I know I’ve been away for a long while. In fact this may just be my first post since 2016 reared his head.

Not to say that I haven’t been inspired to write, I’ve just lacked the motivation to actually pull up anything and put it down. I did start keeping a diary though. Well, tonight I’ve got the hamster turning.

Let’s start with teaching and how that’s all been going:

Last school I started as an Associate Teacher within a pretty large school district. By “Associate Teacher” I really mean a fancy job title for a Substitute. But if you go read my last post from 2015 (it already seems so long ago) you’ll find all that out. Anyways, After a few months of driving around from school to school, I began to get insanely drained. So much so that I even started praying to find the right school to stay with in a long-term assignment.

Hashtag Prayer Works.

I found an assignment for three days that eventually turned into three weeks and finally three months.

Hashtag Ain’t God Good.

Anyways, all of that aside, I got to know a really great group of fourth grade students as well as work with some pretty amazing veteran teachers. The whole experience was great, really.

Now that school is out, I’m enjoying my summer. I vacationed in Atlanta, GA for a week and that was just a really amazing experience. I love it there. The food, the people and the culture everywhere you go. Plus, the weather isn’t as bad as people say it is. Then again, I’m from Texas.

I’ve really been focused on my relationship with God and trying to do the right things to expand my ministry. It’s genuinely been the one thing driving me up to this point. Seeing him work things out in my life through eyes of faith. It’s beautiful.

This is where I admit that I was recently stumbled in my vision. I think I’ve been allowed to do this stumbling because there are underlying issues that have gone unaddressed for way too long. Honestly, in order for me to truly move forward and walk into a new chapter in my life I’m going to have to deal with this. 

I listened to a person that I’ve known for a while talk about another woman the way I wished he would talk about me.

Hashtag Say Whaaaat

Yeah. It was the oddest thing. I thought that by drawing away, limiting exposure and communication I would somehow be miraculously healed from this plague. A plague that at one time kept me up crying to my best friend about.

I’m sitting there. Listening. Responding. Offering advice. Thinking to myself that there must be something wrong with me. Feeling as though he’s doing this to me on purpose. Punishing me emotionally.

I hung up the phone feeling drained.

It was all very unsettling. I couldn’t believe that I had allowed my mind and my heart to put me there again. Make me feel as if I would never be good enough. To openly ogle a confession of love towards someone that wasn’t ME. The transition from the fantasy world I’d created in my mind to the reality that lay before me was all but smooth.

But I think this was for me to realize that I have to pluck the seed from my heart. Unless I openly confess it to myself and accept it, there is no possible way grow. None. It’s hard for me to tell whether I love him or not. I think I’ve mostly become callused. Sometimes you can hold on to an idea for so long that after a while you don’t really feel anything anymore.

I’m at that point.

Not feeling anything.

But feeling enough to remember the pain. How much it hurts.

Eventually, I realized that we’re headed in two separate directions. I want to give and live my life in full service to God and there just isn’t room in my life for unnecessary distractions of old emotions I didn’t know still ran deep.

Hashtag Chasing Pavements.

In other news I feel like people live through hashtags these days. Even when they aren’t on social media. I received a text message loaded with hashtags and I spent a while looking at it wondering if there was something I’m missing in iMessages.