Good morning, God--thanks for this beautiful new day that's in our lives. I really do appreciate the opportunity to live, to laugh, to love, to hope, to hear music and see the sky and clouds and flowers and such. And I appreciate the fact that I get to spend much of the day with the students and other teachers with whom I work; as tomorrow will be my last day with them, today and tomorrow will be rather bittersweet as the relationships will come to an end as the job comes to an end.
I do have to ask, God, why so many changes? Why couldn't this job have continued? Why couldn't Terry and I have thrived here so that we wouldn't have to be moving again? It certainly would have been a nice place for us to live, and I could have continued to work with the kids here to bring them to a really high level in English. In some ways, it seems like the effort that I've made here has been wasted, and that by leaving I'm leaving the kids in a bad situation. But staying simply wasn't possible, so I was in a situation that had no simple answer, no clear way to deal with it. Both my wife and I believe that we're doing the right thing, but of course, we'll never know how things would have worked out had we ended up staying rather than leaving. And we're both looking forward to starting over again in a place that seems more supportive, and that definitely will be more affordable.
God's answer:
First of all, staying was possible. You could have chosen to remain where you are, teaching the same classes to the same students for as long as you would have liked. The question is whether or not it would have been worth the frustration and aggravation that you most definitely would have felt working in the same situation for longer than you have. As you know, tigers don't change their stripes, and the people you work with who are doing their jobs poorly would have continued to do their jobs poorly, and you would have continued to be frustrated with the low quality of the education at your school. Staying was possible, but it wasn't what was best for you or for the students.
You're moving because that's what's best for both you and your wife right now. And believe it or not, you're leaving the school because that's what's best for the school right now. I'm not going to go through an entire explanation of the why's and how's, for reasons such as these make themselves clear through time, and there's a good chance that you'll never see the reasons from the school's perspective. You don't need to. You just need to trust that this situation has come about because there is a need for change, and that change would not have happened if the status quo had been allowed to continue on. And no, you're not some sort of sacrificial lamb that had to leave his job for things to happen--this change is for your benefit, also. There are things that you need to learn and experience that you could not have learned and experienced where you are now.
And the effort that you make never is wasted. It may touch just one or two students (though I assure you it's more than that), but the ones that you touch will soon touch others, and they others, until the ripple that you started spreads out and touches the world. Life is that way, and it always has been that way. Think about how many good teachers you've had whose methods and ideas you now use in order to reach your students, and you'll have an idea of the effect that you may be having on your students. No form of giving can be wasted effort.
You've learned here. But the lessons that you need to learn to continue growing cannot be learned here, so you're moving on. You'll miss the people here, but you'll meet new people. Just trust that all that you're doing has purposes that you can't always know, and things will be fine. . . and you'll continue to grow and learn.
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