The Back Story

What’s with saying I am “unemployed”?  It’s not really true- I am just not as employed as I used to be.  I currently work as the Director of Religious Education at my church and also part time with 4-H programming, among many other tasks.  But until this fall, I also was a teacher.  I had the privilege of being a 6^th grade teacher for three years.  It was challenging, and rewarding, and fulfilling, and fun, and awesome.  I have wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember.  My sisters can attest to the hours spent with me “teaching” them with the extra pages from the previous year’s math workbook.  I never once considered changing my major during college, and everything just seemed to fall into place when it came time to find a job.  I loved my time teaching, and despite being super busy, I couldn’t imagine anything else.  But, through various circumstances, I discovered that I was not called to work at that school any longer.  Furthermore, the same discovery led me to turn down several other teaching position offers.  Had I gone crazy?  For a while, I wasn’t sure.  For Type-A-plan-everything-organized-me, this was a change of pace.  And it was hard.

But through it all, I have discovered that I had inadvertently wrapped a lot of my identity in my career.  I didn’t mean to, but it happened.  And you see, my identity is not as a teacher, but as a daughter of Christ.

So this year, I am taking a sabbatical.  I am slowing down, refocusing, prioritizing, and realigning myself to Christ.  I am also spending a lot of time discerning God’s will for my future.  (To be clear- that does not necessarily mean that I am discerning religious life.  Combine a young, single, practicing Catholic and the word discern, and everyone’s minds automatically assume that I am becoming a nun.  While religious life is a beautiful vocation, and I am open to God’s plans, I am pretty sure that my vocation is to be a wife and mom.  All in God’s time, though.)  So instead of focusing on where I am going to be in five or ten or twenty years, I am focusing on God’s will for this hour, this day, this week.    For His plans are much more perfect than anything I could even imagine. 

“The plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.” ~Psalm 33:11

“If we would just walk humbly with our God, He would lead us by the hand to that which is just for us, made for us, intended for us, and this alone will be the cause of our deep fulfillment and happiness.” ~Matthew Kelly