This Too Shall Pass

I woke up yesterday thinking it was Saturday! I took out Francis for his morning bathroom routine and made coffee to sit in my favorite yard chair when mom asked, “are you not going in to work today?”  I still felt quite certain my mom had her days wrong and I annoyingly said, “It’s Saturday.” Sure enough, she broke the truth and I had to rush and get ready to make my drive to school…  In my world I constantly hear of peers that are retiring or changing job careers during this pandemic and I keep telling myself keep hustling these next few months – survive things will get better.  We have been told that maybe in January we will go back to complete in person instruction… So, more normal days are in view.

This past week, I took a mental health day because I was seriously so overwhelmed and the next morning I had a message from one of my students asking if I would be at school otherwise he wouldn’t attend.  Aww, he missed me!  Then last week I sacrificed my lunch to have the Student Council students tie dye their shirts and one of them caught me before my next period and said, “Thank you, I really needed that.”  I was going over with a friend how these days I feel so overwhelmed and how these two kids were small victories and she said- just imagine all the ones that feel the same way, but don’t express it. 

I have this perfectionist complex also known as atychiphobia that makes everything so much more challenging because I want everything to go according to my expectation and these days I feel like a failure almost every day because every day things go wrong. The internet goes out, my shared documents don’t work when students try to open, my in-person students are quicker at working than my online and get bored while we wait for everyone to finish, and my discomfort of being in front of a camera hasn’t gotten any better…  I even hate the drive home these days because all of my home exits are under construction so traffic gets really backed up.  At a stretch that should take me ten minutes to travel I average thirty minutes on a good day.

Then I get home and I am fried.  I feel like I use all my creativity to make learning fun that when I get home I just want to sit still. Sure, I see projects that I can do, but sitting still usually wins.  LUCKILY, things are starting to go back to normal and now I can go to weekly Bible study.  Like my student needed that social aspect of tie dying I too need my weekly dose of faith sharing.  It so comforting to be with others and vent in a creative way, not as a form of complaining, but a way to validate that what we are experiencing due to the effects of the pandemic is unprecedented.  I find comfort in being reminded that I haven’t lost anyone close due to the virus, that I still have a job and all my basic necessities are met and that this too shall pass…