Today I feel absolutely awful physically and emotionally. My body is stressed from difficulty sleeping and accumulated tension and fatigue. I need to lose weight and exercise more, and get off coffee and sugar. Yesterday I learned that the stress hormone cortisol causes weight gain around the waist. I hope that is an excuse for me. But most of all I feel beat up and bruised inside after a day of supply teaching at the high school level. I had thought I was getting better at exerting my authority and making judgment calls so that kids would not run all over me. And, all things considered, I did manage fairly well yesterday. And it was my first day back at that school in a very long time.
But it is still awful to work with kids who are so out of control and will say and do such mean things to each other and to me too. Was it Art Linkletter who had a program called "Kids can say the darndest things"? Well I could put other epithets in there these days, but for the grace of God. And it is even harder when you realize how much all these kids need to know Jesus, and to put their lives in connection with Him, but even if they might be trying and searching to do that, when connected with their peer group in a situation of temptation to misbehave with a supply teacher, those finer motives go out the window.
I am considering joining the ranks of supply teachers who refuse to teach at secondary level. The very level I am trained for. So today my conversations with God are around those issues, and enjoying a time of retreat into the hard solitary work I have to do of more sorting in the basement. I really do need to spend more time alone. My personality type is one that restores itself through solitude, something I've not had a lot of for years.
So I embrace the verse highlighted in today's reading in Streams in the Desert:
And he took them, and went aside privately into a desert place. (Luke 9:10)
"In order to grow in grace, we must be much alone. It is not in society that the soul grows most vigorously. In one single quiet hour of prayer it will often make more progress than in days of company with others. It is in the desert that the dew falls freshest and the air is purest." Andrew Bonar
Come ye and rest, the journey is too great.
And ye will faint beside the way and sink;
The bread of life is here for you to eat.
And here for you the wine of love to drink.
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4 comments:
Dear Meg,
I'm so sorry it was such a rough day. I don't know how you had the courage to go into that situation. It must be so hard when you can't even develop relationships of trust and respect to draw upon, but go in "blind" in a way. That would be very hard.
God bless you in your basement cleaning out, although I don't know how you could bear to part with things like the paisley shawl! :)
Dear Belinda - funny you should say that about the paisley shawl. I may not part with that. Interesting that when I talked with the museum in Grey County they said they already had some paisley shawls, so that may be something I WILL keep. Maybe I'll find a place on the wall or something...as paisley is part of me too....thanks for being so par - ti-cu-lar and sweet in your comments...
Phew! I'm glad the shawl is safe and sound and where it belongs--with you. :)
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