ATTAINMENT.

God is more concerned with WHO you are ARE than what you DO. I state this not as a lesson I have learned and can pass on to you, but more as a reminder to myself. I have to keep reminding myself of this each and every day that I am sick. I feel so worthless sometimes, as I lie sick on the couch, watching TV or movies.

Let’s be honest, if you don’t work and you meet someone and they ask you (as they inevitably do), “What do you DO for a living?” it makes you want to shrivel up and die. I feel like saying “I do NOTHING, okay! I do NOTHING!” Usually what I DO say is “I used to be a teacher.” I don’t know which one of these things is worse: the fact that I can’t do anything NOW or the fact that my life is defined by what I USED to do. Sometimes I feel like Charlie on LOST, always talking about what he used to be good at… (If you are sick and watch LOST, you understand what I mean…)

When my Lyme came back over a year ago, I had to give up the best job in the whole world: teaching first graders. I LOVE to teach and when I got my own classroom, I felt like I had found my calling and my deepest passion. Yes, it was exhausting. Yes, leaning over those tiny desks all day made my back hurt. Yes, I really hated making those tiny little crafts. But it was all worth it when my students grasped difficult concepts, learned to read and write and shared their creativity with me. I felt like I was born to teach them. It was my gift.

And yet, the thing I have been forced to accept in giving up my job is that I am still “me,” apart from teaching. Teaching is just one of my labels, one of my gifts. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a girlfriend. I am writer. I am a teacher. These are all things that are very significant and I regard them as important and significant to me and to God. But the truth is, I am more than those things. While God gave me the gift of teaching, it is still somewhat external to my being. In my deepest part, I am a unique soul created by God to bring worship to his name. All the other goals and labels I have for myself pale in comparison to that.

It also has occurred to me several times this year that even without my sickness, there will probably be times in my life when I don’t teach (if I have kids, if I retire, if I lose my job, etc…) Careers are way more uncertain that we perceive them to be. I know so many people who pour themselves so much into their careers or their children or whatever it is that is most important to them and then, when their job is done (i.e. they retire, their children move out, etc.), they don’t know who they are anymore. While it is entirely natural to go through this, it causes me to pause and wonder: where do I find my identity? Is it in WHO I am in Christ or is it in WHAT I DO?