Switching

I'm done. 

With the D.C. trip.

With my long, winding habit of grading papers in the 13-14 school year. 

With doing things as I can in the moment, knowing I'll have to circle back later and actually do it well.

With crazy, cluttered thinking. 

I took time to enjoy spring in many ways.  But there are so many things, and unfortunately, people, who have gone to back burners for a time.  This is what I hated.  My people were patient and loving.  But needing that from them for so long wore me down too.

For the last few months, I've put things in their place, with a system, on a timeline.  I've lived intense, marked, and fragmented.  There are times like this in teaching, and they have to be that way.  It's lame, but true.  But thankfully there are also seasons for other things like repair.   Enter the summer quiet.  No more loud life at school, myself in charge of its momentum through the year.  

Enter a breeze in the trees and no other sound.  Enter now.  

My entrance into the summer routine came unexpectedly, not like I imagined at all.
I was waiting for this one thing at the end of our trip.  The dark, quiet parking lot at school, when the last kid was packed into their parent's car and taken away to summer.  To sleep and repair and no homework and hot weather. 

And there I would stand, with the other teachers for a few seconds before we left for home too.  I'd say thank you again.  Thank you.  And we'd wear the look of frayed nerves, too much caffeine, worn and tired, and truly feeling it.  Done.  As I write it, it sounds awful, but believe me when I say that it is good.  It is so good.  It's part of the season.

I've taken 8th graders to Washington, D.C. six times now.  Five other times it happened like that, but not this year.  This year it was way more vulnerable than that.  The airlines lost my luggage, which meant Plan B and a giant open moment for me to see again a teacher's propensity to love control.  And the need to give it up.  To be flexible and adaptable, even in the tired.  

So it came to be that at 1:45 am, our students were loaded onto a school bus and we made the decision to send them on, back to Stillwater without us.  'Us' was myself and Amy, another teacher who was in the same tired realization.  No luggage. 

My keys were in that bag, so there was no way to get back into my life.  At the beginning of a trip, home keys from purse to luggage, right?  At the end, luggage to purse.  Why didn't I do that this year?  It was a huge week, that's why.  Huge. There was no room for that thought, post-fire alarm, when I was packing.

I was not hard on myself in this moment, or ragey or weird.  I was quiet.  Sensible.  Strangely peaceful.  I think you find that when you walk with God and you are called to constantly be reworked and remade to something else better than yourself.  It's not always that fun in the moment, but you find the peace that, oh yes, we say 'passes all understanding'.  That's what I felt as I waved the buses on.  

(Not the actual baggage claim where I found myself this week....)

When it came to sitting there by the baggage claim, making a decision about how to get home, I was so tired that I had to take out a pen and paper to think.  I wrote out who was close by (and kindred spirit enough to do this great thing of saving me) if Jordan or my parents couldn't be reached.  

Does that sound lonely?  It wasn't.  It was finally quiet. 

I dodged a bullet (and I knew it) by not having to haul myself onto that loud, emotional bus for the last 30 miles of the trip to that parking lot where parents would be waiting.  That's when, without fail, the kids start to realize that 8th grade is truly over.  Some of them cry.  And they hug a lot, and start singing songs loudly.  And everyone smells really bad.  And all I do is pray.  I knew I needed that for closure, but that wasn't going to happen. 

So, more vulnerable Plan B. 

Instead I prayed for the two chaperones who were doing this thing, this incredibly strange bus ride home.  They were now 1 teacher/28 students + their luggage + their toddler-like attitudes and overly-tired selves.  Kind of funny, right?  I know this moment so well.  I found out later that a few of the parents greeted the bus with a gift for the teachers. 

It was a case of wine.  

 

My mom was the one to come and get me.  I told her that in addition to the mother/daughter connection we have and feel, the depth of gratitude for her good will, just on a HUMAN LEVEL could not be explained.  The only thing I could imagine comparable to how much gratitude I felt would be to one day show it to my own child when I'm the mother instead.  The one who happily saves her kid from baggage claim somewhere, and does it without thought, in 2 seconds.  Through that lens, even now, yeah, no problem.   But it's hard to be helped sometimes, and I struggle with that more than most.

A lot of things happened on this trip.  Some things really unexpected.  Like a broken bus, being thrown up on in public (which is weird, which is later strangely emotional, which is SUPER GROSS), like a surprise fire alarm at the hotel at 3 am (unable to find one girl because she didn't wake up), more (public) throw up...just not on me.  All this amidst seeing our nation's great monuments and memorials.  :)   

It sounds crazy, and it was.  But let me tell you that it was also very good.  We had fun.  We had lots of fun.  I know people in D.C. who are so great to work with.  We are at the point where we don't shake hands anymore.  We hug.  My students were amazing.  So adaptable, and aside from obvious 8th grade girl drama, so fun.  Great history.  Don't get me started on the history. 

Traveling is fun.  And you know, luggage gets lost sometimes, and people get anxious and need to be talked down.  Things like that happen, and remind us that we need God and we are all human.    

I have said this year that God has changed me on a molecular level.  But I didn't think I would see that so obviously on the D.C. trip.  The Gospel became more alive to me this year than ever before, and I felt that everywhere this week.  The patience of Jesus, the hilarity of being human, the fascination of how He made people different, the unique things people say about their government, that some people thrive in the heat and others do NOT, that motherhood, in all of its raw faults and glories, felt CLOSE.  And whoa, just a glimpse of that role in life is good, bad, and ugly. 

It's the week when a future in parenting feels most humbling and interesting.  It's a lot of things.  This year it was better somehow.  On that molecular level.  I was at peace the whole time, even in the crazy.  I think it's because I've learned to give it up.  Really really.  And other things, more interesting than self and personal glories and personal failures, show up in the nooks and crannies of life. 

Especially when said loud 8th graders need your attention before the delayed flight in the Atlanta airport.  :)