Guys, life continues to be hard. Scott has a lot of unexplained pain. I ended up in the ER in June with diverticulitis (after Scott was laid off, it was terrible timing.) We have had many challenges over the past months. And we have experienced many miracles. My perspective is deepening, and my ability to trust in God's plan for me grows, even as I still wonder how this is all supposed to turn out.
For the past 9 months, I have tried to take one step into the darkness at a time as I try to find whatever path I am supposed to be on. I feel like the Lord is testing my ability to trust Him because I keep getting one piece of the puzzle at a time, and I don't know what the final product is supposed to look like yet.
Impression number 1 came in January: Let go of your job at the end of this school year. This is not what you're supposed to do next year.
This was really hard for me. I love my coworkers (I still love them, they're just not my coworkers anymore.) I love teaching music. I love working with children of all ages. I loved this school community and the children I had worked with for the last 3 years. And I had just moved my two youngest girls to that elementary school so we could all be together (which is not our boundary school), so pulling myself from the school meant I probably needed to return them to our boundary school or change schools. I began to explore options for what I should do. My impression really only told me what I should NOT do, but gave no further information, so I began exploring options. I auditioned at Weber State University in their music department in February, thinking I might try the route of becoming a music educator. I was offered a vocal scholarship (in April, it took a while for them to make their decisions). I considered this very strongly. In the end, after meeting with advisors and planning my route, I walked away from Weber State with another impression.
2. Going to Weber State and pursuing music education was not it. I felt almost sick to my stomach as I left. Even with the excitement of being offered a scholarship, knowing it would take several years to finish school just felt like far too long a timeline. And it felt inflexible. If I pursue music education, I'm locked into additional performances and rehearsals not only through college but through my career. Back to the drawing board.
3. Go on the field trip. I felt like I should go, so I went on a field trip with my kindergartner. I was a last-minute add-on chaperone. While we were driving down the road on her school bus, I saw a sign that showed a new charter school was opening up in our area. I had seen the sign many times before, but always as the driver in my car. For some reason, seeing it as a passenger hit different. The impression hit me HARD: apply there. And if I were going to apply, then I should also apply to have my kids attend there. I started looking into their open positions and saw that the music teacher position required a teaching license. I realized that it might be in my best interest to get my teaching license. My children got into the charter school. I did not even get called for an interview (I had applied even without my teaching license.)
4. I started looking at other music teaching positions, many of which required licensure. I started looking into online programs that would help me get my teaching license, and wondered if, rather than Weber State University, I should attend Western Governors' University online and obtain my teaching license as fast as I possibly could, ideally within a year. End the end, this is what felt right. I would have liked to have started May 1st, but there were some transcript delays, and my start date had to be pushed back by a month. For a while, I considered math education. That's what I initially applied to WGU under. I considered music education. I considered elementary education. That is the one that felt right.
5. Scott lost his job. Again. This is the second time in 2 years that he has been laid off. I had already committed to starting school, and despite our now incomeless status, I proceeded with the plan. Thankfully, most of my tuition was covered by grants, so we only had to pay a few hundred dollars for this semester and I was able to jump straight in at the beginning of summer. With my stress levels so high and my determination peaked, it was wonderful to be able to jump in and work on school over the summer. It gave me something I could control Weber State would NOT have worked out that way. As Scott searched for job offers, we considered a move to Idaho. We traveled up there and looked around. This one was tricky. I felt impressed that I needed to trust in Scott's decision. This time, it was not my choice to make. I know I could have influenced Scott a lot, that's how marriage works. But I felt like I needed to let him be the driver, and so I tried hard to be as open as I could to all the possibilities and to let him make the choice. He ended up taking a remote position that allowed us to stay in our current home.
6. I feel really great about pursuing a degree in Elementary Education. I am loving my classes, loving the chance to do observations, and loving how they are helping me to be a better teacher AND mother. I still do not know what the next year will bring. I haven't stepped that far into the darkness yet. But this path feels like the right one, so I keep taking steps on the path.
One little story about perspective. I am currently taking a math class for elementary educators, and we have learned a lot about encouraging students to explain their thinking. I realize as a parent, that it is irritating as heck to have your child have to explain why they arrived at the answer when they added 11+ 13 and got the answer 24. Even for me, it's a little tricky to explain "It says to add, so I added it." Hear me out as an (almost) educator, though. When kids explain what happened in their brains, it lets teachers figure out if they are using the correct strategies or if they are doing something that could be improved. My 1st grader brought home a little homework packet (her teacher gives just one packet for the week, and it is optional, but I want to see how she is doing and help her, so we try to do her homework each week.) This is the first time she has done subtraction on her homework. She did great with the problem 9-6= ____ and she did just fine with 8-2=____ But when she got to _____=10-7 and ______ = 12-6 she put the answer 0 in both blanks. Without my current background, I would have immediately told her that she got the wrong answer and to try again. With my current information, I asked her to explain how she came up with that answer. Guys...since the equals sign was on the left side of the problem, she did them backwards. She read it right to left. She hasn't seen it done this way before, and did not understand that the numbers still have to go left to right. So she thought "7-10 takes them all away which is 0," and "6-12 takes them all away which is 0". When I told her we needed to try those two problems again, she ended up crying and feeling so bad that she hadn't done them correctly. Scott was able to distract her for a few minutes to give her a chance to calm down, and then help her understand that the equals sign can go on either side of the equation, but we always read the numbers from left to right. I keep thinking about this little math situation and perspective and experience.
Sometimes, like my daughter, we take what we can see, apply whatever knowledge we have, and do our best thinking. We get an answer that makes complete sense to us. But if you look at it in a different way, it's wrong. We might be looking at it right to left instead of left to right. And sometimes we are so frustrated and upset when we realize we did it wrong, especially when we were so sure that we were correct, that we get all hung up on the mistakes and struggle to do anything besides feel bad. A simple correction in perspective can usually help open our minds up to understanding things when we weren't quite seeing the picture the right way. Someone lovingly giving us a chance to calm down, rethink, and try again can be such a lifesaver.
The turmoil in the world right now is overwhelming and chaotic, and so many people are sure that the way they see things is "the right way". There are a whole lot of situations where we could all use a simple shift in perspective to help us understand more people. And it's OK to be wrong and adjust our thinking. Revising and rewriting are part of life that we don't appreciate enough. A year ago, I did not think I would be rewriting my story to become an elementary teacher. But now it feels like the right place for me to be.
Last little quick perspective story. We went hiking with our kids and granddaughter recently. Depending on your perspective, you might have been frustrated or delighted. My 6 year old daughter and my 3 year old granddaughter kept stopping to pick up "beautiful treasures" from the trail. It made the hike incredibly slow, it felt like "tai chi hiking". These are some of the treasures:
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