When Hard Obedience Becomes our Pearls of Joy

 As a teacher, I sometimes encounter students who come against something difficult for them to complete, and their reaction is oftentimes anguished frustration.

As a Christian, I encounter my own string of difficulties that can equally frustrate me, making me grouchy to say the least.

But as someone who pursues God, I imagine he prefers to give us the hard tasks, because it is through hard obedience that we grow the most in our walk with him.

I love words, so when I think about the idea of something being hard, I counter it with the opposite. Soft? Easy? I imagine soft, easy obedience is doing something that feels comfortable, therefore making it pleasant for us. But much like a pearl that is formed only through an irritant, I imagine my own life can only become beautiful in God’s eyes if I am irritated by the sin that so easily entangles.

Philippians 2: 5-11 says that we should try to have the same attitude as Christ who didn’t try to get to the top of the ladder and sit equally with God. Instead, he willingly left the plush life of heaven and stepped into the harsh confines of a human body, and then even went to the cross for a death more horrific than we can imagine. But through his death, his hard obedience, came something extraordinarily beautiful.

I don’t know about you, but I think I may have had a bad attitude through the whole dying on a cross ordeal. But Jesus didn’t. And God’s word says that we need to emulate Christ; so when life asks us to do the hard things in obedience to what God has designed for our lives, we should not only do them, but do them with a gracious attitude.

Then we shall behold the priceless beauty of a pearl emerging because we chose to fight against the irritant with hard obedience and a joyful heart.

An Open Letter to Fellow Educator Friends

In July of 2020, I resigned from MCHS after 13 years in public education, and with great turmoil deep in the pit of my stomach, I packed up my belongings into the bed of two trucks (yes, two-you don’t realize how much of your life gets transplanted into the classroom in so many ways even beyond personal belongings) and drove away from a job I deeply loved. Crossing that threshold one last time held more crossroads than I even realized at the time.

Life shifted quickly as I moved into a new position for Pinehaven Christian School and began a journey into the private sector of education where homeschoolers abound. I was met with friends who offered insight and encouragement and welcomed me into their homes to talk all things education and life and purpose, and the conversations paralleled the countless ones I was blessed with in the halls and rooms of Mount Carmel High School.

As life settled in, I began to notice a closed door into the public sector that I naively assumed would remain open. It had likely shut the moment I crossed that threshold of MCHS, drug my belongings into the basement of my home to be stored, and began to teach for Pinehaven, but I suppose I was just too busy to notice it at first. And I fully realize I asked for it; the choice was mine and no one else is to blame. But now that it stares me down daily, I find myself in an array of reactions.

Some days I want to bust it down and force my way back into the hearts of public educator friends. I want to tell them that I still firmly believe in all they do and am perhaps an even bigger fan than they could realize because like them, I too have walked the oftentimes daunting road of doing my very best to make a small difference in an ever indifferent sea of teenage storms. I want to shower them with encouragement for doing the hard things every single day by showing up and giving their best even as it seems futile. I want to tell them the truth of how much they are loved and appreciated for their endless sacrifices to the youth of our communities. In short, I want to say, “I see you, and I thank you, even from afar.”

Other days I want to just sit at the door and listen in, longing to be part of their comings and goings and belong once again to their fold. But that door seems to have shut when I signed the resignation letter and walked off the stage of public education and into the private sector. Please know that I don’t at all blame my public educator friends for the shut door; in fact, my educator friends who know me personally still readily accept me. I do, however, find a grave distance between private educators and public educators at large, and I readily see it is a product of our culture that I too have fallen under. Honestly, both sides are to blame.

For some reason, we have all developed this mentality of them vs. us when it comes to private vs. public education. I find it likely that the public educators think the private sector sees themselves as superior. In truth, the homeschool mom or the me’s of this world likely spend most days second-guessing our attempts because we too find our jobs are hard and require endless sacrifices for the youth of our own little communities. I also find it likely that the homeschool moms can radiate pride where humility should abound, further inciting division. I also recognize that not all homeschool moms are the same mold, nor are all public school educators, and a whole other array of reactions too lengthy to discuss here have widened the no-man’s-land between the two worlds.

As I have stood in both realms, I can’t help but see the unnecessary chasm that divides our worlds. The honest truth is we all have a heart to help kids reach their full potential; it is just the specifics of the environment that look a little different. At the end of the day, we all love the students before us and want to do whatever we can to move them towards a better future. 

So to my homeschool educator moms and my public educator friends, I am asking us all to consider the larger perspective and make a move toward an open door where we all work together knowing that neither side deems themselves superior. Instead, we should encourage one another in our similar endeavors and do our very best to collectively build a better community by offering hope and promise for all students in our midst, because every student really does matter, regardless of their individual educational environments.

One More Time

This is not our first rodeo. We have traveled this road more times than I can count.

As I walked once again away from the ‘kissing corner,’ my mind replayed a thousand images of times spent watching her as they wheel her down the hall out of our presence while my heart cried out within. Hold it all together though for her sake. She needs all the strength she can muster to just make it through one more time.

