So, it is April, and it is the time when schools will offer their teachers a contract to return or will inform them that they will not be invited back for another year. I have found this time of year to be particularly interesting because it has caused me to look back over this year and ask "Why should you stay?" I know that the ultimate decision does not rest with me, but with the Lord who brought me here and the administrators who, for good or ill, have been vested with the authority to make this decision. Still, I find my freedom provoked.
I have loved teaching here, it has been a time of great challenge and reward, of joy and of sadness, of life, real life lived with intensity and the acute awareness of one who is loving me in all of this, who I am responding to and moving toward and contending with. In the end, it is this aspect that makes me want to stay, that makes me interested in living in this place for another year. Here, in my school, with all of its virtues and weaknesses, I have found myself completely free to say yes to Him again and again. To witness to Him, who is the reason for my life, to respond to him with all of my energy and verify that life is not as sweet when it is not lived in relationship to the meaning of life, which is Christ.
So, I want to stay because I want to adhere to reality here. I want what comes, whatever it is, and I want to find myself continually provoked to live life with intensity and passion. I am learning to become a better teacher, a better colleague, and a more human presence.
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