Dear God,
What have I done? I’m teaching kindergarten this year. As I’m preparing, cleaning my room, thinking about lessons, my own kids keep interrupting me. And I keep pushing them off. I get frustrated and sound annoyed. They interrupt me and my stress goes up. They ask for things they can’t get themselves and my stress goes up. They get bored, nag me and my stress goes up. But isn’t this the age that I’ve committed myself to teach this year? 5 year olds who will all talk to me at the same time in high pitched voices, demanding to be entertained? What have I done?
I’m going to be teaching the most important grade in the school. Even though the state hasn’t even made it mandatory yet, this is when the children will learn the most foundational concepts of their education. They will learn that letters make words that represent concepts bigger than themselves. And when you put these words together into sentences they have great power. Since the pen is mightier than the sword, I will be putting tools into the hands of these little ones that they can use for good or for ill. And this is why I must also teach them compassion and love, patience and hope, community and responsibility.
I have taken on a huge task and I am scared. I am afraid that I am not the person I need to be for them. I do believe that more important than what I teach or how I teach it is who I am as a teacher. So in order to teach compassion I must be a person of compassion. In order to teach patience I must be a person of patience.
This is when I turn to you and say, “Help!” I believe myself to be a person of patience until I snap at Katy for interrupting me five times in five minutes. I believe I am a person of community until I want to run away from my congregation because someone preaches a sermon I find offensive. I believe I am a person of responsibility even as I sit here and write to you while the laundry piles up and the bathroom needs cleaning.
I need you to walk with me everyday, Lord. I need to know you are there. Bless me that I may be a person of substance so that my students may be people of substance also. Bless them so that their minds will be open to learn, their hearts soft toward one another and their bodies healthy. Bless their parents so that they will have peace, knowing that their children are loved and welcomed with Your radical welcome. Bless my colleagues that we may work together for the good of the whole school and bless my administration. Help them to have the patience and courage needed to pull us all together for the good of each other.
Lord, I will turn to you, every morning and every afternoon. I will seek you in the joys of my classroom and in the challenges. With your presence in my room I know that, though I will fall short, your grace will fill in the gaps. By your grace my students will feel loved. My students will learn and grow. My students will discover themselves to be compassionate, happy people.
Give me peace and help me remember who I am and whose I am.
Amen
