It was Mike’s turn to prepare a message this past Tuesday at our weekly morning staff devotions. After soliciting prayer requests and praise reports from the group of us seated in the chapel, he shared that as a cancer patient in remission, he’d been advised to take precautions to prevent the return of skin cancer and was beginning a topical chemotherapy treatment. He then pointed out the emerging spots on the sides of his face, an indication that the treatment was working to bring out places where he had serious sun damage. He told us that over the coming weeks, the treatment would be getting worse and worse, essentially burning away the places where cancer was most likely to develop. He said that it would be extremely painful, but that it would improve his chances of staying healthy in the future.
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers,” he began to read from James 1, “whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”
Our little school’s been through the wringer over the past few years. The sudden dismissal of the school’s seven-year director that came without explanation my first semester, the diagnosis of breast cancer in the school’s most veteran teacher, the growing pains of an unexperienced new director, the death of a colleague this January and the subsequent emotional departure of his wife, our kindergarten teacher, and, most recently, the resignation of our principal mid-year. Problems physical, emotional, relational, and often unexplainable seem to crop up without any warning. It’s been enough to get me wondering where God is in this place. Because our enemy sure is present.
It’s been difficult for me to understand how such enormous trouble falls within and amongst a body of believers, all called to the same work and purpose. I’ve gotten used to the world falling apart and not being able to count on things working out outside of the fellowship of believers, but it’s been such a hard blow to see that nothing seems different even when you’re all playing for the same team. I’ve felt like yelling, pleading, forgetting, or just plain bailing out so many times these past months. How does it get like this? How do we claim to know Christ and claim that we’re doing His work when all the while, things are falling to pieces? Where’s the joy in all of that?
I pulled Mike aside later that morning to tell him how encouraged I was by what he’d shared with all of us. Just the night before, I’d been confronted with an opportunity to push through a personal trial with grace, but I’d met it with an attitude of impending defeat. I’d been embarrassed by my public reaction to a hurtful comment, and recognized a recent pattern in my behavior. I honestly loathe so many aspects of my job during second semester. I hate when students start to check out and quit caring about what we’re doing in class. I hate being the only one working on the yearbook when I have a staff of twenty students who should be doing all the work themselves. I hate sports pullouts from my last two periods of the school day. I hate senioritis. I hate begging the sophomore class to plan events for fundraising. I hate planning rehearsals for plays that my students forget to show up to. I hate the pile of grading that builds up while I’m working myself into the ground on public projects that, ultimately, directly affect what others think of me and how I do my job. I know “hate” is a strong word, but the fact that I feel I’m constantly putting a pillow over the mouth of my anxiety and frustration often prevents me from being more level-headed and sensible about things.
These are the seasons of my life when my enemy knows exactly what to do to undermine anything I’d otherwise be capable of with the Lord’s help. He convinces me I’m terrible at my job, that I’m a waste of people’s support, that someone else would be able to do my work far better than I’m able, that I’m not making a difference, that I’m pathetic, that the people in my life detest me, that I’m just ugly in so many ways. Monday night, I caught him in the act. And I grieved knowing that he’d gotten to me.
Tuesday afternoon, an opportunity presented itself. The teacher in charge of our bi-monthly middle and high school chapel, Steven, had forgotten that it was his week to plan, and so a few of us offered to help him out. I suppose He’d also been touched by Mike’s message that morning and felt that it was worth sharing with our students. Steven and his wife are expecting a baby, and so they’d gone to get a sonogram a few weeks ago. The doctor had had a terrible bedside manner, causing them unnecessary concern, and after leaving the office, they’d decided to go spend dinner together at a shopping center. When they returned to their car, someone had broken into their car and stolen their laptops, ipods, camera, backpacks, sweatshirts - practically everything that had been in their car. Steven felt that such stories of the daily trials we encounter and remember from our pasts might offer an opportunity to remind our students that their teachers are real, flawed people, and that it’s our relationship with the Lord that allows us to find any “joy” in our circumstances and purpose in the face of disasters big and small.
That evening, another one of the high school teachers told me she felt that God was pressing on her heart to share a particularly vulnerable detail from her life some years ago. She worried she would cry, or that the students and other teachers might think less of her for sharing that part of her life. I encouraged her to listen to the Lord and share the part of her story she felt the students should hear. With her willingness to be so honest and upfront about the darker seasons of her life, I felt that I’d take an opportunity not only to bear her burden, but to share some of the parts of my own testimony that I’m least proud of. The trials that shaped my young life the most.
