The weeks leading up to spring break of my junior year were not very pleasant. The fact that I remember those weeks seventeen and a half years later goes to show just how miserable they were.
I was blessed to be a NC Teaching Fellow and I was blessed to be in the Meredith Chorale, but I was not blessed that both organizations demanded my attention over spring break. I needed both to observe in a school system for a week and to go on tour with chorale for part of the week. The next-to-last stop on tour was in the county where I wanted to do my observations, so it seemed to me that I should be able to miss the final night of tour to complete my scholarship’s requirement. I was wrong.
“When you joined chorale,” my chorale director said, “you made an obligation to be a full and active part of the group. The group depends on you for every performance, so you need to be there for every performance.” And no matter how much I reasoned with her. No matter what my Teaching Fellows Director said. No matter how frustrated I became or how many tears I cried, my chorale director would not budge in her stance: I had to be at all performances on tour or else my grade would suffer. And she knew that I wouldn’t let my grade suffer.
I was not a happy chorale member on that tour. I felt disrespected, unappreciated, and uncared for by someone whom I deeply respected and those feelings colored my attitude about the whole trip. I guess maybe that’s why I don’t remember a lot of the trip—just the night that I’d wanted to leave and the beautiful church in which we were singing in Asheville—and the night that I had one of the biggest realizations of my life…
Fast forward to just before my senior year. When thinking about going to my student teaching placement, I felt sick. I’d worked with a middle school band director the year before, and I was scheduled to work with her for my student teaching placement, but I hated it. I hated it to the point that I thought maybe I’d chosen the wrong career. As I hoped that maybe it was the band director and her teaching style that I didn’t like and as I tried to figure out a way to switch schools without hurting the director’s feelings, my mom said, “Have you ever considered teaching elementary music, Dee?” Then that realization of a few months before came right back…
Sometimes I am just plain wrong.
Not just an I’ve made an error in my checkbook wrong. Or an I’ve misspoken a fact or mispronounced a name wrong. But a way-deep-down-in-the-core-of-my-being-albeit-with-really-good-intentions wrong.
It’s a wrong that comes from realizing that I’ve been so focused on what I think is right that I can’t step back and see the bigger picture of what is best.
I was so totally focused on doing my Teaching Fellows observation during spring break that I couldn’t see another way. I was so totally focused on being a band director in the public schools that I couldn’t see another way.
Yet my professor forced me to step back and see another way. And my mom’s simple question gently nudged me to do the same.
So because I didn’t do my Teaching Fellows observation during spring break, I got to spend a week with my sister before going to the mountains to do summer missions that summer. And because I didn’t stick with band, I got to do my student teaching with a woman who helped me realize that everything in my life had been pointing not to band but to general elementary music.
Sometimes, dear friends, when everything seems frustratingly hopeless, maybe we are wrong. Not deliberately or intentionally or even stubbornly. But narrowly and exhaustingly. So sometimes, dear friends, maybe we need to step back and reexamine things with a fresh set of eyes and ears.
Will it always be that easy? Of course not. But may it sometimes be? Maybe. Because sometimes, maybe we are wrong. And sometimes maybe just admitting that fact is the first step toward making things right.
So many thoughts inside my mind
So many doubts inside my heart
I want to believe
But I don't understand your plan
I ask but it's not given to me
I seek but I do not find
The answer that I'm looking for
Must be behind the closed door
With my heart's desire
But maybe I'm wrong
Maybe I'm looking at the wrong door
Maybe I'm wrong
Maybe your will is not mine
So not my will but yours be done
I'm laying my life down on the line
The weight of the world has paralyzed me
So Lord I give it to you
There's nothing more I can do
Lord take my life from me
I'm down on bended knee
Oh Lord
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