I've always admired my mom's strength. But, this past year or so has made me so proud of her. See, she has been looking for a teaching job for 2 years, and man, it's been a roller coaster. 30 applications, 9 interviews, and hours of hard work. She'd talk to my family after every disappointment, bouncing thoughts off me, my dad and siblings, like, "Should I even be teaching? What's my calling?" The whole time, though, she kept away from bitterness and despair. She did even more than that. She came to a point where she was ready to give up her dream of having her own class room, and then . . . something amazing happened.
She got her dream job!!!!!!!!
It kind of came at the eleventh hour, and the God of ours has quite the timing. The interesting thing to me is, it wasn't just any old teaching job. This was the job she'd wanted for a really long time at Mckinley, an elementary school that she's wanted to teach at for forever!
I've never had to go through 30 applications and multiple interviews, but I do know about something I call "hope deferred". Actually, Solomon called it "hope deferred". What I mean by that, is dreams that've been in your heart for a long time but haven't happened yet.
You know when you feel something is really right, like it's just MEANT to happen, but it hasn't come to pass yet? Like, I knew that my mom was meant to be a teacher, or how I knew friends of mine were supposed to come to Jesus, or how I was just supposed to work at camp that one summer. It's like waiting for a baby to be born. You know it's going to happen, but it seems like its taking forever.
Paul talked about that too. He said the whole earth groans as though it has labor pains, waiting for the day when everything will be made right, when all of those good "dreams" come to pass.
Another interesting thing I found about my mom's job situation was that it was only when she got to the point where she could give up the job that she GOT the job. My good friend Matt said once that we have to die to our dreams in order for God to do what He wants with them. I think that's true. It's only after I let go of those dreams in my heart, when that doesn't become my life anymore, that I can really enjoy them the way God meant them to be enjoyed.
Like how at Christmas when I was younger, I would hope and hope for a certain present, like one year it was a pair of roller blades. When Christmas finally came and I got the blades, it wasn't like I had imagined for so long. I think it was because I focused so much on that, and that was not something that could really fulfill me, or last. Not that getting roller blades was bad.
What's so cool about God is that He knows every hope in each of His kids' hearts, and He knows that it's only when they come to Him first that those hopes will be fully enjoyed. I've had things I've hoped for happen, and sometimes it was the wrong time, or the wrong thing. Papa knows what's the best for His kids.