It’s probably not the most dramatic story. Nothing that’ll make a good screenplay one day. But my high school days of loneliness, anger, and self-loathing absolutely reveal so much of who God has been in my life. True, some discouraging things happened to me in high school. I was the victim of a cruel joke-turned-rumor, had a huge social falling out that left me virtually friendless, and was often the object of ridicule for my faith and personal decisions. But where this could have been an incredible opportunity for me to grow in my faith, in my closeness to and dependency upon the Lord, to share Truth with my peers and teachers, and to be used as a willing vessel for God’s glory, I fell so short. I became frustrated and bitter, submitting to the curtain of depression and despair that had fallen upon me, and refusing to find the good or the potential in my circumstances. God took a hold of my heart after a long period of willfulness and stubborn rejection of His desires for my life and offered me restoration and renewal upon graduation. I’m not that person anymore.
Nevertheless, this is a constant, daily, relentless battle for me. It’s always been so easy for me to despair. It’s an effortless thing for me to tune into the lies Satan whispers in my ear and believe so willingly that they’re what’s true. I may appear to be the upbeat, Pollyanna type - my students remark frequently that I’m always smiling - but I’m a born pessimist. It’s hard work for me to remind myself of the things that are good, lovely, and admirable. Much easier to dwell on the bad and think the worst of the world. A turning point in this struggle was when I became aware of the AM radio-like presence of my enemy in my head. Tuned to a frequency that was hand-picked for me. Singing songs and talking talk that was designed to twist my mind into a useless, warped commodity. In listening, I believed, and in believing, I turned away from the Truth that was fighting to change the station. When I realized the spiritual battle going on for my head and will, it became personal. I would do what I could to fight back and make myself useful once again to the God who loved me and wanted to use my life. A final changing experience was when I realized that when I looked back upon my previous trials, I could recognize the growth that had taken place since then. We are works in progress. And thank goodness for that! I love that our God is a God who delights in using what’s broken and seemingly beyond repair.
“...Because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
Like many times in my life, I know that my faith is being tested. It’s my hope that I’m working with the Lord, not against Him, in developing perseverance, too. To be “mature and complete, not lacking anything” sounds like a pretty incredible deal. Worth submitting fully to the process, no matter now complicated and exhausting it may be in the interim. When I give myself a chance to reflect, I’m able to see goodness and growth. I’m able to see small impact that’s been made on the world around me. My sophomore English class, for example, seems to have developed sensitivity for issues and others and a concern for their own intellectual growth and performance overnight. This class usually has a few stand-outs and a few stragglers, hanging around a B-/C+ average. This semester, they’re pulling a 90% class average and everyone’s improving. We held our annual Sex and Dating girls-only (the boys met with the male teachers) chapel a few weeks back and had a lovely, sweet time with the high school girls, focusing on their hearts and desires, rather than concerns of limits and boundaries. The girls were totally adorable at the end of the period, running around, writing something that was beautiful about their friends on cards we’d taped to everyone’s backs. My Steel Magnolias actresses, with the exception of one poor lost freshman, are so wonderfully talented, and it’s such a joy to spend time with them outside of school. The boys in our production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged, are a completely different bunch from last year. They’ve built up so much confidence and are so dang funny. And this precious boy known around campus for being a bit “slow” and “out-there” in my Theatre Arts I class went from a dramatic monologue monotone and awkward train-wreck to this incredibly adorable comedic monologue from The Producers, complete with marching around the stage and this huge surge of energy and confidence. The same class that I’ve scolded for mocking him in the past gave him a standing ovation. And this past Wednesday, when the other teachers and I opened up and shared about our trials and failures, we received an overwhelming response that afternoon and the next day from students, saying that it had been the “best chapel of the year” and had touched and affected them deeply.
There are so many things to celebrate and thank the Lord for. I’m honestly embarrassed every time I fall into the familiar trap of muttering and discouragement. Shame on me. I should know better by now. Because, for as many failures as I see, God’s building up just as many and more successes. For as many discouraging and despairing moments I allow myself to experience, there are so many more opportunities to see change and beauty and encouragement and truth and unimaginable things happen. I just need to pay attention.
You know that song - I forget what it’s called - that goes, “It makes me want to shout: hallelujah, thank you Jesus, Lord you’re worthy of all the glory and all the honor and all the praise?” It’s my prayer that you and I can live our days like this. I’ve found it’s just not worth it anymore to waste time and breath and energy on anything but find the “pure joy.” Please pray that the rest of this school year would be honoring to the Lord, and that as His servant, I’d be a joyful, willing participant in what He’s got planned.
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