Post 29: Closing the Door

I love to play the piano.  I have taken lessons since I was six or seven, although they were intermittent (I’m just impressed my Mom was able to find me a teacher no matter where in the NWT we lived).  I do not own a piano, so I really don’t get to play that often.  But we have two at the school I’m currently working at—one in the staff room and one in the foyer.

I am not a great pianist.  I can sight read really well, but throughout the years of lessons I didn’t enjoy the technical aspects as much.  I may be anal about some things (like dishes and the state of my house and the arrangement of our bistro table on our front porch), but other things I am not so anal about.  Like practicing piano.

Playing piano was something I did purely for enjoyment.  It is a means of expressing myself.  My grade twelve year I was thrust into play for church and I continued to do so up until a few years ago.  I always attended churches that were somewhat desperate for musicians, so they were happy to have me.  In the last few years I have either been in a church for too short of a time to bother trying to join a worship team, or I haven’t wanted to because I can acknowledge that I am not that good technically.

Don’t get me wrong, I play with feeling.  And usually when I sit down and start chording it is because I need to express myself to God and words just aren’t cutting it.  I have had some people tell me that when I play the enjoyment and the expression is what comes through.  And it helps them to worship.

But the whole point of this is that I love to express myself through playing, but haven’t had much opportunity to.  This week I have been on our school pianos every morning.

Why?

Because I have needed to go to God and I am tired of going to Him with words and tears.

On Monday night I found out that my maternity leave position was not being continued.  They had decided to only schedule the teacher I was filling in for for the second semester when she will be back.

And that came as a bit of a blow.  It was rough because nothing had been communicated with me.  It was humbling (and who likes to be humbled).  And it just hurt.  I had really been hoping this would continue and was looking forward to working full-time.

So these last few mornings the piano has been my cry.

About a year ago I was in the midst of finishing off teaching and preparing to hop in my car and drive across the country to get married.  It was a terribly exciting time.

It was also a time of grieving.

I was preparing to leave behind family, friends, and an incredible job.  My students were more than my students—they were my kids.  I cared about how they were doing, and was honoured to me a mentor to some. 

We went through a period of time where I could have sworn that at every chapel service at my school we sang the song “Oceans.”  This song became my anthem.  I want to share the words with you.

Verse 1

You call me out upon the waters
The great unknown where feet may fail
And there I find You in the mystery
In oceans deep
My faith will stand

Chorus
And I will call upon Your name
And keep my eyes above the waves
When oceans rise
My soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours and You are mine

Verse 2
Your grace abounds in deepest waters
Your sovereign hand
Will be my guide
Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me
You've never failed and You won't start now

Chorus
So I will call upon Your name
And keep my eyes above the waves
When oceans rise
My soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours and You are mine

Bridge
Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior

Last Friday we sang this song in our morning assembly and it brought be back to that time.  Of course, last Friday I thought I would have a position next year.  This morning I found myself looking up the chords for the song and it was what I played.

Part of me can laugh.  Between a run-in with tenants, no Hawaii trip, a week where it seemed like nothing I tried with my students was working, the theft of our flower boxes (yes, we woke up Monday morning and someone had stolen our flower boxes off of our porch), and then the realization that I have no full-time work lined up for the fall makes me want to laugh.  Insanity?  Perhaps.

I bawled Monday night when I found out.  Ask my poor husband.  My sister and brother called me instantly to talk about it.  My parents were there for me the next morning, and my mother-in-law was there Tuesday night. 

But today there is peace.  Disappointment.  And hurt.  But peace doesn’t mean an absence of those things.

God has continually been faithful in my life.  He has rarely done things the way that I want them done, but His ideas always turn out better than mine.  Why would this time be any different?

I didn’t rage against Him.  I didn’t even ask Him why.  As we prayed Monday night, Jordan talked about God closing doors and opening others.  He reminded me that something will open up.  And I know that is true.  It might not be what I want right now, and it might be something completely different, but it will be good.

Because God is good.

That hasn’t changed just because things haven’t gone the way I want them to.

Post 28: And Exhale

When I last posted two (or was it three?) weeks ago, I was determined that I was going to start writing consistently again.  And then time sped by.  At this moment all I can think is that in just a few hours the long weekend will begin and that both husband and I could use a rest.

It has been a really good week of teaching, but it has also been a hard week.  Last week my kids participated in a mock trial downtown (which had me pretty stressed out but they blew all the other schools out of the water.  They were pretty incredible.  I would love to take the credit for it, but I'm learning this Law stuff as I go--it was all them!).  This week I had a student ask me in front of the class to change up how I teach.  Which is completely legit.  The problem is when you have tried on multiple occasions to switch things up and your students just don't respond.  I even brought in candy to encourage discussion, and it did almost nothing.  Sometimes you get tired of pushing against a wall and being unable to move it.  I talked to the student later and they completely understood that I had tried to change this in the past.  It is also really hard taking over halfway through a semester.  But the rest of this week has felt fantastic when it came to teaching.  I love my kids, and even the class that I thought would drive me batty has become one of my favourite ones to teach.

