I got to go home for Thanksgiving at the mercy and generosity of my parents. And it was wonderful. I think Ryann was annoyed with my constant hugs, kisses, and squeezes after 2 hours. I just couldn't help it though; she's irresistible. It's amazing how much she's grown and matured. I wish I could put her in my 3s class. She's so stinkin' cute.
It was refreshing to see my family and some of my friends. I so appreciate the relationships that quickly pick-up without awkwardness or hesitancy. I am blessed beyond measure to have several of those in my life currently.
When it came time to leave, I was surprised at my inner resistance to head back to Seattle. I love my life here, but I was reminded of how much I left behind in Atlanta. Seattle is better than Atlanta for so many reasons in my mind, but Atlanta has relationships that are better than everything Seattle has to offer. Yet I'm confident this is where I'm supposed to be.
The thrill, adrenaline, and newness of my life has faded. Reality has sunk in: I'm a preschool teacher, high school cheer coach, and new resident of the state of Washington. None of it feels real. I take that back. The coach part feels very real. Because it's very time consuming. Very.
And I'm asking myself, "Now what?!"
I am confident that what I'm doing now, what I'm learning here, and how God is calling me deeper in relationship with Him is all purposeful. This is training ground for something later, and God is expanding my tool belt, if you will. But there's a part of me that's wondering how long I can settle here before I'll be taking off again. There's something very appealing to me about experiencing new things. Going new places. Meeting new people.
But the more attached I get to my team, the harder it sounds to pack up and go. At the beginning of the season, I was keeping the cheerleaders a little distanced from me, but I couldn't maintain that for long. My freshmen are begging me to stay until they graduate. But when I think about being here for the next 3.5 years, I shudder. I can really only handle one day at a time right now.
The past couple of days I've been reading 2 Corinthians 4. Verses 6 and 7 say this, "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us."
As this next part of the transition process is feeling a little harder and a little more real, my prayer is that I would remain a jar of clay. It's so easy for me to want to come across as being something much more sophisticated than simple clay. When in fact, I am clay- with cracks, dents, and stains. Just as miraculous as it was when God spoke light into the darkness, so it is just as miraculous that God would allow me, a broken, fallen being, to have Christ live in me. The beauty of the Gospel. The amazingness of grace. I was but an ordinary, fragile, clay jar, and now Christ's power resides in me.
I pray that the inadequacy of who I am would be known so that the surpassing greatness of Jesus inside of me would be made so apparent.
No comments:
Post a Comment