October 2, 2011
It smells like rain. I love that smell.
The smell of a new beginning, a fresh start. The smell of thorough weeping, a cleansing of the soul. The smell of the earth rejuvenated, reinvigorated. The smell of old things washed away, a purging of dirtyness. The smell of sadness, a mourning for things lost or not had. A beautiful, rich smell with a mixture of emotions. The smell of how I feel...
A fresh start: I actually like teaching. Sometimes, I still get nausceated by the idea of standing in front of a class, stuttering my way through a lesson and receiving blank stares. However, this is no longer the norm. Even my most challenging class (8th grade Pre-Algebra...15 goofball guys and 4 dramatic girls...all of whom would not consider math a favorite subject) has been tracking with me lately.
Thorough weeping: Due to some combination of a lack of sleep, a failed lesson, typical early-20s angst, feeling lonely, missing physical touch, and a hundred other reasons at any given time, I've cleansed my soul many times (Jessie and the tissue boxes have been quite comforting though).
Rejuvenated: Sharing dinner with several families, feeling my eyes light up as I talked about CCDA philosophy of ministry with a parent who found such things also quite fascinating, making yet another random Wheaton connection (your niece's in grad school at Wheaton and just started dating a guy who worked at the same camp as me...wait, does his name happened to be ___? yep, it is a small world...and once you go to Wheaton, it gets about 732 times smaller.), absolutely loving the past two weeks of teaching my advanced Algebra class (solving equations on individual whiteboards for two weeks! now, this is my kind of math.), listening to little Joshua at dinner tell a hilarious, ridiculously animated, 10-minute version of the story of Joseph (so, they threw him in the well, and Joseph was like, "Ahh!"...), and watching the glorious sunset as I jog home from Rosslyn.
Old things washed away: Slowly, God is healing my fears of teaching. After a rough experience in Chicago last fall, I almost changed my major and dropped education completely. While I still don't know if I want to be a teacher, I now see that I could be a good one, if that's where God wants me. (...but Lord, I would prefer not being condemned to that fate.)
Sadness: Sadness that I cannot spend longer with my students (note: I did not say "spend more time teaching"); sadness that the missionary community seems quite isolationistic (where is the incarnational ministry? where is the living among the people? where are the widows, the orphans (ok, we do have baby Jane with us!), the poor, the untouchables, the children (ok, I see a lot of children regularly), the sick, the dirty, the prostitutes, the people that Jesus would be hanging out with and loving?); sadness that school politics are still present at a Christian school; sadness at the racial segregation, cliques, and occasional cruelty of the 7th graders to each other (words wound deeply); sadness that people cling tightly to their denominational ties rather than Christ (who destroyed all barriers that humans like to put up to keep others out).
Mixture of Emotions: I helped out at a dental clinic in Nanyuki, a city a few hours from Nairobi. Our dental team consisted of my host dad Mike & dental student Joshua (our two dentists), a dental technician, three dental assistants who work at the various dental clinics with Mike, and my host sister Nikki and I. We saw about 100 patients that day. I learned more about dentistry than I've ever known in my life and saw my life's quota of teeth being pulled and cavities filled (the cavities were actually really cool; teeth being pulled was also interesting, but a little too bloody for my taste...no pun intended). I'm now an expert at preparing syringes (for numbing), using suction, washing dental instruments, and holding flashlights (for extra visibility). In Kenya, there's one dentist for every 200,000 people. Yikes. But anyways, something that struck me that day was seeing the way Mike and Joshua came alive while seeing patients for 10 nonstop hours. Mike didn't even eat anything for 10 hours, and Joshua only stopped for 30 seconds to wolf down a sandwich, but it was as if they didn't even need food because they were so energized by what they were doing. These two men were made to be dentists.
Similarly, that's something I loved about watching Jessie teach: she comes alive when she's in front of a classroom talking about math. She was made to be a middle school math teacher. I'm not sure that I was made to be a middle school math teacher (one big difference between Jessie and I is that she is always one to ask, "Why? Why do numbers work this way? Look at these awesome connections between the way this works and the way that works," whereas I generally ask, "How? How do I solve this equation? What's the process?" ...number theory/asking why is an area that I would need to develop tremendously if I choose to be a teacher because I wouldn't be content being a good teacher, I would want to be an excellent one...there's that Wheaton perfectionism rising up in me). But I don't know that I want it badly enough. Teaching is not just a career; it's your whole life. And I'm not sure that I want it to be my life (then again, it doesn't really matter what I want...we'll see where God puts me).
After the dental clinic, we had a good conversation in the car on the way home about career possibilities (the sky's the limit), and I realized that I love working with people one-on-one. I love helping people understand the way that their brain works, the way they communicate, the way they show love to other people (personality tests, love languages, learning styles, etc.). So, I'm considering going into counseling (I probably should go to counseling first...ha!). I haven't chucked teaching out the window, but I am exploring other possibilities as well.
The smell of how I feel... sorry there wasn't a more concise way of expressing how I feel (if you made it this far through my email, I'm quite impressed...either you had nothing else to do or love me a lot...I'd like to think it's the second). I can't believe I only have four weeks left. Also, I've added more pictures to my facebook photo album titled "Nairobi 2010," so feel free to check that out. I have no profound words of wisdom to leave you with, but I've realized again this semester that God loves us to let us stagnate. The growing pains hurt. But my God is also a Healer.
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