Thoughts

I went on my first interview for a teaching position with a middle school that serves high risk kids.  It seemed like they already had someone in mind and were just going through the motions of interviewing others…  To be frank, I was relieved that I didn’t get the job.  The whole process brought with it tons of anxiety and feelings of doom that I used to get every time I tried giving teaching a chance.  I felt so overwhelmed, like I was opening a wound that I worked so hard to heal.  All these negative emotions and feelings of failure have exhausted me since. Am not sure where to go from here.  Since, I left my previous job, I have been courted by one of the competing companies, they are terribly interested in me going to work for them and now I am considering their offer. 

These past few years, I had been trying to get my Master Catechist Certificate because I had this desire to work for the Catholic Church.  I still do, even more now with the new sex curriculum that public schools need to implement.  So, am thinking that maybe I should take the mortgage job and continue seeking an opportunity within the Catholic Church.

I write these posts and let you into my life and sometimes I feel like sharing things every step of the way is over exposure because just because I write things down doesn’t mean that’s the way my life will go.  I have been watching this documentary about young girls that are incarcerated and I see how they sabotage their lives because they feel so unloved and like they don’t deserve any better.  They come from tumultuous homes where all the odds are set against them: parental abuse, neglect, drug and alcohol addiction, mental illness…  I see so much of myself in them because that’s where I came from, the only difference is that I had the unconditional support of my mother.  Yet, just because a person gets away from that chaotic atmosphere doesn’t mean that she leaves without deep scars and shadows.  I love an often miscited quote by Marriane Williamson where she expresses our biggest fear:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?  Actually, who are you not to be?  You are a child of God.  Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.  We are meant to shine, as all children do. We are to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.  It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

I’ve come along way, but I still carry a lot of fears that I need to let go.  Am not sure if I will make it back to teaching or if as Saint Junipero Serra said, “siempre adelenate” and that path needs to be left in my past; but, no matter where I go, I know that I will continue to strive to shine my light and trust that God has a plan that is better than anything that I come up with.