One more time. Will you allow her that today, Lord? Will you allow us to come out of this day on the other side with her still by our side? Or is today the day?

I lost it hard yesterday. I have tried and tried to hold it all together but it just became too much. And as your divine details kept unfolding, I fell apart. I hope it was a beautiful mess; it really just felt like desperate chaos. 

So my mind keeps replaying all these images of times you have asked me to hold it all together as I had to hold her up. But if I am honest, it seems so unfair.

Why should a 16-year-old daughter have to wipe the puke off the floor after helping her mom clean off her feces and settle into the madness of her mind while she does her best to just lie still?  Why did you make me see her that night as she walked right into me and had no idea who I even was? Why did I spend countless hours taking care of her when I could barely take care of myself? 

That one night stole so much. I lost my mother much too young, only to spend more hours in a hospital or doctor’s office than most people do in a lifetime combined, and I am only 41. I know the drill all too well. The nurse will come in and ask a thousand questions, interrupted by the surgical nurse or the anaesthesiologist or the surgeon or labs. If I could cry a tear for every drop of blood I have watched them steal from her weakened soul, I would flood the hearts of too many. 

My heart feels the flood. Like I am holding up the dam by a measly whisk of breath and at any moment I know it will all come crashing down if I dare to even steal a whisper begging for mercy.

It leaked yesterday. For a few small moments as a dear friend held me close, I let some of it out. But how do I account for twenty-four years of dammed emotions because she couldn’t be my strength. I had to be hers.

I am trying my best today to be her strength, and to just hold tight. But, God, it is harder today than normal. For just a few moments, I need to be a kid again. A 16-year-old girl who is free to laugh and live and have a mom who will take care of it all. But I am not a kid anymore, and the innocence stolen will forever play on repeat in my mind every time I have to once again sit here in these forsaken waiting rooms. God, I have grown weary of waiting. When will you let it end? Or better yet, when will we get a new beginning?

I guess I could say I wish life had a reset, and we could start anew, back to the beginning. We could go back to the 1995 Lesa who was young and free without a care in the world. But then I wouldn’t have You. And as hard as today is, You really are enough. So I trust in you to be enough in me today. Because I need you. Oh, I need you. Every hour of every day. I need you to be enough in me. yae.

One more time.

Moving Mountains

One more time, one last time.

Time ticks tediously into the winds of insanity.  But all you really want is to hold it somehow still in your hands just long enough to feel it, to own it.  But it slips. Oh, how it slips away and away and away and yet you hold it, waterfalling cascades dancing around you as you turn this way and that to just hold on.

Just hold on.  You wonder why you even try.  But yet you do. The very thought of addiction benumbs your soul and yet out of embers and ashes you peer, wishing desperately to grasp one wisp of yellowed shine.  The dawn of a new day never knocks, or maybe it did and you just didn’t hear it.

Why are you addicted to the insanity of normal?

The demons of normality are beckoning to be your best ally.  Grasp hold of their sickening web and then you can break free to live an enchanted life, to unshackle the slave of your thoughts, break free, just be.  

But you sense you are less than enough.  So just this one time, just this one moment, you shall reject the heart’s earnest cry to move mountains and one more time, just this one more time, you shall remain.  Stay the course, hold your head high, be who they want you to be, who they need you to be.

Being for them breaks who you are.

You need more.

You need heights unsoared and valleys unkempt and struggles more real and yet more ensnaring than you can handle, but the chains of being what they expect are more wretched yet.

Maybe it’s time.  Maybe those demons are really just angels who need their own wings; they cannot fly if they cannot unlatch.  

They can’t control you anymore because . . .

Maybe it is time.

One last time for them, one more last time for you.

And as you fly, they shall also forever flight in the foreground because those who wonder are never really lost.

Those who fight and flight are dancing together on the face of their failures, and you can step in time, join the dance, be alive.  

Because how will you ever know what to believe if you don’t go just this one time.

Just this one time.

Even if you fail.  Even if you crash and burn.  It shall still be beautiful. . .

For you can only ever be a beautiful disaster.

Homeward Bound

It almost always hits somewhere in the Dakotas.  Driving hard to make the miles, time rolling slower than paint drying in the hot, humid summer air, and I enter a lengthy haze.  From inside, I am quiet. I have nothing to say. No words could begin to express what is happening in my heart. Nothing in me can muster the energy; all my reserve is pounding away against the flood of endless uncertainty and it is all I can do to just breathe.  Breathe in. Breathe out. Survive.

I would like to stay in the haze.  At least it is better than coming out on the other side ready to tackle another year in the hot hells of southern Illinois.  The endless tasks with little return of effort. Slaving away at work, farm, and home for the tidbits of recompense slowly dispersed like morsels as I eat away at the sticky, messy dough desperately eager for that next text message or email from the student who might reach out long enough to give me a sip of water in my dry desert.  They are always worth it, but could there be more?

