This Gift That Didn't Look Like One

In our family we have some mottos or mantras. We say, "You win some; you learn some" there is no lose unless you don't use it. We also try to replace the words "problem" and "challenge" with the word "opportunity." Try it. You can change almost any sentence with those first two words and infuse it with hope by replacing with that last word.

THE PROBLEM

Todd and I are high school teachers. About one month ago we were given about 24 hours to say goodbye to our students (at the time we though it would be for 6 weeks), pack up our personal belongings and anything we might need to try teaching online from home and leave our classrooms. That was hard! Our classrooms are sacred, ordained spaces to us. They are places where we pour ourselves out for kids and watch them light up with confidence, new knowledge and skills, find inspiration and lean on us and each other for support. I was in a whole mix of emotions that I was able to identify as the beginnings of grief when I went to school that last day, knowing it was suddenly a last day. Teaching content wasn't that important anymore and the paramount priority of what we do was all that mattered--love these young people. Meet them where they are today. Leave them with some answer to the most pressing question: "What am I even supposed to do?"


So that's what my heart took into my classroom that morning. And I decided to share it and give it to these young people I had come to love and hope that they could find a way to do it. To see this problem, this sadness as an opportunity.



I have to be honest, I have struggled! I've gone through all 5 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) more than once and back through a couple of them a couple more times. Grief is not linear. And with each stay-at-home order extension and now school closure extension through the end of the year...I go back through the stages again. I know there is some hidden, unexpected opportunity in this, but I've struggled HARD to find it.

I'm not happy we are not going back to school this year. I'm actually pretty devastated about it. I couldn't really talk to anyone for several hours after that new knowledge yesterday afternoon. I've been robbed before a couple times. Once it was my purse. It felt like a loss over and over again over the following days as I recalled yet another important thing that had been in that purse that I now didn't have but was held by a malicious stranger now. It might have been something personal that was irreplaceable or just felt like an invasion of privacy, something valuable and expensive to replace, or something inconvenient to replace but each realization made me live the loss again. That's how it felt yesterday and today. Each event lost, each beloved student's face that I won't finish out with who is different this loss, each exciting thing my own kids were looking forward to was another assault on my heart.

THE OPPORTUNITY

But I'm thankful to know finally and not wonder if and when that announcement would be made. We know what we're dealing with now, so I can move fully into acceptance and seize this as an opportunity.


That's the shift I'm making today. Today I'm finding the gifts. There has never been a time like this in my life. Yes, I remember 9/11 clearly but even in some of its similarities it didn't offer some of these gifts. The world has slowed. The world understands that each of us is grieving and having feelings and prioritizing health and wellness and family. There is so much comfort and relief in that!






Some of the gifts are small. I get to wear my slippers all day long! I love my work and "my people" (students), but in the fall I sometimes lament that the hardest part of going back to school is putting on real shoes again. I get to work with my dog right next to me. He has a calming secure sort of influence on my heart.






I get to listen to worship music all day long and talk freely with my kids about our loving God! My kids get to hear all day about our loving God!! That's no small gift! One of the great opportunities during all of this is to be filled with the calm and love and hope of Jesus as we lean on Him to navigate this part of the journey for which there is no map. But we do have a Compass and we do have a Guide!



This comes at a strange time in the life of my oldest daughter. This was to be the end of her elementary years. This summer she transitions to middle school. She's not the daughter that wants to snuggle and be tender most of the time. I was starting to dread the middle school transition because it feels like a time when the distance between she and I could easily grow as she starts to look to her peers more for influence and my voice becomes less powerful to her. But no! I get three and a half bonus months with her to love and invest and guide her as she transitions to middle school. OH MY GOODNESS! What at gift. We have walked and talked just the two of us. We have written journal entries back and forth to each other and we have snuggled many times because she has initiated it. She is looking to Todd and I to fill her emotional needs and we are so, so privileged to get to do that. I think being "stuck at home"--NO "SAFE at home"-- during this period of life for her that is often an unsettling transitional time will change the trajectory of her growth and our relationship from what it would have been in so many good ways.


This time is asking us to really make our priorities primary. To let the things most important to us rise to the top and all other things fall along the wayside. It is redirecting our hearts to what matters most and pruning the unnecessary and unhelpful things from our lives. It is forcing us to sit with the quiet in a world usually so noisy we've forgotten how to listen to our own hearts (noise and hurry are the enemy of a spiritual life). It is forcing us to sit with ourselves and learn more about who we are and what we are about. That is one gift I want to intentionally choose to pick up and never set back down.



I have decided to look at this time as a weird gift filled with opportunities that I never would have had otherwise and seek out ways to make it count as much as I can. That's one of the reasons I'm reading and writing and creating and planting and calling and walking and laughing and responding when my kids show they need it and dropping everything to take care of myself and my family and shutting out the noise and seeking God deeper.

This is a gift and I'm done wasting gifts!! What gifts are you realizing during this time? Comment below!