Dear 2020

Dear 2020,

As an educator, I can applaud your tenacity. You carried on with your lessons despite your pupils' resistance... despite my resistance. However, even I must admit that I have learned several valuable lessons from your controversial pedagogy, and despite my disdain for your methods, I am grateful for these lessons:

• Life is simultaneously fragile and resilient. That's what makes it beautiful. It's the dandelion springing up between the cracks in the concrete. It may not last, but for a moment the terrain is transformed. We are all dandelions in the concrete.
• The things we take for granted are the same things that others are fighting for desperately. In a moment, they may become the things we are fighting for, too. 
• Children aren't the only ones who need a routine... Discipline is creating your own routine when no one else is there to establish the rules for you. 
• Sweatpants are a good and perfect gift from above (James 1:17). Seriously, why do we invest in anything less comfortable than cheap sweatpants? The right people will find you beautiful when you are most comfortable.
• Humility is the nuanced distinction between taking ownership and taking charge. It is looking in the mirror instead of through a window (or a screen). We too often forget that taking ownership is always more productive than taking charge. 
• The difference between inconvenience and oppression is perceived in the context of privilege. The line is thin between the two constructs, and the line of justice is easily crossed despite our best intentions.
• Sometimes the best comfort is silence. We all experience our own pain in response to our own circumstances-- no two wounds are identical even if the weapon was the same. I don't want or need you to know my pain; I simply need you to acknowledge that my pain is real.
• It's ok to admit when you're drowning. No one throws a life vest to an Olympic swimmer. Look for the surrounding ships and start shouting. As someone who knows depression intimately, I have learned that my silence only expands the darkness. I experienced my first season of depression and anxiety when I was in high school. A pastor told me that my depression was symptomatic of a lack of faith. I was holding on to a thin thread, and just like that, his words cut it. It took years to dispel the myth that my faith and my depression were at odds. Admitting depression would mean admitting to a lack of belief, so I didn't admit it, and the depression got worse. I still pay the price for several unhealthy choices I made. When I read Matthew's account of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane per the recommendation of a counselor in college, Jesus' anguish felt incredibly familiar. I know the Garden of Gethsemane all too well, but I'm not alone... my Savior knows it, too. There's a reason why most of David's Psalms are psalms of lament. God made our souls as a reflection of His own, and He gives us permission to feel our pain. It connects us to His son. Wake up your friends like Jesus did at Gethsemane. Call out to the ships. Chances are you aren't the only one in desperate need of a lifeboat.
• Sometimes hope is an act of defiance... sometimes hope entails getting out of bed without knowing why. Hope provokes the darkness. That's why it's dangerous, but it's worth it. Share your matches, and it gets a little easier.
• Fear is powerful, but faith is more powerful. If hope is the match, then faith is the flame. 

Despite our flaws, there is something undeniably beautiful in each of us-- something eternal and unbreakable. For these revelations, 2020, I am thankful, and I hope that we can part with a sense of mutual respect.

Your willful and exhausted pupil,

Austen

One Too Many

Fourteen months ago, I stepped away from teaching in order to pursue another dream. 

As Glenn and I started getting answers from our fertility specialist and an amazing team of physicians, I realized that starting a family would require a commitment... a larger commitment of my time, energy, and resources than we initially anticipated.

While teaching, my students were my life, and their needs superseded my own aspirations. I could not make the appointments, get the necessary procedures, explore our family planning options, and still feel successful in my role as an educator.  This is not meant to sound vainglorious. It is the educator's truth. I've watched my colleagues and friends make countless sacrifices, lovingly and even joyfully because that is our truth. We love our students more than our personal plans... more than money, sleep, and in many cases, more than anything else. I've cried with more than one friend as their relationships unravel due in part to the beautifully sacrificial act of teaching.

Nearly three years ago, I started looking into doctoral programs. It is important to me that I model the attributes that I want my students to live into... One of my Room 134 Family Precepts was to strive each day to be a bit  better than yesterday. At the time, I wanted to start taking 1-2 online classes per semester. Leaving the classroom was not a part of the original plan. However, as I started applying to doctoral programs in the spring of 2019, I was also aware of the increasing demands related to my dreams of becoming a mom.  

Last year, as Glenn and I started having hard conversations about our journey into parenthood, I was incredibly fortunate that several amazing doors opened financially through academic fellowships, so that I could pursue a doctoral degree full-time. 

While, I am fully confident that God was present in our decision-making, it's hard to explain the heartbreak I felt, as I exchanged one dream for another. Teaching is not like other jobs. When I think about teaching, I do not think about my duties or the hours I spent planning, I think of 127 faces, and each one is precious to me. 

In the fall, I stepped into the new season of writing and reading research while getting regular ultrasounds and trying various hormone treatments. The disassembled crib in our back bedroom became a source of pain rather than a reminder of promise, and I felt this unrelenting guilt for pursuing something that felt selfish.

At one particularly trying doctor's appointment, I sat in the little room waiting on the doctor to return with results from the HSG, and a teacher friend called me. Of course, I picked up because it was school hours, and I was curious and somewhat concerned. A former student of mine was on the line. He learned that I was friends with his math teacher, and he wanted to call and say 'hi.' The tears quietly flowed as I offered a bit of "Fantastic Spray" through the phone line.

I digress.

This fall, educators and families are faced with a terrible decision. This is not what we wanted nor anticipated. 

I think of 127 precious faces, and I know how desperately many of them need the classroom and the safety and security that it provides.. the safety that my colleagues work tirelessly to provide.

While I ache for my former students and long for them to return to the safety and security of the classroom, I am also increasingly aware of the fact that my colleagues cannot provide that same sense of safety and security this fall.

