It's
hard to know exactly why I waited a month into the school year to write this
letter to myself... To this year... But here it is, Columbus Day weekend, and
I'm finally still long enough to get it done. Sometimes, we wait because we
have no choice and sometimes waiting is the product of both circumstance and
patience. Maybe it's a hope that somewhere in the not so distant future,
something will be improved enough that the effort we put forward will be worth
it and the example we set will actually be something worth following.
There is a strong river of complacency that sometimes runs through me. Make it
easier. Make it comfortable. Three years into this adventure God set me on at my
school and the river is pushing against the dam of my conscience and what I
know God wants from me. Perhaps that why this letter had to happen one month
in... So it wouldn't be filled with remnants of years past or good intentions,
but rather that its landscape would be peppered with informed conviction and
words spoken to particular rather than generic truths.
The effort to write this letter each year may seem redundant, but to me it's an
anchor... A rock in the storm of year long, and often life-long, investment.
Everything means something and to the hundreds of kids I will have the
privilege of serving this year, the window of intentionality must be open...
Otherwise, the days are just words on a board, formulas in a mind, and a time
that was spent, but not necessarily spent well. I once read that great leaders
care about depth, not distance... And they lead with the windows wide open. Ten
years into this journey, it's still a push to prioritize all those things.
There is risk in caring about depth as there is risk in being vulnerable as a
leader... But who can follow someone they do not know?
All along, I thought the verse that would motivate this year would be Hebrews
10:39 as I felt God pushing me to not shrink back. And while that is still a
truth governing over my fears and hesitations, it is the simplicity of 1 Timothy
6:20 that aims its arrow of conviction and motivation towards the year that is
to come. "Guard what has been entrusted to you." It starts with the
two that I mentor, outward towards the girls on my team, extending to the
students in my room, and beyond to every person God distinctly brings and keeps
in my life this year. To live a year with intent is simply to ask God what he
wants and then try to do it. I will fail at times, do things that require
apologies at others, but live and work with an awareness that influence and
obedience aren't met through personal frivolity or disengaging from the tasks
that God asks us to do.There is a loss of self that occurs when the classroom doors are opened and the students file in. To me, it may be year ten, but to them it is year one and there is no mundane in the vast unknowing of the first time. The timeliness of this note is not lost on me. I write from a room in a house after what I'd say was the most intense in all my years of teaching. To get in the trenches and live life with teenagers is to live willingly exposed knowing their hurts will sometimes be yours. Six years ago, a student passed away and that changed my teaching career forever. That year asked me the question of whether or not I'd forever and always teach with the windows open aware that hurt and tears would follow because they just do when things mean a lot to you. This year, I type as a child who helped define the triumphs and trials of last year, mourns the death of her father.
A school is not a place that is simply filled with assignments and agendas. A school is a place where depth and distance are contemplated and decided upon based on the very people that model them. To guard what has been entrusted to me is to accept the unwilling and the challenging as much as it is to embrace the grateful and exciting. To not just plod along through the fogs and winters of the year, but to descend into the trenches knowing that it could puncture the heart... And trusting that not only would that be okay, but it would absolutely be worth it.
A decade in, and my gait should not change. To have influence is the greatest
gift and responsibility God can give. To not do it in my own power, the great
challenge. To be able to say in June, “I have fought the good fight, I have
finished the race, I have kept the faith” is the finish line that will push me
through every trough and every crest. There is no depth without risk, without
vulnerability. Be all in, guard what has been entrusted to me, rely on God to
get me there. Go to the cross willingly and when that seems too hard to do, ask
the cross to meet me instead. Whatever I need will be waiting there for me.
Connection is based on honesty, so don't be afraid to live with the windows
wide open and watch what God will do.
