Surrender Your Reputation.

The greatest advice I ever received as a teacher was: "When you surrender your life to Christ, you also surrender your reputation." It was from my supervising teacher at Eastbrook Public High School, Roberta Kroll. We were talking about our jobs and the professional and the pressure to be the "cool" teacher and the implications that has on ones relationship with ones students as well as the work one does in the classroom. And her words struck me, freed me, and desperately stuck with me.

I forgot about them the last couple of weeks, but was reminded tonight when I was thinking over the day. I stepped down from several of my leadership responsibilities with Interact today. And in doing so, I surrendered some of the perceptions of me. I allowed others to see my breaking point, to label my failure, to mark my limits. But I also allowed myself to be finite. To stop and rest. To reconfigure what is important. To do less, well. And mark my purpose in the classroom.

My job is to educate. To love on kids. To be available to them. To listen to their stories and share in their exclamations and hold their tears. To hear the girl yesterday crying about the death of her mom, three years ago this weekend. To listen to the boy who dreams of the girl a year his senior. To congratulate the sixteen year old on her birthday. To cheer with the coaches at the football game. My job is to open their minds, to ask them to go farther, to push them, teach them, to think.

This is why I'm there. This is why I am called.

So today, I fell back on wisdom from a sage teacher. I surrendered my life to Christ again, by surrendering my reputation. I backed away from Interact, from the craziness of meetings and questions and emails and receipts and purchase orders and politics. To step aside from the pressures, the complications, the craziness. And to instead, be finite, but infinitely called. Called to Christ. To my classroom.

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Just an additional note: Yesterday, after the day wound down and students were dispersed among homes and friends and families, I felt at rest in my classroom for the first time this year. This my friends, is a blessing, a relief, an affirmation. Thank you Lord, for giving me a place there and redeeming its purposes with you in this day.