I started teaching middle school seven years ago.  My career has had its ups and downs, but for the most part, I would tell you that I loved most days of my job.  Three years ago, I hit a bit of a rocky patch as I experienced my first “holy discontent” with teaching.  God moved me closer to my family and provided another amazing teaching job.  However, the church He wanted me to be a part of was an hour away from my job.  Honestly, for three years, I would have said that was an obstacle, but I see now how that was only a piece of God’s plan coming together.

Because I was an hour away from my church, I was not able to get involved with the student ministry like I had anticipated.  My passion had always been driven by student ministry and being around teenagers.  However, the distance forced me to take a different role.  I began working with volunteers in our student ministry: recruiting, training, equipping, caring for, loving on, etc.  And without me knowing it, my passion began to slowly shift.

About a year ago, my pastor, Perry Noble, asked the question, “What makes you lose sleep at night?”  My immediate answer was working with teenagers, but that answer just didn’t feel right.  So, ironically enough, I lost sleep over pondering this question and realized that my heart wasn’t just for students anymore.

Fast forward to this school year, back in September I began to feel my second “holy discontent” and began praying that God would show me my next move.  Fully expecting Him to wait until the last minute, He totally knocked my socks off when he provided His answer back in January.  That was when I was presented with the opportunity to leave teaching and to begin a position at my church working with volunteers.  So…after a season of intense prayer and some middle-of-the-night conversations with God, I get what’s He’s been up to.  I see how this set of dots connect.

Right now, I am in the bittersweet season of closing the door to one chapter of my life and stepping into something brand new.  Something that will stretch me like I’ve never been stretched and pull me in ways that I’m not sure I’m real comfortable with.  But as I see God move at NewSpring Church every single week, I am totally overwhelmed with excitement that He would chose me to be a part of what He’s doing.  So, I ask you to pray for me these days…pray that packing up my classroom won’t bring too much stress and that moving into a brand new phase of life will bring such a sense of peace.  Pray that I will let this season be a reminder that God does know exactly what He’s doing  and that that trust will spur further obedience in this plan He’s got for me.

I have watched this McDonald’s be built from scratch.  I pass it every morning and afternoon on my way to and from work, and every time I see it, something is different–some type of progress has been made.  They put the golden arches up just this week, and I got so excited.  Now I didn’t get so excited because I love Mickey D’s that much (I mean, they do have the best french fries).  I got so excited because it’s almost finished and I’ve watched the whole thing happen right before my eyes.

I love seeing progress!  For example, I love painting–not painting pictures and such, but painting walls.  I love how you can see progress with just one swipe of the roller.  The progress is obvious.  You can easily see how much you’ve accomplished and how much you have left.  There’s nothing to wonder about.

I think this is why this season of waiting on God is so difficult.  Many days come and go and I don’t really see any progress.  I can’t really see how much has been accomplished or how much farther I have to go.  I was reading in Ruth this week and was reminded of the invisible hand of God.  Every time I read this book, I have to remind myself that Ruth was not on the outside looking in.  Even though I can see God moving and making progress throughout the whole story, poor Ruth sits in the middle of her circumstances uncertain of what’s coming and uncertain about the purpose of what’s happening.  I can definitely relate to that!

I don’t think it’s coincidental that Paul chooses the verb “stand” in Ephesians 6 when he talks about us putting on the full armor of God:  ”Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to STAND your ground, and after you have done everything, to STAND.  STAND firm then…” (Eph. 6:13-14).  Sometimes in the middle of our uncertainty  or our doubt or our feeling that we’re not making any progress, our job is not to WORK harder or RUN in a different direction or TRY to find answers for ourselves.  In those seasons, it might simply be our job to STAND…stand in the certainty that we have a God who loves us and that we can trust Him to be at work in us.  We can STAND on the promises He makes to us that He has a good purpose for us and that, through our obedience, He is constantly making progress toward that purpose.

