Cosas bellas creό, del polvo cosas bellas el formό. Cosas bellas creό, de mi cosas hermosas el formό.
Tu nos renuevas, transformas Señor. Tu nos renuevas, transformas Señor.
Cosas bellas creό, del polvo cosas bellas el formό. Cosas bellas creό, de mi cosas hermosas el formό.
(click here for an English version)
I remember my parents having a hard time accepting my decision to study English in college and become a teacher. I simply felt God’s calling. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t do anything other than what God had created me for. So at 17, it was decided, and I followed my passion.
All the while, my mother kept telling me that teachers weren’t in demand. They are underpaid, under-respected. “You’re smart enough to become a doctor,” she would say, “In Korea, teachers are the most highly respected profession. If we were there, I would be okay with this, but the US isn’t like that.”
But I wouldn’t listen. I had heard God’s call, and I was marching boldly forward.
By my second year of college, a friend of my sister’s introduced me to Teach for America, and it became the sole outlet through which I desired to fulfill this passion of mine. I didn’t just want to teach, I wanted to get right into the thick of it. I wanted to go where I was needed the most!
And so I did. Determined to get in, I spent multiple rounds with TfA after college, convincing them to take me on as a corps member. I packed up my things, and I moved my entire life to Atlanta, a city still reverberating from a history that I had only read about in books, a city where I knew not a single soul. The culture shock was immense, the familial comforts nowhere to be found.
My two years as a teacher in Atlanta wrecked the passion I had once had. It turned me into an insecure, disillusioned shell of what once was a confident, idealistic dreamer.
Nearing the end of my two-year commitment, after a really bad day in the classroom, I drove home in a fury. All I could think was, “Your mom was right. You should have become a doctor. Who do these kids think they are?! I’m too smart to be treated this way!! I don’t have to put up with this!!!” I could feel the hot tears building inside of me. All I wanted was for them to break, but they just wouldn’t. I was stuck in a hot anger and dark depression, barely even remembering the teenager I had been that just wanted to make a difference. For someone, anyone.
I finally got my mother on the phone later that night, and flooded my thoughts out onto her. “Mom, you were right! I should have become a doctor!!” Calmly, she simply responded, “Yeah, but you wanted to make a difference.”
Then, the tears came. Powerful and flowing, understanding how far I had fallen, understanding how far away I was from that young girl I had once been.
My mom is usually the first to tell me to “buck up,” to tell me that I’m only crying because I feel sorry for myself, to remind me that my own hardships are minuscule in comparison to those of my students. But this time, she just quietly and patiently listened to my crying.
I spent that next summer trying to reflect, trying to understand what, if any, impact I had made. I would hike to my favorite spots in Ferguson Canyon, and ask God how He had used me in Atlanta, why He had sent me there, only to return in such defeat. I would drive in my car and listen to songs that talked about how God uses these things to make us stronger. I would sit with my pastors as they told me how God’s network is so wide-spread and all-encompassing that it’s sometimes impossible for us to understand our small link in the chain. But healing just wouldn’t come.
I first signed up for The Race because I believed that it would be an oasis after what I considered a two-year crawl through a desert. I believe I even wrote that in my “About Me” section of this very blog. I expected The Race to take my dry, broken spirit and renew it so that I could re-enter my teaching world afresh and ready.
If you’ve been following my blog this year, you know that it wasn’t quite the oasis that I expected. In fact, there have been a lot of physical hardships and inconveniences that have affected me at a level I did not anticipate. Beyond this, it wasn’t healing my spirit the way I had hoped.
Many of the countries I have been to, I have stepped into teaching roles feeling very unsure of myself and regularly believing that I couldn’t do it well. Even arriving here in Guatemala, I asked to not be assigned the ministry that would be going to the public schools to teach.
Despite this request, I ended up as one of the teachers, heading to 1-4 schools a day.
I guess the Lord knows what you need.
I don’t really know what it was this month. Nothing I can pinpoint specifically, but this month was different. It changed me. God finally brought me the healing I had been waiting for, my Race has finally become the renewing oasis I had needed.
