in my apple-scented classroom is time I can never get back.  Tonight I’ll stay here until 8:30, meeting with families and telling them what they should be doing to get their kid into college…and my own son won’t be doing his homework or practicing the piano because I won’t be there to make him do it. 

I’m still putting one foot in front of the other because I have to get home somehow.  Some days are more of a limping walk than a run, but what else can you do when your heart hurts?  Am I foolish for wanting more?  Greedy for wanting something different?  Am I only serving my heart’s desires, or am I following God’s leading?

I just don’t know.