One More Try

I have a very vivid memory of playing rhythm sticks with my kindergarten students during my first year of teaching. While the lesson was a success and I was having fun with my job, I remember thinking, “Is this really what I’m called to do for the rest of my life?”

Four years later, I started classes in divinity school. I taught music during the day; I studied at night. Eventually one night of classes turned to two nights turned to three, until I ran out of night-class options and had to make a decision: continue teaching or finish my graduate degree. I chose the latter.

For the next two years, I was a full-time student. I threw myself into my classes and learned everything I could learn. I worked as a church-secretary and became nationally certified to do the work. I served as a music-minister. I assisted one of my professors. I went to pastoral counseling for spiritual direction. I grew leaps and bounds and felt that the work that I was doing to complete my degree was setting me up for the rest of my career—I just wasn’t sure what that career would be.

Shortly after finishing my graduate degree, I was offered a job working with the organization that I had wanted to work with since the summer after my freshman year of college. Even though the call would move me to South Carolina, I knew that it was where God was leading, so I took the job and relocated life to Columbia. I found an amazing little apartment that overlooked Lake Murray and I dove into my work with everything I could give. The move away from family and friends wasn’t easy, and figuring out the new language and expectations of the job wasn’t easy either. But I did it. And I was content. I was making friends and making a difference through my work—especially through my work of educating about human exploitation…yet just as quickly as the door to my dream job had opened, it closed. Sudden. Unexpected. Forceful. The end.

One stormy afternoon, as I packed up my stuff to move out of my amazing little apartment that overlooked Lake Murray, I found myself wanting to jump into the lake’s waters, fully clothed, so that the lake could wrap her arms around me and hold me as I cried. As I floated on my back, rain crashing onto my arms and face, ears listening to the sounds of nature as she poured our her fury, I found myself repeating a lyric that I had learned only weeks before: “This is what we’re made for, standing in the downpour, knowing that the sun will shine. Forget what lies behind you, heaven stands beside you, you’ve got to give it one more try. One more try.”

This past Friday, my principal called me into her office. “Ms. Deaton,” she said. “I’ve got something to tell you. You’re going to be our 2016-2017 Teacher of the Year!” After we finished our conversation and I was presented with a beautiful vase of flowers, I went straight to car duty. I could hear thunder rolling and rain falling, so I knew that we were in for a difficult dismissal. Pants legs rolled up, baseball hat and rain-jacket in place, umbrellas left in the library for fear of lightning strike, my team and I walked boldly into the parking lot to get our students home.

As I stood in the parking lot on Friday afternoon, soaking wet from the worst car-rider weather of my three years at Johnsonville, I couldn’t help but smile. “This is what we’re made for, standing in the downpour,” I sang…

Because, friends, the sun had shone. Heaven had stood beside me through shell-shocked brokenness and confusion to home to chaplaincy to my school where, seven years after I walked away from another wonderful classroom, I was given a lovely little hut overlooking the playground.

Walking away from teaching the first time was not easy. My heart was—as it continues to be—in the public schools. Yet I knew, in my gut, that walking away was what I needed to do.

Though my graduate degree pays me absolutely nothing when I look at my paycheck, and though my three years of vocational ministry seem like a distant dream, they pay me everything I need when I look at my colleagues and students and know that my work isn’t necessarily about rhythm sticks but that it is about influencing lives by showing up and being fully-present every day—not wondering what’s next, not longing for something more, not being so off-balance that my angst comes out on those around me—but being present, ready to face the good and the bad and the everything in between, with stubborn, steady love.

“This is what we’re made for. Standing in the downpour. Knowing that the sun will shine. Forget what lies behind you. Heaven stands beside you. You’ve got to give it one more try…”
One moment, one day at a time.
…One more try.

Amen.