When Plans Change

I always wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be Miss Beadle when I grew up: smart, kind, firm, a talented teacher with great ideas. My own teachers were very influential, too. Mr. Hertzog gave us kudos before they were candy. Mrs. Shulman read my very first novel and supplied thoughtful feedback. Mrs. Glassman gave me all As and Mr. Cerensits gave me all Ds, on the exact same paper; that's another story.

But truth be told: I wanted to teach because I didn't think I was good at anything else. I was neither athlete nor musician. I didn't have charm enough to be a politician or beauty enough to be a model. I wasn't smart enough to be a doctor or lawyer. Teaching it would be.

I did a few semesters of community college right after high school, and I got a job as an assistant teacher in a day care center. Day care teachers earn no money, so there is high turnover, but I was there for seven years, and I loved it! I worked mostly with the two year olds, but a few years in, the school age teacher left, so my boss moved me over there. I didn't like it much during the school year, mostly because it was a split shift: 6:30-10 AM and 2:00-5:30 PM.

But when summer came, we moved the third through eighth graders to a separate site and we had Camp Melvin. I was in heaven! I taught a lesson under the tree every morning, and then we did art, science, and drama related to the summer's theme. They played games, we swam in the pool, and, best of all, elementary and middle schoolers can carry on a conversation! I decided teaching was really what I wanted to do, and I was good at it.

I returned to college at age 25 to get my elementary teaching degree. I graduated when I was 30, and almost immediately got a full-time job as a fifth and sixth grade teacher.(Sometime I'll write about how I asked God and got exactly what I wanted.) I taught Latin, Bible, American History, and Language Arts. I was going to do this for the rest of my life.

And if God was on board with my plan, I'd get married and have kids in there somewhere, too.

* * *

It was not to be. By age 35, my hands were deformed with arthritis and my jaw was completely fused shut. It took a full year to be diagnosed: psoriatic arthritis mutilans, a severe and debilitating autoimmune disease. My rheum doc told me 35 is about right for first symptoms and diagnosis, but he's never seem it move so fast. My case is aggressive, and over the past 5 years, we have struggled to find a drug that works.

Needless to say, I am no longer teaching. My body can't handle it. And I can't be the kind of energetic, fun, adventurous teacher they deserve.

It broke my heart to walk away.

Since then I have worked part-time at a job I enjoy and am good at, and it still falls into the category of education. I've also focused on my lifelong joy of writing: this blog and my novels.

But it was not until this week that I was able to put into words the truth I have learned. I was interviewed for a video that will be shown at Parker Hill Community Church in a few weeks as we study "How To be Brave." Jack asked the questions while Jeff filmed and Carol sat as a witness and a dear friend. With Jeff's questions, I was able to articulate what has happened in my heart:

I have accepted that plans change. I am neither creating lesson plans nor dispersing knowledge to middle schoolers. Nor am I married with children.

But as I wait, a bit anxiously, to see the finished, edited interview, and as I participate in on-line health blogs and support groups, as I systematically help able-bodied people in my world understand what disability and chronic pain mean, and as I write my stories and blogs . . .

God has taken my easy and settled plans and given back to me something grander and bigger. I'm still a teacher of sorts.

But plans could change. You and I need to be willing to change with them.