I love the sense of justice some of my students have.  I will read a case out to my grade elevens and the outrage they feel at what was done, or how they feel justice was (or was not) carried out is just incredible to see.

My motto for this semester has been "small victories."  And in each of my classes I am able to identify small things that have changed.  Those are the moments and the victories that I hold on to.

But this week has also been just plain exhausting.  Thursday kind of took the cake for stressful days.  After our biggest run-in with our tenants yet, we both felt just drained.  (Back to small victories--they gave us written notice that they are officially leaving partway through the summer, so huzzah for that!).  We decided to relax for the rest of the evening, and finally look into confirming our holiday in Hawaii that I won last year.

I won this trip when purchasing my wedding dress and all my bridesmaids' dresses.  But it was one of those deals where they try to make it as difficult as possible for you to claim it.  Like where we had to pick two dates we wanted to take our trip on, but those dates couldn't be closer than 3 months apart.  So Jordan put down our honeymoon and our one year anniversary.  Two months before the wedding they told us we got to go for our one-year (thank you, Jordan, for being able to plan our honeymoon to Jamaica after that).

Thursday night we went to the website.

The website no longer existed.

We called the number.

The number was no longer in order.

We emailed them.

There was no email in return.

After some research it turned out the company claimed to have gone bankrupt last fall and so it shut down.

So bye-bye, Hawaii.

We handled it really well, I think.  There was just sort of silence in the house as we took it all in.  We both tend to mull things over, so that was what we did.

There's no sense in crying or getting upset, because that isn't going to change what happened.  Getting mad at God because of a cancelled trip or a blow-out with our tenants isn't the answer either.

We had been planning on taking some time before our trip to visit with my family out west.  Jordan suggested that we just take spend our holiday out there instead.  The next day my parents called and suggested the same thing.  So we will get to spend a week with my family (which I am very excited about!).

And now it is the Monday of the long weekend.  And it has been the perfect opportunity to exhale.  We have both slept in, We ran errands that needed to be run.  Today we went for a run to start the day and then demoed the closet upstairs we are planning on turning into a laundry room.

The weather has been glorious.  They had been forecasting rain and instead we have had sun and heat.

Yesterday our pastor preached on "Where is God when I'm suffering?"  As we drove home after church, I commented to Jordan about how I enjoyed the sermon, and it was definitely full of some good stuff.  But the hard part is that when you aren't suffering it is easy to tell yourself these kinds of things.  To remind yourself that God is present in your suffering.  But when you are hurting or your world feels like it is falling apart, those things never seem to be much of a comfort.  At least, no one likes to be told them when they are grieving/hurting.

But I also realized something this weekend.  My typical reaction when something doesn't go according to plan is to wondering why God is screwing things up.  Why He doesn't seem to want to let anything go according to plan.

The thing I noticed is that when our plans began to fall apart for the summer, I didn't rant or rave against God.  True, I was exhausted and probably somewhat numb from all of the experiences that happened, but even with a little time and some much-needed rest, I haven't gotten angry.

Now I'm not saying it is wrong to get upset or even to get angry when you are in the midst of suffering.  The Psalms definitely show a great deal of frustration.  When I think of the raw emotion in CS Lewis' A Grief Observed, I tend to think God is okay with our emotions.  He is God--I don't think He scares that easily.

But I think there is a part of me that, at least with the smaller things in life, is learning to trust God.  To realize that things not going the way I want them to doesn't mean that He is out to get me.

And of course I realize that having said all this the next time something goes wrong I will probably get very upset :)

I feel like this post has been all over the place, and for that I apologize.  In life I find we go through seasons.  There have been times where it feels like emotionally I am very aware of God's presence.  I will go for a walk and feel completely surrounded by Him.  Other times it seems like intellectually I am attuned.  It is as if everything I read points to Him and challenges me.  The last year or so I haven't been able to characterize what my relationship with Him has been like, but I think this weekend I have been better able to.  I think I am in a season of a quiet awareness of Him.  There is a peace and an assurance through anything that is happening (uncertainty over work, the death of a loved one, tenants yelling and calling me names), that God is present.

It is as if I am able to simply exhale.  I can continue to breath and continue to live and can know that no matter what happens, it doesn't change Who God is.  And my feelings don't change whether or  not He is present.

He is.