the Journey

There is a sweet sort of purposefulness that accompanies being a teacher- especially of students who are eager to learn, full of questions and yearning to better speak a language. Last month, I took a TEFL certification course at Maximo Nivel, an indescribably phenomenal language school nestled in the heart of Antigua. Becoming certified was a condition of getting my job back for next school year, but also was something I desperately wanted for myself once I realized that teaching is it for me, the passion I looked for all through university when I felt so purposeless, such an aimless drifter.

I adore academia, I always have, and uni was a joy. I had some incredible classes taught by brilliant minds, but I always felt the lack of something concrete in my life to be especially or overly excited about. I love to learn for learning’s sake, but I was always surrounded, it seemed, by people who either had an end goal or had already found their passion. In my church community especially, the idea of having a passion and doing something with it was lifted up often… but I avoided the question. I’ve always been full of these nebulous loves, of reading, writing and music, of performance and depth, of travel and working with my hands, but a passion? It didn’t seem to exist for me the way it did for my friends. I had advisors urging me to pick a career and then find the specific classes I would need to get there, but that seemed so stifling and prescriptive. I don’t want to go through life meeting requirements for something that might come next. So I stopped meeting with advisors, and started taking every class that caught my eye, regardless of their ‘relevance’ to some sort of future career, resting in the hope that by doing what I loved, I would be forging a path towards something else that I loved as well. There’s a cliché that I believe in unreservedly: that the journey always tops the destination; but it seems the idea doesn’t hold much merit when going to school and getting good grades supposedly prepares you for a career where you rise in the ranks until you retire (if you’re lucky). And all the while trying to nurture a family, friendships, community, hobbies…. There just has to be another way! Plans are important, of course, I won’t refute that, wise choices must be made now to prepare for what will come… but the future is coming either way. It strikes me as foolish to spend so much time getting ready for what comes next that we miss the current season.

Leaving academia behind was absolutely terrifying; I always thought I’d press on to my PhD or a law degree, but graduation came and went, and somewhere along the way, I lost all desire to apply to grad school. Instead, two months of uncertainty and directionlessness later, I was on a plane to Guatemala, on my way to a job I was under qualified for, but brimming with excitement! And in coming here, somewhere between the insanity of being presented with crowded classrooms, very dear but high energy children, a nebulous idea of lesson plans, and not enough training- and the busy tranquility of working in a hotel far removed from the cares of the world, I found my passion, and my niche. I absolutely adore teaching. I could ramble on about it for hours, and the satisfaction and joy that working with these children has brought me cannot be overstated.

Is it too dramatic to say that working here, learning to teach, earning the affection and respect of my students, has helped me feel alive again?

I am a generally peaceful and placid person. One of the reasons my boss (a phenomenal women with big dreams and the drive to make them happen) hired me back for next year is that I remain unflustered in the face of even the wildest classroom conditions (and rest assured, my second grade boys may very well have invented wildness). I have a long fuse, and though my anger, when provoked, can be powerful, it’s a rare occurrence. But the flip side of this is that I have a tendency to hold a grudge, and when I leave problems alone rather than address them and rock the boat, my anger simmers beneath the surface like a pot constantly about to boil over. I spent so much of my senior year in this state that it started to feel normal.

But here, I am being stripped, both of the anger and the many causes behind it, so that little by little, the heat is being turned down. It all began when I met a mission trip group three or four months ago, and a woman on it prayed over me and told me that God would be bringing redemption to something broken in my life…. which He did not too long after. Slowly, little by little, piece by piece, and in ways that could only have been crafted by my Daddy, harsh and harmful influences have been culled from my life, the painful shards painstakingly removed. This morning, I realized I wasn’t angry anymore, the absence feeling almost as unsettling as the knowledge of how long I lived that way.

Happier things to follow, I promise, but this new start, these steps into life as a ‘grown-up’ still feel new, a page in a book half turned because I wasn’t fully prepared for the content to follow. Tomorrow may bring troubles of her own, but I feel finally able to turn my back on past pitfalls. It may have taken a year of dramatic ups and downs, but the process was worth it, for my heart is stronger, and my spirit is light.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility: For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen, And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

The Prophet, Kahil Gibran