Ready for the Next Door

Here I sit at another fork in the road of life. My classroom days may be a mere 27 days from ending. The choice to return to teaching after retirement has been the right one and filled me with self-confidence and joy to be back with a work family, kiddos and their families. My leaving yet again is to spend more time with my Mom. This is a good choice but somehow I greedily wish I could be with Mom and in my classroom as well. Some don’t understand that it takes more courage to step away from work than to stay. When work is filled with heart kids that I get to impact daily, it is a very hard leave. On my desk calendar there is a count down to Christmas break. It is not a countdown to freedom but a reminder to treasure each moment that I get to share with these precious gifts.

I had an idea of what I would do when I stepped away from the middle school behavior program that was my home for seven years. My thought was that retiring was just a repurposing of my life. My heart believed I would somehow support young adults with autism since there were so many that I was blessed to walk beside when they were younger. God led me instead to working with wee ones in the Early Intervention Program for birth to three year olds. What a learning curve! This included a very different and fabulous work family as well as travel to homes and preschools to support families. What a gift that year and a half was to me. That led to me following a couple beautiful three year olds into a preschool program with a work sister that I adore.

This year I was once again given the opportunity to teach full time with kindergartners to third graders. I went into this program believing that my heart was really for middle schoolers. Although I will always be a middle school teacher at heart, I must admit that this opportunity was my favorite for this time in my life. Yes, I can have more than one favorite when it comes to working with kids.

This time I look forward to God’s next adventure for me as this time back in the classroom melts away. Too often I make my plans and then He opens doors that challenge me and grows my heart. The future awaits and the one thing I am sure of is that as this door closes the next one is ready to open. It will be exciting and filled with just who and what it should be.

In Him,
Joyful
11-11-18