And by the end of her story, Ruth sees how this is true.  She sees how God was at work the whole time and there was never anything to wonder about.  How exciting to think of being in that place one day!

As I pondered all of this, I was taken to 1 Corinthians 12:12-31. This is where Paul tells the church that they are one body and that they are each different parts of that body. He says that “God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as He wanted them to be” (v. 18). So, God has made some of us to be the head, and some to be the neck, and some to be the arm, and some to be the feet, and He has even given someone the job of being the left thumb. And like my left thumb, this may seem like one of those jobs you don’t really want to have…one that doesn’t seem really important most days. However, as I have learned this week, my left thumb is super important and I can’t wait to have mine back to normal. So whether you’re the left thumb or the toe nail on the pinky toe, you have a special job to the body and it’s a job that only you can do. So let’s get out there and do our job in the body of Christ because God has lots of work to do through us!

Hughes poses the question, “What happens to a dream deferred?” He then offers some suggestions for what he thinks might be the answer: “Does it dry up 
like a raisin in the sun? 
Or fester like a sore– 
And then run? 
Does it stink like rotten meat? 
Or crust and sugar over– 
like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags 
like a heavy load. Or does it explode?”

Every time I have read this poem, I have felt sorry for the person it applied to. I felt sorry for the person whose dream has been deferred…the person who has been told to wait for his dream to come true. As I read this poem the other day, and as I stand in the middle of a prolonged season of waiting, I saw myself in the poem and realized that I, too, often ponder these same questions:

What does happen to a dream while you’re waiting for it to come true? Does to dry up and eventually die, leaving you with only a memory of it? Or does it become infected with bitterness and frustration and grow into something that causes you pain? Or does it begin to stink and make you sick every time you think about it? Or does it become so heavy to carry that you buckle under its weight and it just makes you want to give up?

The writer of Proverbs makes a similar statement, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Not to be too redundant, but it seems that many people agree that it stinks to be waiting for your hopes and dreams to come true. So, I can’t help but ask the obvious question: What do we do when we find ourselves there? We can’t just complain and whine and give up.

Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” In the midst of a dream deferred, the way for me to hold onto hope is my faith. I have faith in God’s promises, so I can also have hope that He’s got good things planned for me. I have faith that God is who He says He is, so I can also have hope that He’s going to be faithful. I have faith that God loves me, so I can also have hope that He’s walking right beside me. And as a result of all of this, I don’t have to worry about what happens to a dream deferred…I can trust that if MY dream does not come true that GOD’S dream for me will…and His dream is much better than mine (Eph. 3:20).

So, where will I be next year at this time?  No clue…but I’m going to spend this year focused on trusting God to take me to the exact spot where I can best serve Him and bring Him the most glory.

I had a flashback to this incident a few days later when I was pitching one of my little fits with God.  It was one of a similar hysteria to the little boy in the movie theatre.  I screamed…I cried…I stomped…I pouted.  I told God that it wasn’t fair that He wasn’t doing things my way.  That’s when I remembered the mother’s calm spirit and how she let her son “get it all out” and then calmly took his hand and walked him in to see his movie.

In her book So Long Insecurities, Beth Moore says, “We need a place we can go when, as much as we loathe it, we are needy and hysterical…I need someone who will love me when I hate myself.  And yes, someone who will love me again and again until I kiss this terrestrial sod good-bye.”  How awesome is my God?!  Now, I don’t know if the lady at the theater was doing it on purpose, but she showed me a picture of God that day.  He reacted a lot like her when I threw my fit…he calmly waited for me to say my piece (even if some…okay most…of it was undeserved and just plain stupid and selfish).  He let me get it off my chest.  Then He took my hand and walked me into the place we were going before I stopped us with my hissy-fit.