With my team at a coffee shop, we studied Numbers 13 and talked about facing our giants, about becoming a giant ourselves. In this chapter, the youth of Israel go into the Promised Land to spy it out and find out if it does indeed “flow with milk and honey.” They return to tell the Israelites that the land is everything that was promised to them, everything they’ve ever hoped for. However, the chapter ends with the Israelites response, proclaiming that the giants inhabiting the land are just much too big to take on. In the very last sentence, they say, “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”
They said, we seemed like grasshoppers IN OUR OWN EYES! The truth of the matter was that no one had called them grasshoppers. They had only said it of themselves. They were equally giants if they believed themselves to be, if they believed the God of the Universe was on their side.
I realized, I was the only one calling myself a grasshopper. After that, I went back to read my recommendation letter from my principal, a very encouraging account of the things that I did in Atlanta. I knew what that letter had said, but I was finally in a place to really hear it. Healed.
No part of me regrets my time in Atlanta. The lessons I learned there are infinite. I learned about the brokenness of our low-income communities. I learned about the bravery of the teachers that fight for our kids each and every day. I learned a lot about strength and trial and release, and I met a lot of students that shine despite their circumstances.
I stand before you today again that dreamer. Guatemala healed my heart and renewed my calling. Only now, I’m not just that dreamer, I also get to carry the strength from the lessons I learned in Atlanta. I’m not a grasshopper anymore.
Cosas bellas creό, del polvo cosas bellas el formό. Cosas bellas creό, de mi cosas hermosas el formό.
Tu nos renuevas, transformas Señor. Tu nos renuevas, transformas Señor.
Cosas bellas creό, del polvo cosas bellas el formό. Cosas bellas creό, de mi cosas hermosas el formό.
(click here for an English version)
I remember my parents having a hard time accepting my decision to study English in college and become a teacher. I simply felt God’s calling. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t do anything other than what God had created me for. So at 17, it was decided, and I followed my passion.
All the while, my mother kept telling me that teachers weren’t in demand. They are underpaid, under-respected. “You’re smart enough to become a doctor,” she would say, “In Korea, teachers are the most highly respected profession. If we were there, I would be okay with this, but the US isn’t like that.”
But I wouldn’t listen. I had heard God’s call, and I was marching boldly forward.
By my second year of college, a friend of my sister’s introduced me to Teach for America, and it became the sole outlet through which I desired to fulfill this passion of mine. I didn’t just want to teach, I wanted to get right into the thick of it. I wanted to go where I was needed the most!
And so I did. Determined to get in, I spent multiple rounds with TfA after college, convincing them to take me on as a corps member. I packed up my things, and I moved my entire life to Atlanta, a city still reverberating from a history that I had only read about in books, a city where I knew not a single soul. The culture shock was immense, the familial comforts nowhere to be found.
My two years as a teacher in Atlanta wrecked the passion I had once had. It turned me into an insecure, disillusioned shell of what once was a confident, idealistic dreamer.
Nearing the end of my two-year commitment, after a really bad day in the classroom, I drove home in a fury. All I could think was, “Your mom was right. You should have become a doctor. Who do these kids think they are?! I’m too smart to be treated this way!! I don’t have to put up with this!!!” I could feel the hot tears building inside of me. All I wanted was for them to break, but they just wouldn’t. I was stuck in a hot anger and dark depression, barely even remembering the teenager I had been that just wanted to make a difference. For someone, anyone.
I finally got my mother on the phone later that night, and flooded my thoughts out onto her. “Mom, you were right! I should have become a doctor!!” Calmly, she simply responded, “Yeah, but you wanted to make a difference.”
Then, the tears came. Powerful and flowing, understanding how far I had fallen, understanding how far away I was from that young girl I had once been.
My mom is usually the first to tell me to “buck up,” to tell me that I’m only crying because I feel sorry for myself, to remind me that my own hardships are minuscule in comparison to those of my students. But this time, she just quietly and patiently listened to my crying.
I spent that next summer trying to reflect, trying to understand what, if any, impact I had made. I would hike to my favorite spots in Ferguson Canyon, and ask God how He had used me in Atlanta, why He had sent me there, only to return in such defeat. I would drive in my car and listen to songs that talked about how God uses these things to make us stronger. I would sit with my pastors as they told me how God’s network is so wide-spread and all-encompassing that it’s sometimes impossible for us to understand our small link in the chain. But healing just wouldn’t come.
I first signed up for The Race because I believed that it would be an oasis after what I considered a two-year crawl through a desert. I believe I even wrote that in my “About Me” section of this very blog. I expected The Race to take my dry, broken spirit and renew it so that I could re-enter my teaching world afresh and ready.
