Tag Archives: future

What the future holds…

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As I sit and write this post I am jobless. I resigned my teaching post during my maternity leave as my request for part time hours could not be accommodated.

On 6th June my maternity pay ends and I am yet to find a new job.

You see, the thing is after nearly 12 years of being in the teaching profession I don’t know if it’s for me anymore.

I haven’t become old and jaded but I’m not sure I have the same passion that I used to for it. I am passionate about young people, about them feeling empowered and safe and nurtured but not about targets and grades and performance management. I am passionate about investing in the lives of young people but not about making them jump through hoops.

I have worked in mainstream, PRU, Alternative Education, SEN and within each it is only a matter of time before it becomes about everything else but quality time with the students and to be honest, that’s never what I signed up for.

I am torn, don’t get me wrong, this has been my vocation, my calling for 12 years, I have eaten, breathed, slept teaching for the majority of my adult life.

Right now, I question if it is where I am best used. I question if my heart is still in it, if I can inflame my passion for it again. It’s frightening.

I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know how everything is going to work out.

I do know that the world looks at me differently now I am a mother. I do know that many will question why I would sacrifice a career.

My perspective has changed, my faith has changed. I have been given skills, abilities and passions and I am called to use them to make a difference.

The question is where?

I haven’t ruled out teaching, it is almost synonymous with who I am but I don’t want to just go through the motions anymore.

So yes, I resigned without a new job to go to. Yes, I stuck to my guns about wanting to work part time and yes, despite the uncertainty of it all, I feel it is one of the most sensible decisions I have ever made.

I don’t know what the future holds but one day I will, for now, it’s about holding fast.

Don't write off the small things…

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Hearing His Voice

I got a tweet yesterday in my timeline from @lisabevere with a link to the above message. I favourited it but did not listen to it until this morning. It is about the Holy Spirit and hearing from God. It feeds into exactly the journey I have been on recently. 

While listening I got emotional with God. I had tears. It really spoke deeply into my heart. 

Hearing from God is an odd phrase – often it is met with consternation and skepticism. It can fall into the weird category and can frighten people. We can build it up into something so big that we avoid it at all costs. We shy away from it and often times ignore it. 

For me, promptings from the Holy Spirit are not big booming voice encounters – it comes from within a nudge, a sense that I should do or say something. 

One part of the message really pierced my heart…

There are so many other things I said to you and you second guessed them.’

I know this is true in my own life – that I have felt promptings, to pray out, to sing out, to pray for people, to encourage, to acknowledge, to speak a word and I haven’t because i have second guessed myself. I have allowed fear and doubt to prevent me from doing what I have been called to do. 

I started a journal a week ago – I can see evidence of hearing from God, of being prompted by the Holy Spirit and I have been following those promptings. It hasn’t been anything ‘huge’ just small things. Sending a tweet, an email, writing a blog post but there has been fruit. There has been a momentum building. 

How often do we write off the small things? Does the word not say:

Do not despise these small beginnings, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin… Zechariah 4:10

The problem is that in our humanness we don’t want small, we desire big, we want more, we want fireworks and lights and fanfares. We go from following a prompting to wanting to build a ministry. We don’t want to start small but that is how it all begins. 

Starting small is exciting and we need to recognise that. Do you want your faith life to be a journey, an awesome adventure? Do you want to be able to see how God has worked in your life? It doesn’t happen overnight, as much as we would like it. It is about the small steps towards greater obedience. 

I love to praise and worship God. I have a real heart for worshipping. There is nothing better for me than singing my heart out to God. For me, it is through worship that the Holy Spirit stirs within me. It is through my recognition of who God is, of His love for me, of his amazing faithfulness that I feel the spirit stirring me and moving me. 

On Sunday, I went from dancing around my kitchen lost in wonder, love and praise to praying fervently for the church and weeping. That was a prompting – it came out of my worship. 

On Sunday, I was prompted to pray for a friend and I walked all the way to the back of the church, took them by the hand and said ‘Can I pray with you?’ Turns out they really needed prayer but wouldn’t have asked. 

As I listen to preaches and talks, I often hear passages read and the Holy Spirit will speak a name to me and I know I have to send them that passage. I don’t always get a response, or know how that has spoken to or affected them but does that mean I should stop?

Following promptings is not about our glory but God’s. It should not be done to get recognition for ourselves but for God. So it doesn’t matter about the response to me, it matters that I have been obedient. 

I don’t want to write off the small things. I want to make sure i don’t miss out. I want to follow every little prompting I get. 

How about you? Have you been prompted recently? Have you been too busy second guessing that you have missed opportunities? 

 Can I challenge you to follow a prompting today and see what happens? 

I want to finish with a video of a worship song that is constantly on my heart at the moment. It is about God’s faithfulness and the fact we are never alone.

Why not start from a place of worship and see where the Holy Spirit leads you today?

Fear and Faith

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Today, I went to a Women’s conference at New life church East Grinstead.

Recently, I have been a bit stagnant in my Christian walk. Not completely but I have become quiet, just coasting.

I was looking forward to today not because I was seeking a spiritual high that would boost me for a little, but because I wanted to wake myself up to the bigger picture again.

Livy Gibbs was speaking and she got to the heart of the matter – fear…

‘Fear and faith can’t co habit in your heart, one makes its home at the others expense.’

This pinpointed exactly where I was.

Fear is a natural reaction – feeling out of control and what we tend to do is make attempts to gain control. This can lead us into idolatry -putting our trust in people and things that ultimately will let us down.

God is in control of my unknown future. So I can either fear or have faith…

Do I see the future through fear or faith? I know what I want to answer but the other happens so easily.

