For many, 2020 has become like “that class” or “that student”—the one you endure as you count the days till graduation or summer break. Yet, until recently, I would have smiled and sheepishly admitted that I was enjoying much that this year had brought into my life.
Trying to remember those positive moments, I’ve been rereading my own writing from this year and found this letter I wrote on the day I traded one uncertain “in-between” for an even more uncertain one: “Today marks one hundred days for me since life was ‘normal.’ One hundred days since I left the house without thinking ‘Where’s my mask? What will security measures be today? Will the guards let me into the store? Will the walk to the store raise my temperature too much? Will the guards let me back into the apartment complex?’ “One hundred days since I could visit a friend. “One hundred days since I could go to work and see my students. “One hundred days since I started having mini praise fests every time the grocery store restocked the staple Western luxuries like cheese, salami, yogurt, and cream. “One hundred days since I began to see one of my biggest prayers—that the disconnecting, numbing power of technology would loosen its grip on my students’ generation—being answered as He glutted us all on our craving until we turned away from the semblance of ‘connection’ and began to look forward to seeing each other in person again. “Through all of this, I have seen what I call ‘glimmers of light.’ Students who were marginalized or underachieving in the classroom have suddenly become motivated and are making up for slacking in the first semester. I had a professional development opportunity almost no other teacher has ever had—daily feedback from a teacher friend who was an unobserved fly-on-the-wall in my video class. I had a wonderful friend just ‘happen’ to need a place to crash at my place for fifty-five wonderful days of healing fellowship during the height of the quarantine. “And this week, these glimmers gave way to a sunburst: I lost my job. This fall, I was rereading Paul Miller’s A Praying Life. In it, he mentions praying about his hopes and dreams. I started doing that. And He brought to mind dreams I had put away in a mental drawer, thinking they were just happy daydreams. And He kept bringing them up, as people would mention this or that opportunity in the States that match those dreams. But I was locked into a two-year contract. Yet, I kept Asking about these dreams even while accepting that I would stay overseas for another year. And then, Monday morning, I was called into a meeting and quite suddenly, found out that they were cancelling my contract for next year. “I walked home alternately laughing and singing ‘Blessed be the Name of the Lord.’ ‘He gives and takes away. He gives and takes away. My heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be Your name.’ And, oh, how He gives. In the most unexpected way, He gave me what I had lacked the faith to ask for. “So, I’m coming home. I don’t know where that home will be. But I know when. I’ll be moving Stateside in July to start another adventure.” It has been four months since I penned that letter. Four months filled with change and uncertainty and countless decisions made on too little sleep. And although the sunburst has been crowded out by some ominously dark clouds, I still see glimmers of light.
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