Today is a big day. SouthLake students arrived to school with their new pencils and notebooks neatly organized in their new backpacks. Lunches are packed and gyms bags filled with clothes for practice. Freshmen faces show traces of underlying anxiety about locker combinations, difficult classes, peers, and pimples. Seniors confidently and nostalgically walk the halls knowing that today is the first day of their last year.
Teachers arrived this morning with as much excitement and anxiety as their students. First day speeches and smiles are ready on their lips. Rooms are carefully decorated with posters and meaningful quotes. Textbooks lie in stacks, ready to be given out. Young minds await their wisdom and knowledge.
Today everything happened the same way as always, but for the first time in eleven years, my room is not decorated, there are no speeches or lessons, no hall duty or book lists.
Today when I awoke, there was still excitement and anxiety, not about going to school, but about NOT going to school. There is excitement about this next chapter of life. Andrew has, what he calls, his first big boy job. We are expecting Baby Shank sometime in January. We are in a new town with a new church and a new home to decorate and enjoy. But there is also a little bit of anxiety. Not that I'm anxious, mind you, but I am filled with questions: What now? If I don't teach, what should I do with my time until Baby Shank arrives? Substitute or tutor? Try to write? See if I can help with the local cross country team? Actually make a shopping list and dinner plan and cook something?
After my first week in Hilton Head, the questions seem pressing. I've applied at the Christian School here, but replies have been slow. I've mostly been reading books and driving to thrift shops. I want my time to be purposeful, but I sort of just feel like a bum. Our apartment isn't ready yet, so there are no boxes to unpack. Andrew keeps telling me to enjoy the time and that I'm already doing work- making a baby- but eleven years of teaching and coaching is a hard habit to break. Perhaps God is giving the rest and space that I have been needing. I am praying that I won't just fill it up with random things to do, but that God would guide each day and fill it as he decides.
