Light Up the Beginning of a New Decade

Tomorrow I start a new decade of teaching.  It's year 11. Actually, tomorrow the students arrive; I've been at school all week. I can't say it's something I'm excited about or to which I've been looking forward. It's not really job dissatisfaction so much as it is my heart is really with my kids at home. B is already back at school too though and C starts in a little over a week. August always kind of feels this way, but this year is more intense. I kept kind of hoping some miracle would happen and I'd just be able to take a year off.

I'm not going to go into details, but there is a culture of negativity in my district right now. I have hope that it can and will change. God didn't perform a quick miracle over our circumstances so that I could just take the year off-- finish off these last 12 weeks of pregnancy and spend several months at home with our little one. And as I've been praying and reflecting, I've come to learn it's because He wants me at my job. To be a light. To be positive. To be His hands and feet.

And it's that reflection, that which my creator has put before me, that makes going to bed tonight knowing I need to get up before the sun tomorrow to welcome 150 new fresh faces into my room, easier.  Daily, I will try hard to light up the dark places with my coworkers, with my students, with my students' parents.  And my hope and my prayer is that little by little that light will spread, that a slow miracle will take place, and that culture of negativity will disappear. Maybe then, other Augusts won't feel so much like this August. They'll feel better.

Time to light up the start of a new decade.

~One Ordinary Mom