Silencing Defeat
Monday, January 20, 2014 Posted by Sara
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In the quiet summer days when I had ventured down to Texas for a little R&R, I considered seriously not returning to my job. I had spent the previous months finishing off a very difficult second year of teaching. It was a season in which I spent most weekends and evenings working and felt like little fruit was coming from my efforts. I felt defeated and discouraged and exhausted. The thought of enduring another year like that one made me cringe. My emotional health and my spiritual walk were shot. And I recall sitting in a park bench with my lifeless heart thinking, "life is too short to live like this."
I believe in retrospect, my year might have been aided had I opened up more with those around me about the difficulties I was experiencing. I had really convinced myself that everything that was going wrong in my class was my fault. It became such a habit in my mind that I'd gladly take on the blame for other things going on around me, "welp, that was probably me too." Lies are vicious.
I have since realized that so many of my challenges and experiences are actually common place to most teachers, even the most experienced. But in the moment, in the trenches of last year, I convinced myself otherwise.
I felt a little like a grumbling Israelite. "So you brought me to California to die, did you, Lord? Just bury me under my student debt, what a waste."
I did not hear a "thus sayeth the Lord." No angels, no fireworks, no visions. I heard nothing.
But in that moment, on that park bench I REMEMBERED.
I remembered who God is. I remembered that is is not like Him to lead me to places to die - but THROUGH the valley of the shadow of death, that I would know His nearness and faithfulness. I knew that I felt done with this assignment - but He was not done with me. He did not lead me to California, through two more years of school, to my dream school that it should end like this.
So I didn't pick up the phone. I went back to work. I prayed voraciously and got back on the saddle.
And I see God shifting things all around me now - that impossible dreams for education are in the works.
He is faithful. He is able. He is my OVERCOMING God.
And today I am thankful for His silence - which helped me REMEMBER who I was dealing with.
"Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands." Deuteronomy 8:2
"But then I recall all you have done, O LORD; I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago." Psalm 77:11