If you’ve been following my blog this year, you know that it wasn’t quite the oasis that I expected. In fact, there have been a lot of physical hardships and inconveniences that have affected me at a level I did not anticipate. Beyond this, it wasn’t healing my spirit the way I had hoped.
Many of the countries I have been to, I have stepped into teaching roles feeling very unsure of myself and regularly believing that I couldn’t do it well. Even arriving here in Guatemala, I asked to not be assigned the ministry that would be going to the public schools to teach.
Despite this request, I ended up as one of the teachers, heading to 1-4 schools a day.
I guess the Lord knows what you need.
I don’t really know what it was this month. Nothing I can pinpoint specifically, but this month was different. It changed me. God finally brought me the healing I had been waiting for, my Race has finally become the renewing oasis I had needed.
With my team at a coffee shop, we studied Numbers 13 and talked about facing our giants, about becoming a giant ourselves. In this chapter, the youth of Israel go into the Promised Land to spy it out and find out if it does indeed “flow with milk and honey.” They return to tell the Israelites that the land is everything that was promised to them, everything they’ve ever hoped for. However, the chapter ends with the Israelites response, proclaiming that the giants inhabiting the land are just much too big to take on. In the very last sentence, they say, “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”
They said, we seemed like grasshoppers IN OUR OWN EYES! The truth of the matter was that no one had called them grasshoppers. They had only said it of themselves. They were equally giants if they believed themselves to be, if they believed the God of the Universe was on their side.
I realized, I was the only one calling myself a grasshopper. After that, I went back to read my recommendation letter from my principal, a very encouraging account of the things that I did in Atlanta. I knew what that letter had said, but I was finally in a place to really hear it. Healed.
No part of me regrets my time in Atlanta. The lessons I learned there are infinite. I learned about the brokenness of our low-income communities. I learned about the bravery of the teachers that fight for our kids each and every day. I learned a lot about strength and trial and release, and I met a lot of students that shine despite their circumstances.
I stand before you today again that dreamer. Guatemala healed my heart and renewed my calling. Only now, I’m not just that dreamer, I also get to carry the strength from the lessons I learned in Atlanta. I’m not a grasshopper anymore.
Cosas bellas creό, del polvo cosas bellas el formό. Cosas bellas creό, de mi cosas hermosas el formό.
Tu nos renuevas, transformas Señor. Tu nos renuevas, transformas Señor.
Cosas bellas creό, del polvo cosas bellas el formό. Cosas bellas creό, de mi cosas hermosas el formό.
(click here for an English version)
I remember my parents having a hard time accepting my decision to study English in college and become a teacher. I simply felt God’s calling. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t do anything other than what God had created me for. So at 17, it was decided, and I followed my passion.
All the while, my mother kept telling me that teachers weren’t in demand. They are underpaid, under-respected. “You’re smart enough to become a doctor,” she would say, “In Korea, teachers are the most highly respected profession. If we were there, I would be okay with this, but the US isn’t like that.”
But I wouldn’t listen. I had heard God’s call, and I was marching boldly forward.
By my second year of college, a friend of my sister’s introduced me to Teach for America, and it became the sole outlet through which I desired to fulfill this passion of mine. I didn’t just want to teach, I wanted to get right into the thick of it. I wanted to go where I was needed the most!
And so I did. Determined to get in, I spent multiple rounds with TfA after college, convincing them to take me on as a corps member. I packed up my things, and I moved my entire life to Atlanta, a city still reverberating from a history that I had only read about in books, a city where I knew not a single soul. The culture shock was immense, the familial comforts nowhere to be found.
My two years as a teacher in Atlanta wrecked the passion I had once had. It turned me into an insecure, disillusioned shell of what once was a confident, idealistic dreamer.
Nearing the end of my two-year commitment, after a really bad day in the classroom, I drove home in a fury. All I could think was, “Your mom was right. You should have become a doctor. Who do these kids think they are?! I’m too smart to be treated this way!! I don’t have to put up with this!!!” I could feel the hot tears building inside of me. All I wanted was for them to break, but they just wouldn’t. I was stuck in a hot anger and dark depression, barely even remembering the teenager I had been that just wanted to make a difference. For someone, anyone.
I finally got my mother on the phone later that night, and flooded my thoughts out onto her. “Mom, you were right! I should have become a doctor!!” Calmly, she simply responded, “Yeah, but you wanted to make a difference.”
