Never Catching Up

Still Chasing Hope. It started a year ago, and I was HOPING it would lead to a year of writing and dreaming. I dream of writing one day for a living, but I have carried this giant expectation around like a weight this year instead of letting it lift me up like dream clouds should. My real job currently got in the way. Correction. I let it get in the way.

And I suppose fear got in the way of my writing, as well. It's as if starting the writing process is like opening Pandora's Box. I don't know what's inside, but I'm scared of what may come out. What if it isn't good enough? Writing is the career I have replayed over and over again in my head when this first career I've chosen has pulled me into the depths.

I sound dramatic, but I have been an utter mess all year thanks to what I call my "first career." I've been chasing hope for 10 months, and it's exhausting. All year I just kept hoping it would get better. I hoped that they would care. I hoped that they would know, really know, that I want to know them. I hoped that I wouldn't lose my mind. I hoped that I would make it until the end of the year.

HOPE may as well have been a tiny little child, running around, as I chased relentlessly after it...feeling the soft fabric of its shirt once or twice but never truly grasping it.

Until now.

I've almost made it through my third year of teaching, and just writing those words brings tears to my eyes. In January, I didn't think I would get here. Crying alone in an empty classroom when I should've been teaching after the worst class of my life, I knew I couldn't face them again. These kids who hurt so deeply--but take their pain out on me. With words that cut deep. And looks that turned my world around. "I went to college for THIS?" I kept repeating. No one deserved to be treated the way I was treated. Self-pity reared its nasty head, and I wallowed for a while. And then God did this funny thing that He loves to do...He surprised me. Some of the kids who I cared for most but hurt me deeply started responding to me. And I saw that the way they were treating me was only the outcome of how they'd been treated all their life. I, at most, would get 50 minutes of it a day for a year. Some of them had been treated as if they were significant all their lives. And we are a product of our environment, aren't we?

So when Spring came, I mustered up the last bit of hope I could and kept going to school, thinking maybe I would reach them. It sounds trite, but I mean this with everything that I have: God never gave up on me, so why should I give up on them? It wouldn't be right considering God placed me there in their midst, anyway.

One exam review and one exam left with the class that almost did me in, and I can't say there is a perfect, happy ending. But thanks be to God, He never let me give up on them, and I really feel they know it. I've received a lot of advice this year. My skin is working on being "tough," as they say, but as for the advice to harden my heart...it won't happen. With Him living in it, I'll just have to deal with what comes...with a lot of prayer and a little bit of hope.

Running Away

I've been running a lot the past few months. Not the type of running where you strap on the nice pair of Nikes and feel-better-about-yourself-when-you're-dripping-sweat-running. The kind of running that gets you nowhere but keeps you away from everything you don't want to think about. At the rate I've been going, you would have thought I would have reached something by now, but strangely enough, all I reached was the realization that I hate figuratively running as much as I hate literally running. It's exhausting mentally, and it doesn't make me feel better about myself at the end like the "real" thing does.

What I've been running away from is my dream. My dream, simply put, is writing things that matter.

I'm terrified to write for some reason, however, which is why I only have two posts on my blog. My first obstacle happened in late August when my PawPaw died; I knew the minute I started letting the words flow again, I would speak of him. My best friend was now gone. I couldn't come to terms with the fact that I hadn't been successful in making everyone in my life meet this amazing man before he left this earth. I was devastated that everyone I was going to love hereafter was not going to even have the possibility to know him. I couldn't begin to put those words on paper or in cyberspace because I could not even accept them in my heart.

But I have to stop running and stand still for a while. I'm missing so much in my attempt to leave it all behind. And I have great people willing to stand still with me and help me figure it out...so the running shoes are coming off.