My weekday schedule looks like this:
6:20 wake-up
6:45-7:10ish work-out
7:10-7:30 shower/get ready
7:30-8 devos
8-8:20 breakfast
8:20 (or asap) leave for ministry
9-12:30 morning classes with my kindergarteners
12:30-1ish lunch
1-3:30 afternoon classes with my kinders
6 dinner
7 chores
8-10 free time (currently binge watching Marvel)
Though this schedule seems very organized and systematic, my day is anything but uneventful. When I was assigned to my Kindergarten class, I was pumped because I had also taught a Kindergarten class in Costa Rica. What I showed up to, however, was far from the same. This class is only 9 students, yet you would think there are 30 of them. They are all 3-4 years old, and despite having 2 teachers in the room, it’s usually chaos. I was struggling so much last week with handling the children and having 0 control of the class most of the day that I was considering switching classes. For most, this seems like no big deal, but for me… and my pride… I couldn’t just give up. So I stuck with it. In the midst of dreading my decision, I often caught myself looking around at what is my life for the next two months. In the back of my mind, I just wanted to show up, yell at the kids to sit down (sometimes having to physically implement it), and leave. But the Lord had bigger plans. And He had bigger lessons for me.
- Patience is only developed through experience. I knew going into this ministry, especially after the first day, that I would have to seek the Lord often for peace and patience. What I didn’t realize, is how often that was not my first instinct. It took three days of being in that classroom to realize that I had not once prayed the Spirit over that room. Not once did I pray, in the moment, for peace and patience. All I did was complain about my class, but never did I pray FOR my class. Don’t worry. The Lord convicted me of that real quick.
- I have only been with my kids for a little over a week now, and I love them to the moon already. Yet despite my desperate attempts to just love them, they resist me time and time again when all I want for them is the best. All they want is candy and play time, but of course that is not the only beneficial thing for their education in the long run. This means doing the hard work, doing the hard learning, and sitting still. Sounds an awful lot like the Israelites… and us. I was sitting in quiet time last week when the Lord hit me with this parallelism. Obviously, I’m not God, but in this situation I realized a little bit of His heart for His people. All He wants for us is the best. He WANTS to bless us. He WANTS us to thrive. But we aren’t willing to do the hard work and go through the hard seasons to do and be our best. Instead, everything in our beings simply want to run out the door and do what we perceive as “fun”.
- Grace is great to receive. Grace is not fun to give. Grace has been a recurring lesson for me on the race. As many of you know, it also happens to be my middle name. Coincidence? I think not. But how does that relate to my students? Well, I recently learned a little more about my students and their home lives. Though the school I am at is a private Christian school, they have a variety of economic backgrounds and home situations. Most of my kids don’t have a dad in their lives, being raise either by a single mother or their aunt/grandmother. Two of my kids have severe ADHD, and potentially something else, and one has OCD. I didn’t even know before this that kids as young as 3 could have OCD. Even though these things don’t excuse bad behavior, it opens the door for greater understanding and outpour of grace. Its still hard, but my heart extends to these kids even more than before. At the very least, it just set my heart on fire to show them their Father’s love. On top of that, it made me realize just how unworthy I am to receive grace myself, yet how much God overflows it over me.
Class is still hard, but I can’t imagine not going every day and seeing those 9 kids’ smiling faces. Patience is frustrating, but I am just as disobedient to my Heavenly Father and He pours His grace over me anyways. Now I just understand it a little bit better. I knew Ecuador would be a hard goodbye, but now I know why.
-A
P.S. prayers for patience with this class are still appreciated 🙂