Then, the tears came. Powerful and flowing, understanding how far I had fallen, understanding how far away I was from that young girl I had once been.
My mom is usually the first to tell me to “buck up,” to tell me that I’m only crying because I feel sorry for myself, to remind me that my own hardships are minuscule in comparison to those of my students. But this time, she just quietly and patiently listened to my crying.
I spent that next summer trying to reflect, trying to understand what, if any, impact I had made. I would hike to my favorite spots in Ferguson Canyon, and ask God how He had used me in Atlanta, why He had sent me there, only to return in such defeat. I would drive in my car and listen to songs that talked about how God uses these things to make us stronger. I would sit with my pastors as they told me how God’s network is so wide-spread and all-encompassing that it’s sometimes impossible for us to understand our small link in the chain. But healing just wouldn’t come.
I first signed up for The Race because I believed that it would be an oasis after what I considered a two-year crawl through a desert. I believe I even wrote that in my “About Me” section of this very blog. I expected The Race to take my dry, broken spirit and renew it so that I could re-enter my teaching world afresh and ready.
If you’ve been following my blog this year, you know that it wasn’t quite the oasis that I expected. In fact, there have been a lot of physical hardships and inconveniences that have affected me at a level I did not anticipate. Beyond this, it wasn’t healing my spirit the way I had hoped.
Many of the countries I have been to, I have stepped into teaching roles feeling very unsure of myself and regularly believing that I couldn’t do it well. Even arriving here in Guatemala, I asked to not be assigned the ministry that would be going to the public schools to teach.
Despite this request, I ended up as one of the teachers, heading to 1-4 schools a day.
I guess the Lord knows what you need.
I don’t really know what it was this month. Nothing I can pinpoint specifically, but this month was different. It changed me. God finally brought me the healing I had been waiting for, my Race has finally become the renewing oasis I had needed.
With my team at a coffee shop, we studied Numbers 13 and talked about facing our giants, about becoming a giant ourselves. In this chapter, the youth of Israel go into the Promised Land to spy it out and find out if it does indeed “flow with milk and honey.” They return to tell the Israelites that the land is everything that was promised to them, everything they’ve ever hoped for. However, the chapter ends with the Israelites response, proclaiming that the giants inhabiting the land are just much too big to take on. In the very last sentence, they say, “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”
They said, we seemed like grasshoppers IN OUR OWN EYES! The truth of the matter was that no one had called them grasshoppers. They had only said it of themselves. They were equally giants if they believed themselves to be, if they believed the God of the Universe was on their side.
I realized, I was the only one calling myself a grasshopper. After that, I went back to read my recommendation letter from my principal, a very encouraging account of the things that I did in Atlanta. I knew what that letter had said, but I was finally in a place to really hear it. Healed.
No part of me regrets my time in Atlanta. The lessons I learned there are infinite. I learned about the brokenness of our low-income communities. I learned about the bravery of the teachers that fight for our kids each and every day. I learned a lot about strength and trial and release, and I met a lot of students that shine despite their circumstances.
I stand before you today again that dreamer. Guatemala healed my heart and renewed my calling. Only now, I’m not just that dreamer, I also get to carry the strength from the lessons I learned in Atlanta. I’m not a grasshopper anymore.
Cosas bellas creό, del polvo cosas bellas el formό. Cosas bellas creό, de mi cosas hermosas el formό.
Tu nos renuevas, transformas Señor. Tu nos renuevas, transformas Señor.
Cosas bellas creό, del polvo cosas bellas el formό. Cosas bellas creό, de mi cosas hermosas el formό.
I remember my parents having a hard time accepting my decision to study English in college and become a teacher. I simply felt God’s calling. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t do anything other than what God had created me for. So at 17, it was decided, and I followed my passion.
All the while, my mother kept telling me that teachers weren’t in demand. They are underpaid, under-respected. “You’re smart enough to become a doctor,” she would say, “In Korea, teachers are the most highly respected profession. If we were there, I would be okay with this, but the US isn’t like that.”
But I wouldn’t listen. I had heard God’s call, and I was marching boldly forward.
By my second year of college, a friend of my sister’s introduced me to Teach for America, and it became the sole outlet through which I desired to fulfill this passion of mine. I didn’t just want to teach, I wanted to get right into the thick of it. I wanted to go where I was needed the most!