Psalm 20:1 says, “May the Lord answer you when you are in distress.”  And in this case, his answer to my distress was one I have heard before…OBEY ME AND ENJOY IT!   (My friend, Vanessa, has some experience with this too.)  And right now, obedience means standing still.  If I don’t continue in the tasks God has put me in the middle of right now, I am taking steps away from Him.  That means that I continue teaching school right now and I continue driving an hour to serve at church.  I continue learning about finding my security in Christ.  What’s more important (and harder) is that I find joy in the middle of this obedience.  I can’t just put my “game face” on or trudge through it.  I can’t complain my way through it.  Instead, I have to savor every minute of it, dive into these tasks and find the purpose of them, and realize that there are people who need to see Jesus in me right where I am right now.  Bottom line…I can’t waste this time with fits and whining!  That’s not obedience!

Tip #1:  Color-coding! I color-code most everything in my personal life, but I am extremely over-the-top about color-coding in my classroom.  Each class is assigned a color, and I meticulously use that color throughout the year.  For example, my 4th period class this year is GREEN.  That means they have GREEN writing folders, GREEN file folders, I use  a GREEN marker on the board for their agenda, I use GREEN ink on my calendar for this class’s due dates…you get the picture.  I know this seems over the top, but it keeps everything organized in my mind.

Tip #2:  Plastic Drawers! I swear by these!  Each class has a drawer where they turn in EVERYTHING.  I seriously don’t take any papers from my students EVER.  They place everything (signed papers, essays, homework, etc.) in their class drawer.  This way I don’t have a chance to lay papers down and lose them.

Tip #3:  Dollar Store Buys! During the school year, I am a dollar store junkie.  I stop by any dollar store any time I can.  I stock up on school supplies.  You can get all kinds of stuff for $1…dictionaries, thesauruses, post-it notes, index cards, pencil sharpeners, etc.  Along those same lines, I have learned that it is easier for me to keep a stock in basic supplies (pencils, papers, erasers) than to fight the battle with students who don’t bring those things with them to class.

Tip #4:  Duct Tape! I cannot take credit for this one at all.  My good friend suggested this to me.  I use duct tape to mark where the students’ desks go in my classroom.  This is probably the most Type-A thing I do at school . However, it really has made life so much less stressful.  At the end of the day, instead of me spending time straightening desks, I can have my students fix them just the way I like them.  This is also great for when we do group work.  I like working in groups, but I hate setting my desks up that way.  The duct tape makes it really easy for us to move desks back into place at the end of class.  And…now they make fun duct tape, so that makes it even better.

Tip #5:  Labels! I got my fancy label maker for Christmas last year.  I use this to label everything in my room so that my students can help me stay organized.

Tip #6:  Pretty Pens! I love these pens for grading papers.  (I actually like them for many other things too!)  My education professors always stressed that red ink was “mean.”  So…these pens offer happy, fun colors that are “nicer”.  And, they don’t bleed through the papers.

This just may be my all-time favorite picture.  My friend Anna took it of me and a precious little girl named Devon while we were in Kenya back in June.  What makes me smile when I see this picture is the memories that come with it…

We were at a village in Segera, Kenya repairing the roofs on some of the huts.  This task blew me away because our tools were simply a piece of tarp and a machete.  (Just think about what we would be using in America to fix a roof.)  The Kenyans ladies replace the roofs on these huts about once a year.  We started this task by removing the grass from the existing roof on one of the huts.  As I made my way around one hut, little Devon made her way to my side and wrapped her little arm around my leg.  That was it…we were attached from that moment on.  I held her until my arms were tired (in such an incredibly good way).  In this picture, Devon is wearing my sunglasses and we are playing our own little version of peek-a-boo.  Devon was young, so her English was not great, but she knew what the features of your face were.  So, when she would put the sunglasses on, I simply pretended her eyes had disappeared.  This picture captures one of the moments when I would raise the glasses and she would open her eyes really really big to show me where her eyes were.  Then, she would let out the most amazing laugh!  We probably did this twenty or thirty times before Devon’s attention was diverted to something else.  As I was playing with her, one of the Kenyan men that was traveling with us said something that literally brought tears to my eyes: “She will never forget her time with the mzungo (white person).”  Wow…I know this is something I will never forget, but to think that something so silly can make a difference in little Devon’s life just blows me away.

