It seems odd to me that my thoughts would be so preoccupied with school right now. I know that this time last year and the year before, I was much more interested in planning my summer vacations. My heart is moving closer and closer to Charlotte as our time to leave grows nearer. We have twenty or so school days left. Every morning I stand in the hall with my two hall duty buddies (Egbe the Francophile and Melanie the Thespian) and ponder the day to come. This morning I confessed my mixed feelings. On one hand, I was overcome with a gnawing resentment, which certainly flowed from something in me but at least was acting on threatening emails from parents, overly low shirts and short skirts on students, and general dissatisfaction with a mounting pile of paperwork and bureaucracy. On the other hand, I was moved with compassion as students came by to update me on life situations, turn in remarkably good projects, and ask me how “Mr. Murray” (who had been out sick for two days) was doing.

Three distinct situations have come up in the last week to give me the impression that my time here has been meaningful. None of them have anything to do with Spanish, and to be honest, I have serious doubts about my effectiveness in foreign language instruction over these three years. Nonetheless, my interactions with two students and a colleague over these two weeks have impressed on me that the work I have done has gone beyond my allotted 90 minutes every other day. Have they heard me listening? Has my life been an example? Do they know that I care about them and pray for them and long to see the darkness in their lives redeemed to the light? I think so. At least a few.

I hesitate to draw lessons from what is going on. Generally I’m too quick to decide exactly what it is that God is teaching me in the circumstances of my life. Maybe it’s nothing. But I doubt it. So whether these are the lessons intended or not, they are the lessons digested.

Listen.

Wait.

Learn.

Wait.

Be real.

Be kind.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

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