And so I did. Determined to get in, I spent multiple rounds with TfA after college, convincing them to take me on as a corps member. I packed up my things, and I moved my entire life to Atlanta, a city still reverberating from a history that I had only read about in books, a city where I knew not a single soul. The culture shock was immense, the familial comforts nowhere to be found.
My two years as a teacher in Atlanta wrecked the passion I had once had. It turned me into an insecure, disillusioned shell of what once was a confident, idealistic dreamer.
Nearing the end of my two-year commitment, after a really bad day in the classroom, I drove home in a fury. All I could think was, “Your mom was right. You should have become a doctor. Who do these kids think they are?! I’m too smart to be treated this way!! I don’t have to put up with this!!!” I could feel the hot tears building inside of me. All I wanted was for them to break, but they just wouldn’t. I was stuck in a hot anger and dark depression, barely even remembering the teenager I had been that just wanted to make a difference. For someone, anyone.
I finally got my mother on the phone later that night, and flooded my thoughts out onto her. “Mom, you were right! I should have become a doctor!!” Calmly, she simply responded, “Yeah, but you wanted to make a difference.”
Then, the tears came. Powerful and flowing, understanding how far I had fallen, understanding how far away I was from that young girl I had once been.
My mom is usually the first to tell me to “buck up,” to tell me that I’m only crying because I feel sorry for myself, to remind me that my own hardships are minuscule in comparison to those of my students. But this time, she just quietly and patiently listened to my crying.
I spent that next summer trying to reflect, trying to understand what, if any, impact I had made. I would hike to my favorite spots in Ferguson Canyon, and ask God how He had used me in Atlanta, why He had sent me there, only to return in such defeat. I would drive in my car and listen to songs that talked about how God uses these things to make us stronger. I would sit with my pastors as they told me how God’s network is so wide-spread and all-encompassing that it’s sometimes impossible for us to understand our small link in the chain. But healing just wouldn’t come.
I first signed up for The Race because I believed that it would be an oasis after what I considered a two-year crawl through a desert. I believe I even wrote that in my “About Me” section of this very blog. I expected The Race to take my dry, broken spirit and renew it so that I could re-enter my teaching world afresh and ready.
If you’ve been following my blog this year, you know that it wasn’t quite the oasis that I expected. In fact, there have been a lot of physical hardships and inconveniences that have affected me at a level I did not anticipate. Beyond this, it wasn’t healing my spirit the way I had hoped.
Many of the countries I have been to, I have stepped into teaching roles feeling very unsure of myself and regularly believing that I couldn’t do it well. Even arriving here in Guatemala, I asked to not be assigned the ministry that would be going to the public schools to teach.
Despite this request, I ended up as one of the teachers, heading to 1-4 schools a day.
I guess the Lord knows what you need.
I don’t really know what it was this month. Nothing I can pinpoint specifically, but this month was different. It changed me. God finally brought me the healing I had been waiting for, my Race has finally become the renewing oasis I had needed.
With my team at a coffee shop, we studied Numbers 13 and talked about facing our giants, about becoming a giant ourselves. In this chapter, the youth of Israel go into the Promised Land to spy it out and find out if it does indeed “flow with milk and honey.” They return to tell the Israelites that the land is everything that was promised to them, everything they’ve ever hoped for. However, the chapter ends with the Israelites response, proclaiming that the giants inhabiting the land are just much too big to take on. In the very last sentence, they say, “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”
They said, we seemed like grasshoppers IN OUR OWN EYES! The truth of the matter was that no one had called them grasshoppers. They had only said it of themselves. They were equally giants if they believed themselves to be, if they believed the God of the Universe was on their side.
I realized, I was the only one calling myself a grasshopper. After that, I went back to read my recommendation letter from my principal, a very encouraging account of the things that I did in Atlanta. I knew what that letter had said, but I was finally in a place to really hear it. Healed.
No part of me regrets my time in Atlanta. The lessons I learned there are infinite. I learned about the brokenness of our low-income communities. I learned about the bravery of the teachers that fight for our kids each and every day. I learned a lot about strength and trial and release, and I met a lot of students that shine despite their circumstances.
I stand before you today again that dreamer. Guatemala healed my heart and renewed my calling. Only now, I’m not just that dreamer, I also get to carry the strength from the lessons I learned in Atlanta. I’m not a grasshopper anymore.
You make beautiful things. You make beautiful things out of the dust. You make beautiful things. You make beautiful things out of us. . .
You make things new. . . You are making me new. . .
