God is truly amazing! Straight-up, He just is! I speak so much to others about how His hand is always in our lives and how He blesses us with little "tender mercies" and so on. But, there are times in our life when literally nothing goes right! There are times in our life when we just want to throw in the towel and quit. That is totally normal!!! Despite my reputation of always being happy, I have those days too! This past week has been full of them and last night was just the icing on top!
(I don't want to go in to detail about what happened this week because you, as a reader, will still gain from this message if you don't know everything.) Last night I came home feeling professionally inferior, foolish, and completely alone (despite the fact that I was not). I drove the long drive home at 10:00pm and just cried. I asked Heavenly Father to come sit in the car with me and I just talked to Him. I had this feeling that I needed to turn the "Do Not Disturb" off on my phone. I pulled over and reached down to turn it off and I saw that I had a voicemail and missed call from the principle. I listened and the first thing I heard was this,
"Hey Sarah, I just wanted to let you know that the band did a great job tonight . . ."
My little tears became a sob as I recognized that as a small tender mercy for me.
I continued the drive and when I got home I saw that the gates were closed for my apartment complex. They have been doing work on it so I knew that my original code wouldn't work. They gave us a temporary password and I proceeded to use that. Now, here is a side-note--I had never used this before and so I followed the directions on the panel. No matter what I did it would not open the gates. At that moment, the only thing running through my head was "I really don't need this right now!" I wanted to flick somebody in the eye, I was so angry!
After me standing there and feeling stupid for about five minutes somebody else pulled up behind me. I asked them if they knew anything about the passcode and they knew less than I did (we are both pretty new). Then somebody else pulled up, they were also new. None of us could figure it out! At about 10:50 we finally got help and they told us that we didn't have to follow the panel, we just typed in the number. I had never rolled my eyes so hard in my life!!!!!!! The feeling of foolishness started to overpower my anger when I had the feeling to look around. There were five other people standing outside with me that knew just as much or less then I did!
As silly as this sounds, I recognized that I am not alone. We all have struggles that we are going through, and though some of them are the same we all have different experiences leading up to it. Their experience at the gate was different from mine because we all had different things happen to us that evening. I immediately went to bed because I was just done.
This morning I woke up still feeling pretty hurt from last night. I had a meeting this morning that was in Meridian, so I got up and got ready for that. I decided that I would spend the day in Boise (which is where I currently am; rehearsal tonight!) so that I could save on gas. I arrived at the meeting and was greeted by one of the choir directors that I just adore! His name is Ron and he just rocks! I didn't think he would remember me because I didn't work with him that much, but he did! I ran in to David, Andy, and of course my friend Joie! She was so sweet and bought me hot chocolate from Dutch Bros, another tender mercy!
Throughout the meeting started I had the opportunity to meet a lot of other choral and band directors. One of them happened to be from Melba. I teach his daughter choir and he told me to start working on his son! He told me that he heard about what happened the night before and said that I needed to keep my chin up. I was doing great things for Melba and my personality was contagious! I put on my best smile and thanked him for what he said. He and another gentleman offered their assistance if I ever needed anything. I told them I would use it and then we parted ways.
I then talked with Joie about everything that happened and asked her what I should do. This is one of the biggest things I learned: it is okay to feel hurt and sad! Silly, right? I was trying so hard to force this happiness and feeling that there was something that I needed to learn from all of this. But I wasn't letting myself feel through the emotion that I naturally needed to feel. Yes, I still hurt now. But I am feeling through it! It will affect me for a little bit, and that is okay! So long as I don't let it stop me from doing what I need to do!
I am reminded of what my friend and tutor, Eli, told me once: "You have too much to do to let this get you down." And he, as always, is right! I do have too much to do to let this stop me. Does that mean I can't feel poorly about it? No! Does that mean that I have to go eat a carton of Ben and Jerry's ice cream? No! I have too much to do! These kids need me and, to be honest, I need them!
My lessons:
- It is okay to be hurt and sad, just don't let it completely control you!
- I am making a difference.
- "Sarah remember, you have too much to do to let this get you down."
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