For when I am weak, then I am strong!

I know that my faithful readers have been wondering where on earth has my blog gone!? – and by faithful readers, I mean my mom who acquired a taste for my blog this summer and who has not been satisfied in quite some time :) I have no excuses for my lack of connection with the blogosphere. I’ve told myself I’ve been too busy ever since I started teaching, but really I think it boils down to my fear of actually trying to put my experiences into words.

In my past entries, I’ve shared several encouraging Bible verses or songs, but today, I think it’s only appropriate that I finally share with you the verse that I’ve claimed as my “life verse” for several years:

But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

I picked this as “my” verse in middle school after a spiritual challenge given to me by a Bible teacher. I was told that a life verse would be something to always hold onto and make personal in times of joy or strife. Well, I never knew how true that would be for me. (I’ve found myself thinking this quite often lately!)

I need God’s grace now more than I ever have. And quite frankly, it is the only sufficient entity to get me through my days as a first year teacher.

As I haven’t blogged since before the start of the school year (oh, what high hopes I had for consistency with this blog!), I’ll give you a short synopsis of life: I moved to Jacksonville and am teaching three different subjects (Language Arts, Intensive Reading and Creative Writing) to 8^th graders at a K-8 campus in the northern part of the city. I never in my life imagined there could be such a challenge, but I still find myself getting out of bed daily, prepared to take on the world through the eyes of these 13 and 14 year olds.

The number of times that any form of the word “weak” appears in this verse should give you a clue as to what I’m about to say. Although I’ve worked incredibly hard to become a decent teacher (the part where I deliver necessary academic material to my pupils), still, my job is my weakness –- and by my job, I don’t mean teaching students to find the main idea of a story or to write in complete sentence. I mean my job that enlists me to enter a school everyday where kids are desperately in need of someone who believes in them. I mean my job where I’ve already filled out two separate police reports for incidences in my classroom. I mean my job where students know more about worldliness than I ever dreamed at that age. I mean my job where my heart broke as a student quietly begged me to bring her Orajel the following day for a painful toothache, because she knew her mom could not take her to the dentist. I mean my job that requires me to study not only the material that I’m teaching the next day but the students to whom it is being delivered.

I claim the above verse, because THANK GOD that HIS power rests on me BECAUSE I am weak. The fleeting hardships and persecutions I’ve faced in my classroom are the very things that make the revealing of Christ possible. My building-minded brother and boyfriend will like this next part :) I like to think of this analogy when I picture myself in my classroom (aka my mission field): A nail. I see it metal, shiny and pointy – pretty much everything it’s supposed to look like. BUT a nail is not serving its real purpose until it is hammered or beat down over and over again until it is holding together those two pieces of wood. How will the Lord’s work be done if we, as his missionaries, are not hammered down until we reveal HIS purpose?

My prayer is that I delight in these weaknesses, because the Lord’s glory is growing brighter with every passing day.