The end of March marks the end of seven months living here in Ecuador. Seven months of this adventure and, as I made my coffee this morning, adding a drop of vanilla extract, I thought of the beginning that these seven months have been.
These months have been joy-filled. After graduating from college and then from my Master’s program, I often asked myself where God would ever see fit to put me. I could never imagine the job He had in store for me. I was a vagabond who had traveled through multiple failings and fewer victories in my life; what life purpose would ever make sense? So when the offer to teach at AAI finally came, when the plane finally landed, when I first walked through the door to my class, it was like a homecoming. “This,” I felt God whisper. “This is what I’ve wanted you to do. Here. For them. In Me.” And joy has overwhelmed me in doing just this.
These months have been revealing. I’ve been poured out to the point of empty, only to wake many days and find this job had still more to take. My resources–that passion and energy, my love for books and writing and youth–yeah, those resources were emptied within the first two weeks of September. What’re you supposed to do after everything you’ve leaned on has been stripped away? I commented to another teacher early in October, a line that has become a joke between us both, “This job, these kids, they suck the marrow out of the bones I’ve built my body on.” And that was in October.
I believe that the emptying was (is) necessary, and I pray that God never fills me to the point of self-sufficiency. I don’t want to be self-sufficient; I want to be Christ-sufficient. In these past seven months, God is teaching me what this means. And unlike many of my students, I’m an incredibly slow learner. Praise God for His patience.
These months have also been adventurous. I never thought God would give me an adventure for a life, but here I am. I walk a kilometer to school every morning where I encounter brokenhearted, lively, passionate kids. I teach them to love words, because God gave us language to express the experiences He writes into our lives. I teach them to love others, because God first loved us. I teach them to love life, because speaking ten years farther down the road than them, I know it hurts them now, but God fulfills His promise to make life worth it. And then, after the teaching them, I love them, and I believe that loving sincerely is an adventure in which we are all called not only to participate but to embrace.
And then, though, after the joy and the revelations and the adventure, these months’ve been hard. I miss my family. I miss talking to my mom late at night at our kitchen table. I miss waking up to the sound of my dad’s footsteps overhead. I miss taking car rides with my youngest sister, Naomi. I miss watching Duck Dynasty with my brother Andrew.
When they said that the first year of teaching is the hardest, they should’ve included other firsts on that list. The first year living in a foreign country, the first year in your own apartment, the first year depending on other people’s financial support, the first year walking everywhere, the first year opening your life to what God calls “sacrifice” and “service”. . . It’s hard. It’s all hard, and some days I’m better at it than others. Some days I wake up with courage and passion and energy. Other days, I bring an extra bit of mascara to school because I know I’ll be crying in the private handicapped bathroom by third period.
But in the midst of it all–the joy and the revelations, the adventures and the difficulties–God’s whisper of reassurance has never left me, and I hear Him again. “Here,” He whispers. “We are not done here. For them. In Me.” And I can’t wait to see how the rest of the story goes, considering that this is just His beginning.
a scribble of jo 