God Will Put Flesh on Your Bones

So I got hired as an early childhood special education teacher this summer. It’s what I’ve been working for since I started grad school in 2008, it’s what I did my student teaching in, it’s what I’ve been wanting since I was in grade school—it was perfect. The setup of my school is amazing: I team teach with a regular early childhood teacher in the classroom, I have a mentor teacher to help me with special ed. stuff, the rest of the staff is very supportive.  I went in feeling pretty good about it all.

I had 1 ½ weeks of training and various beginning-of-the-year stuff to do before the kids came. I quickly realized how much I didn’t know about being a teacher in the public school system. There is a lot of paperwork—data collection and reporting, records keeping, detailed lesson planning in line with state standards, etc., etc.

Then the kids came J About ¼ of them have little or no English, and I have virtually no Spanish. I have 2 kids I have to do assessments on and write up an individual education plan on within a month. I have 6 other kids that already have a plan in place that I have to figure out how to follow and meet specific goals for. Then there’s the baseline data I have to collect and organize on all of them, the unfamiliar curriculum to follow, and the behaviors to manage.

Very quickly, I felt overwhelmed. Many days, I cried the 40 minute drive home. I began feeling the effects of the stress in my body, upsetting my stomach to the point that I could barely eat. I knew this wasn’t what God had planned for me when He gave me this job; so I began seeking, praying, crying out, trying to find out what I was doing wrong, that I was such a mess with it all.

He took me to Psalm 3. As I read it, I began to see it as a defining of 2 roles, mine and His:

He is a shield

He bestows glory

He lifts up my head

I cry aloud

He answers me

I lay down

I sleep

I wake

He sustains me

I do not fear

He delivers

As I meditated on it, I began to realize how much of God's role I was trying to take—to “keep my head up,” to sustain myself, find my own answers and way out—while not doing my part. I was full of fear, and I wasn’t sleeping much either!

I began to cry out in repentance and asking Him to change me. As I prayed, He showed me a picture of myself that has imprinted itself in my brain. I was emaciated, basically a skeleton, walking around starving as I tried to live out my life.

It reminded me of when I became anorexic in middle school. I remember taking such pride in keeping my daily food intake under 400 calories. Instead of feeding on food I fed on that feeling of control, while my body deteriorated.

He has promised to sustain me, to be my Father, my strength, my comforter, my help. And yet, here I am, 25 years later, skeletal fingers trying to move fast enough to hold everything together on my own while it falls apart all around me, dying all the while.

And so I came to a choice—I could keep holding onto that control, stay sick, probably end up with something chronic, and have nothing to give my kids or anyone else. Or I could cry out to God, ask for His mercy and His help to let go and put Him in His proper place in my life, as Head.

There are strongholds that have to be broken down. I have to spend time with Him, in the Word, in prayer, getting to know who He really is. I have to push past the image religion has given me of a capricious God who is standing there waiting to slap my hand when I reach out, telling me to stop being so greedy, stand on your own two feet. I have to be willing to let Him grow me up, and realize that means more dependence on Him, not less.

I’ll be honest—it’s hard. There are so many excuses I could lift up to explain why I can’t let go or trust. But it boils down to this: God is a God of compassion and mercy; but that compassion and mercy is there to lift me up out of my mess, not pat me on the head while I stay in it. I have a destiny, but I’ll never fulfill it if I don’t take my proper position and let Him take His.

It’s taking tears; it’s taking set-apart time with God wrestling down my pride and really recognizing my need for Him; it’s taking willingness to be raw and real with God about what I believe about Him and myself. It’s taking a desire to change, and to be changed.

But it’s working. I’m getting some peace, even though my circumstances haven’t changed. God still has to remind me to “eat:” to let people pray for me, to dig out truth from the Word, to worship and get in His presence every day and let Him fill me. It's taking time; it hasn’t happened overnight. But I’m finally starting to see some flesh on my bones.