I have stated before that science is a gift from God. In many ways, fear is a gift, too. We wear seatbelts, stop at red lights, and obey the speed limit out of a healthy respect (fear) of the consequences. In that same breath, we do not allow our students to bring weapons into school because we all have a healthy sense of fear. But, what happens when the weapon is unseen? What happens when an invisible weapon has the potential to do as much (and possibly more) damage, but we have no way of knowing if the weapon is present and no way of standing in the gap between the weapon and our children?

I know we are not called to live in fear, but we are called to fear God in a sense of respecting His power, His authority, and His love (Proverbs 1:7, Psalm 111:10, Job 28:28). We are also told that we should not test Him (Matthew 4:7).  

I can and do respect the hardship that we are all facing, but I also implore you to consider the risk.  If the data does not convince you of the risk to your own child, then please think about my husband. Think about my friends. Think about your most beloved teachers from your own academic experience. These are the individuals who will stand in that gap for your child because that is what they have always done. I was right there with them, standing between your children and the door to our classroom in every single lockdown drill. Knowing that in the face of danger, their lives mattered more to me than my own. 

Right now no one knows where the threshold between the threat and your child resides. No one fully understands the weapon. Everyone is positioned at the same gap.

My fear is one sacrifice is one too many. If it's not my own spouse, it's someone else's. If it's not my own child, then it's someone else's. If it's not my own student, it's someone else's.

Regardless of the percentages and statistics, it only takes one to spread this virus. It only takes one innocent person to pass this on to countless others, and it only takes one life for it to be too many. 

Rather than grow angry with each other, we should care for each other... endure for each other... and recognize that a risk to one is a risk to us all. One is one too many.

Grace for the "Not Right Now"

The current terrain of our world is unfamiliar, and I am intimately aware of the dangerous intersection where my experience ends and yours begins. I cannot speak into the space of your circumstance, but I can share my own with you, in hopes that together, we can know the hope that grows in our collective vulnerability.

Uncertainty and I are well-acquainted. I am intimately aware of disappointment, and I know how it feels to wait for answers that only muddle the situation further.

I am still waiting... and now as the whole world is waiting, all attempts at progress are paused.

It is easy to excuse our feelings of disappointment.
It was too early to tell, so my hopes weren't built up so much. 
We have x,y, and z other options. 
At least we didn't... 
At least we weren't... 

The cross is critical to the narrative that grants us life and hope. It's the nail pierced hands and feet that issued us our redemption. An empty tomb is not spectacular, unless formerly occupied by a lifeless body. His death lasted for three days. For three days, the long-awaited Savior was dead.

He did not denigrate the painful cost of our celestial reunion, and He did not immediately rise.

For three days, death and grief replaced a world of hope and expectation.

Pain is a critical part of God's narrative. It presages new life. When we admit our ache, we invite others to do the same, and while the pain may remain for a time, I have found that hope resides in our collective ache.

I have found so much comfort in the words of a dear friend who is also a part of the ten percent- the women who "have difficulty becoming and staying pregnant." As I tried to excuse my pain as somehow less valid, she stopped me with these words--

Have grace for the things that you are not right now. 

Two months ago I wrote those words on the whiteboard in my office at church.

In the face of disappointment... In the face of uncertainty...
Allow space for the grief
Admit the ache
And Have grace for the things that you are not right now. 

This is not how the narrative ends, but it is important right now.

After two days, he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. -Hosea 6:2

Have grace for the things that you are not right now. 

A Quiet Space at the Table

As an introvert in a family of extroverts, I sometimes feel like a fixture at the table. I love words, but I frequently struggle to find the right ones. My words, however eloquently and meticulously composed, rarely match the contents of my heart.

Glenn knowingly teases, as I revisit each dialogue hours later, trying to bridge the gap between my heart and my mouth. After six years together, he often recognizes when my lexical gymnastics routine simply will not yield its intended outcome.

Words possess a power which warrants our reverence. They resurrect wizened bones. They ignite revolutions, part waters, calm tempests, and speak light into darkness. Words reveal the nature of our God (John 1).

Yet, I fear we are quick to forget the power of words, in favor of more vainglorious impulses. In our human nature, it is so tempting to add to the noise. Silence is mistaken for ambivalence, and fixtures at the table are frequently adorned with others' ideas, like coatracks overwhelmed with ill-matched attire.

So, we speak up.  We cast our words carelessly into the cacophony. We seek others with familiar voices and shout louder.

The resulting clamor is so distracting, so consuming that no one witnesses the destruction, the casualties of our heedless speech.

We all wear the shrapnel of words wielded with such indiscretion. I believe that is why it is so easy to recite offenses as opposed to accolades.

In 1 Kings 19, Elijah encounters God in a whisper. This particular Biblical vignette has resonated in my heart during this season of overwhelming worldly and personal discord. God reveals himself to Elijah in the stillness after the storm. He whispers a question, a gentle invitation into the stillness of Elijah's refuge.

I think the world is in desperate need of such reprieve.

God provides the a quiet space in the cacophony. He resides in the pause between words spoken; He breathes the blank partitions onto the page.

God is not a fixture at our table. We are the guests at His. There is infinite space in His presence, but who can hear His gentle proposal amidst the dissonance?

As I re-read this post, I know that these words are for me. This post has existed as a draft for the past three months. Yet, in that time, my perspective has shifted. I have learned that God's silence is not a punishment-- it is, in fact, a gift.

In our grief, in our waiting, and in our dissonance, God neither shouts, nor reprimands. He meets us in the quiet, whispers to us by name, and extends an invitation to sit with Him at His table.