Even though I had the phone on silent, the call still woke me as the glowing screen lit up my room. I rolled over and ignored the phone. A good sleep the night before the first day of school was of greater importance than chatting with a friend from a different time zone. A few minutes later, the room lit up again. My friends rarely call and would never call repeatedly like this, so I peeked at the screen, saw the unfamiliar number, and set the phone screen-side down.
A minute later, I got a message: “Are you dead, sir?” Ominous question to start my thirteenth year of teaching. Part of me contemplated replying to the message with some quip like, “No, but if you interrupt my sleep again, you will be.” But mostly, I just stared at the message and heard Marcie’s matter-of-fact voice asking Peppermint Patty this. Now a month into the school year, I feel like this was the most fitting question to start the year. In many ways, I feel like I traded places with my students from this spring. Last semester, I was teaching middle school second-language students who couldn’t navigate the technology needed for online learning at all. After a semester, I had a folder of over a thousand screenshots I had sent to students to guide them through the cyber labyrinth. Now, I’m the one using a new system that my non-language learning students are marginally more familiar with. I constantly check for reassurance: “Can you see my screen?” “Can you hear me?” “Can you open this document?” Rather exhausting. And the students ask even more questions: “How many words are required in this paragraph?” “Can I read the car manual for my required outside reading pages?” “My wifi cut out; what did you talk about in the last half of class?” From that first ominous question, the questions have continued piling up. Fortunately, from my students last year, I learned the answer to every question: yes. (Occasionally, “maybe” is an acceptable substitute.) Me: What did Pinocchio do? Student A: Yes Me: Did you listen to the chapter or did you read the chapter? Student G: Yes Me: Why did the flying monkeys obey Dorothy? Student M: Yes Me: Can you see me? Students A-Z: Maybe (An exception to this “one answer to rule them all” is questions about lunch. How was lunch? Noodles.) Maybe I can try this ultimate answer with my students this week. At least, I can amuse myself with in the afternoon when I am tired after teaching to a screen for three straight hours and that ominous text message pops into my head again. “Are you dead, sir?” Maybe. Maybe.
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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. As a writer, I am easily distracted. As this year has removed any sense of normal and structure from my life, finding a “writing spot” has been challenging. One of my goals this fall was to enjoy the ease of using Western internet again by resuming regular blogging (it’s hard to stay motivated when posting a blog requires several tries to load the webpage and a half a dozen refreshes to get the edit button to work). And yet, now that this fall has arrived, I still am in an “in-between” with no routines beyond go to work and go to sleep.
I find myself looking to the past for perspective and reminders of truth. Today, determined to resume a writing life, I reviewed my unpublished writing from this year and stumbled on this post I wrote for Easter: At first, when I tucked myself away inside for a presumably brief isolation, I secretly relished having unlimited, guilt-free alone time. Time to reflect, write, feel, think, grow, heal. Eighty days later, I still appreciate this time in the in-between, but I am aware of the consequence of passing time. A few weeks ago, a friend asked me whether we were going to have to go through culture shock again when we re-emerge from isolation. A disheartening thought. But she’s right. Reintegrating with society, rebuilding routines—we will have to remember parts of the foreign culture we have forgotten; we will have to adjust to parts of that culture that have changed. As with most experiences in the in-between, a new normal awaits on the other side. And a new normal, of course, means change. I’ve experienced many transitions in life, but this prolonged in-between is unique; I’m not in the process of changing locations or jobs with clearly defined parameters. At times, I feel like I’m paused mid-scene and waiting for the viewer to press Play again. But we aren’t really paused, so when He presses Play, we’ll jump to new scenes without finishing the old ones. Usually, I view change with antipathy, odd considering how often I see the flaws in the normal and try to fix it. But during this in-between, I have been musing on two ideas: the comfort of His immutability and the mercy of my mutability. In the midst of constant change—moving to new homes, gaining and losing friends, colleagues, and students, switching jobs—He remains steadfast, a sure anchor for my soul. That comfort of His unchanging nature often deludes me into wanting everything else to stay in the familiar safety of a broken normal. As I stare out the window at a world slowly unpausing, wondering what it will look like when this interlude is over, part of me fears the changes that will be. But today, Easter Sunday, we are not just celebrating God’s immutable love, justice, and grace. We are celebrating the new normal He brought us—the gift of change. Now, as we wait in the in-between, we are made new, changed from glory to glory. Those changes, though difficult and gradual, are possible because we are mercifully mutable. No matter what life looks like next, I can and will change with it while He remains the same. Even better, we look forward to a far more blessed new normal that awaits us. |
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