From this I learned that I can do all sorts of things to show someone Jesus (and that too makes me smile)…that looks different from person to person and from place to place.  He can use even our smallest efforts to magnify himself.  So I’m praying that I won’t miss any opportunity-big or small- to show Jesus today with the words I say and the things I do.

With this in mind, I can say with confidence that I might just be the person that GPS’s were invented for.   My GPS has greatly simplified my life and has literally become my best friend.  I have become very dependent on this friend.  So much so that I don’t even look up directions on Google anymore.  I simply get in my car, plug in the GPS, type in the address, and drive.  It’s that simple, right?!  Well…it could be.  I could simply follow the pink line to my destination.  The GPS offers to do all the work.  It will calculate the miles, decide where to turn, and even estimate my arrival time.  If I were so trusting, I could enjoy the music from my IPod and just drive.  However, I find my finger attracted to the little button in the bottom corner of my GPS…the one that allows me to see what comes next.  And then I can hit it again and it will tell me the next step, and then I can get the next step, and so forth and so on until my GPS shows me the whole way to get to my destination. 

On a recent roadtrip, I made a few observations about how my walk with God is sometimes like traveling with my GPS.  He offers to do all of the work.  He wants to do the planning.  He wants to decide what turns I should take.  He wants to decide how many miles I should travel in one direction.  He draws that pink line and all I have to do is follow, but just like with my GPS, it’s not always that simple.  There are times that I wish I could hit that little button in the bottom corner…the one that shows me what’s coming next.  But alas…that button does not exist.   I can’t see what God is up to.  I can’t see where this road He has me on is leading.  I can’t even see what the destination is, and there’s no estimated time for my arrival.  I have no choice but to follow Him one step at a time. 

But you know what?!   (And this is what I’m having to learn right now.)  As frustrating as that is sometimes…that’s sort of the beauty of it too!  God doesn’t want to just create the directions and then set me on my way.  He wants to walk along with me.  He wants me to obey what He is telling me right now, today.   He wants me to focus on this step, not the next one or the one that I will take in 6 months.  He wants me to be so focused on Him that following just comes naturally. 

Matthew 6:34 says it best:  “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”  In other words, don’t worry about what’s coming.  God is giving me directions one step at a time.  All I have to do it walk right beside Him and He’s going to get me exactly where I should be.

That was all well and good until my junior year when I decided I was miserable studying for law school and felt God telling me I needed to change my major to education.  And then after graduation, my college boyfriend and I broke up.   Then I moved back to my parents to go to graduate school.  You get the picture…one by one, the details of my well-crafted and much desired plan began to unravel.

There are still days, as I sit here as a 29-year-old, single school teacher, that I wonder why God didn’t like my plan.  And then it hits me (over and over again) that He didn’t like it because something huge was missing from it…He was!  My plan had me putting faith in just that…the plan.  I was finding my security in my circumstances and in what I thought would make me happy and in my ability to control the things around me.

I am currently reading Pete Wilson’s Plan B where he addresses just this–the way we respond to God when our circumstances aren’t what we had hoped for.  In a recent sermon Pete preached at NewSpring Church, he said, “My one assignment is to respond to my circumstances confident that God is with me.”  God doesn’t ask me to work out the details or to make things better; He simply asks me to be confident that He’s got it.  Pete also posed this convicting question, “Could I pursue God if He didn’t do anything else for me?  Could I realize that I still owe Him everything?”  Ouch…so that means…right now, at this moment, in these circumstances, God’s grace has saved me and quite frankly that should be enough for me to just do it God’s way without question or hesitation or disappointment.

So it all comes down to this–I have to know that I have a God I can trust:  “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory…” (Ephesians 3:20-21)  Father, let my trust in You and Your plan bring You glory!