A haven of rest awaits just round the corner.  I find it come July, but now it is August, and my heart yearns to return through that haze to the other side, to find my soul in the mountains of Montana where you will plant me.  Will you plant me? I want to grow, but it seems so hard here in the shadows of corn and pork-capital of the world. The capital of comfort lures me to buy into all the things I cannot afford, yet purchase after purchase finds me wasting away yet in this desert land.  The thick, humid air can be so very suffocating; I can hardly breathe.

Father, help me breathe.  Remind me as I replant yet again here in this wasteland that this is the plan You have for me.  Is this the only plan You have? My heart yearns for something more, but something more comes at such a cost, and I only want it if You would have it for me, for us.

Coming out from the haze is so damned difficult.  I stay there as long as I possibly can, heart revolting for the deemed departure that You demand.  By the time we hit Iowa, I have emerged, but with each passing time, it becomes more difficult to gather back up all the pieces of my heart.  I feel like humpty dumpty who cannot quite put myself back together again.

Father, put me back together.  Make me whole so I can tackle all You have in store for me here.  Bring peace and passion and purpose to this next year that lies ahead.  

And maybe if You would think it is okay, grant me a plane ticket come March-to teach, to breathe, to revive this heart of mine.

In all my wanderings and revolts, I really do just want what You want for me.  Show me Your way, and I promise to go where You go.

Trust and Obey.  There really is no other way.  

Trust that I AM

Some days I have it together.  Some days I do not.  And other days, like today, I am Jacob wrestling with God for all I am worth. 

Lunchtime.  I am sitting in my room, door locked, lights off, listening to Bethel Worship.  I play the song You Came.  Tears flowing, I am begging God to please come, pleading for him to whisk his breathe across my cheek, letting me feel His presence.  Speak to me...please........

Suppertime.  I am fixing soup, listening again to Bethel Worship.  With no choosing on my end, a different song plays, and this one reminds me that He is with me, even when I don't feel it. . . Mike drop-walk away.  Tears again.  I know He wasn't actually the one singing, but He was.  He spoke directly to my heart, reminding me that He is alive and well in my soul, so it can be well with my soul.

Trust Me.

I still feel like my hip is out of socket, but my heart can rest anew because He showed up, just like He always does, and spoke His Truth-I AM that I AM.

sHe

She was too young with a veiled clarity for the blackened white in the midst of swirling greys, but we probably shouldn’t blame her-a habit of youth. She blames herself enough already.

You came.  Soft, slow, seducing.  So she gave.  Every last ounce of her heart and soul, and then the final prized token of her unfailing devotion so you would finally know her love.  Her first and final hail mary.

She never was the same.

Times broken pieces to put humpty dumpty back together again, and just when she thought all was healed, you dropped in again.  

Why here of all places?  The teeter-totter of mind over emotion, knowing this is the exact place she wants you to be but your arrival seemingly caused the ground to fall away beneath her and she doesn’t quite know how to get back up.  The jekyl of wanting you to know Christ like you have never known him before but the hyde of wishing you would have chosen somewhere else to take your pursuing heart.  

Why would God do such a thing?

Yes, I know.  You have great plans for me.  Really, You do.  And it is crazy insane how You are doing a good thing in me through all the debased pits of my weeping heart.  So I do hear You.  Really, I do.

You know how I have struggled with this for some time now.  You know how I want so much for this to not be a big deal, but then within seconds it is erupting inside bigger than life and then I just don’t know how to breathe.  Spirit and flesh battling inside for the final victory over how I will go on with life now that his presence is in my midst.  

Life does go on and we live in the here and now.  I cannot recreate the past with all its veiled clarity, but I can use the vivid picture You have revealed today to move past this moment.  I am not defined by my past.  I must trust that You alone can show Him truth and think not of the me he knew, but choose instead to see the me You have made me to be.  But really, it is not me at all he needs to see; it is You we all need.  

I will choose in this moment to step out of my pit of pity, for pity really is the base for my wallowed pit.  And I will live in the spirit over the flesh, knowing You clothe me with righteousness and see not all the wretched shame of my past.  When I stand in Your fathomless glory, I fall to pieces inside because I am reminded of how very unworthy I am.  His presence reminds me of my guilt-choosing his hail mary over the bloodied sacrifice of my Jesus.  But I no longer live that life of lies, and though it haunts me still daily, I am not defined by the veiled past.  Satan would try to tell me differently, but as we sang today, when the lies speak louder than the truth, remind me I belong to you.  

I cried a lot today.  Weeping for the past that I cannot alter and for how much You love me in spite of me.  And if I am honest, weeping also for all the he’s whose hearts I played around with in my downspiralling implosion of youth.   I was a blackened mess.  But You pulled me from the muck and mire and gave me a new name, so I can either sink into the regret of the past or embrace the hope of a future You offer freely, a gift I can never earn but desperately need.

I will take your offering.  I will kneel at the altar of Your love because it is the only place I can be whole again, and I will gladly welcome him to do the same even if it is right beside me, because that is Your desire, and all I want is to have Your heart.