There are many unknowns coming up in my life:
How will we manage financially with a major works bill and a baby on the way?
What will happen after maternity leave?
What will my spiritual life look like in 3 months time?

It would be so easy to be fearful, to panic, to lose hope and strive to control it all. The truth is I can’t and by trying I would simply tie myself up in knots and become more fearful.

I have faith that it will all work out, I can’t tell you how and it may seem illogical but I choose that over fear any day. Fearing the future does nothing to change it.

‘She is clothed with strength and dignity and laughs without fear of the future.’ Proverbs 31:25

I want to be able to laugh without fear of the future and the only way to do that is to admit I am not in control and walk in the freedom that brings.

Be yourself

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‘Be yourself everyone else is already taken’ Oscar Wilde

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about what it means to be yourself. I often comment that I am not feeling myself today, but what do I mean when I say that?

I think sometimes we have this idea that there are people who don’t care what people think of them, experience complete freedom in thought, word and deed, never experience anxiety or worry. This idea that there are people who can go through life, day by day, unaffected by the comments of others or their own analysis of situations.

I think this is a myth.

Deep down, we do care about others opinions of us, despite our protestations to the contrary. We are relational beings, as much as we may strive for independence and to do it all alone. We can’t.
We need other people, each other, relationship.

The thing is, because of this need for relationship we often spend our time trying to craft ourselves into the person we think others want us to be. We have a created ideal.

I need to appear strong, not too needy. I shouldn’t talk about myself too much and make sure I listen. I mustn’t appear too grumpy or angry, but on the overhand, I need to ensure I am not overly emotional. Being classified as emotional is close to be written off in our strange, created ideal.

Where do these ideals come from and why do we insist on maintaining them? Why do we have a natural bent towards criticism rather than encouragement? Judgement rather than grace? Fault finding rather than recognition of strength?

We need to start with ourselves, accepting who we are, what being ourselves means for us.

So I am going to tell you who I am, what being myself is for me.

I am emotional. I have highs and lows. In the highs, I experience euphoria and am able to take on most things that are thrown on me, I can give and give and give and feel no effect. In the lows, I feel lethargic, begin to second guess everything and everyone. I misread situations and withdraw.

I experience stress, anger and frustration. I can be very vocal about how I am feeling and my default expression of emotion is tears. When I am happy, sad, angry, frustrated, tired, I cry.

I love to spend time with people, but I can be affected by the moods and attitudes of others. I worry about what people think, my appearance, finances, health and the future.

I expect the best of myself all of the time and will often beat myself up about the slightest of errors. If I speak out of turn, I replay the moment continuously and cringe at my behaviour.

I giggle a lot, sing at every opportunity and find any opportunity I can to smile.

The authentic me is the person I have described above. I don’t think she sounds too bad actually.

What about the authentic you? What does being yourself mean for you?
Leave a comment, tell me who you are, let’s start destroying the myth and start enjoying being ourselves.

And so it begins… again

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So, tomorrow a new term begins. After having a week off, I now go back to being a teacher. It is strange how much changes when work starts up again. I already know what I am teaching and when up until Christmas, I have a meeting schedule running through my brain and Parents’ evening on the horizon.

It would be a lie to say I am not a little apprehensive. We are on Ofsted standby, we have a Christmas production to film, I already know we are short staffed tomorrow. I also have my hospital appointment which means I am nil by mouth from 7am tomorrow.

I am looking forward to seeing the students again. You see, it may sound trite or cheesy but for me my job (vocation) is all about the students. I have a holistic approach to my teaching, one that was at times frowned upon as I was not solely driven by targets.

Being senior teacher, a large percentage of my week is spent listening, listening to students in crisis, listening to their complaints, listening to their fears. It is one of my favourite parts of my job. I have been criticised for having too much of a ‘milk and cookies’ approach and not being punitive enough. I will take that. I am not a soft touch, I have high expectations of the students my approach is just different and it works for me. There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach in teaching, your personality plays a large part.

I spent a lot of my life adapting and changing to fit into what people wanted of me. I am no longer prepared to do that.

Criticism is a large part of teaching, when I did my PGCE my tutor said I was ‘too emotional to be a teacher.’ I have no idea what he meant, I took it as a statement to rail against.

You can have a heart and be a teacher, in fact, I would argue you can’t be a teacher without heart.

Tomorrow, the journey begins once again. I will say this evening, that I am going to have more of a work/life balance this half term, that I won’t work until 9pm every night, that I won’t get burdened by the grumbles and complaints, that I won’t answer emails at 11pm but I know deep down that I will struggle. Being a teacher is 24/7.

So to all of my fellow educationalists, here’s to a new term. Let’s make the best of it. Let’s enjoy it more, but most of all let’s support each other.

‘Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just in fact as you are doing.’ 1 Thessalonians 5:11

I would appreciate your prayers for my hospital appointment 🙂

The old has gone…

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Today, I have been reading a book where the main character has the option of going back and changing the past.

This is not a new premise, it is one that is often used and discussed.

It has made me question – why?

We often think back to the past, with that rosy haze believing things were better, that we were happier. We seek to relive past moments, memories that have stuck.

Or, maybe the past didn’t have those moments and everything has a default back to it. We are desperate to escape from it but let it continually play in our minds like a smeared residue on a glass that refuses to be removed.

Think about now. Ok, there is a list of things that could be better? What about what is good right now? Take a moment.

This is something I have been challenging myself to do. My thoughts so easily fall back into old patterns. It is not healthy and it is not helpful.

When it gets tough, I hold on to the promise…

‘This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!’

It is a daily process, I don’t always find it easy. I do love the freedom it gives, the opportunity to be the real me.

Do you find that you live in the past?
Do you focus on what could be better?
Do you recognise what is good in your life right now?