Convicted

This last year has been tough on pretty much every front. So much so that I'm not sure where to start.

I saw two relationships begin and end this year. I moved away, and then moved back home. I got a job, hated it and got a new job. I've run, I've loafed, I've tried and I've given up. I've questioned, and questioned...and questioned.

Two years ago I was so sure that I was doing exactly what God wanted me to do. I was going to school to do thing that I KNEW he wanted me to do: teach. With all of those things happening in between now and then, I'm back in the same place, and nearly equally unsure of whether I'm doing the right thing anymore. Part of that is that I continued to make bad choices in my personal life, specifically in my relationships. The wrong people, the wrong things, forcing things, not hanging on long enough, believing too much in one thing, and losing hope in another.

Recently, I've lost my best friend. Or at least, that's what it feels like. Her words cut me so deep, I think I've cut myself off to everything. I've always been one to trust my gut implicitly. And for some reason, that gut is gone. I remember on the my birthday this year, I called this friend and told her exactly how I feel now: I feel dead inside. I've lost all respect for all the things I love about life, and therefore I feel like I've lost respect for myself. I don't know how to get that back.

I should be excited to start school again this year. And I am, but not in the way I want to be. I'm excited to be working, because I find some of my self-worth in what I do. And I do truly find my work rewarding. Most of the time. But I'm looking to it to bring me out of this hole I'm in, and I know it won't do that. It will drain me, and the kids will kick me, and there will be moments when I will hate it until it's over again in the spring.

Part of this funk is that I've been so stressed out this year. One more year has passed, and I question whether I am where I'm supposed to be, if I'm doing all the things I should be doing. I'm broke. And that really stressed me out. I feel like I can't function at the normal level of me when I feel as though I need to watch every penny, which right now I do. I know that shouldn't decide how I feel, but it does. At least partially.

Also, I haven't been writing, as evidenced by my last post date, and I think that's part of it. All this stress just gets bottled up inside, festering and causing boils on my heart. I can feel the burden of all this uncertainty ever so lightly lifting even as I tap the keys here.

So what prompted all this whiney introspection? In an effort to get excited about the coming year, I rss'ed several new teacher blogs. One written by Jim Burke especially stuck me in the gut. "But education needs courage, it needs wisdom, it needs vision now, for as the Bible says, "in a land without vision, the people perish" (Proverbs 29)."

I have lost that vision. Literally. I can't even picture out to set up my classroom. I can't see my students in their desks. I can't see myself enjoying life anymore. And something needs to change. And I think it needs to start with my relationship with Jesus.

I've felt this way for a long time, and have been trying to shake it off. Telling myself that substitutions and relationships, and even physicality (how cliche, I know) will fill the gap when I know that it will not. It will only dig it deeper. So there's a starting point I guess.