In Spite of Myself

I changed my major 3 times in the first 6 months of college.  There was almost one more time during my junior year when I was going to switch out of elementary education into a broader communications major.  My reasoning?  The more I got into my education classes, the more I realized I didn't want to be a teacher, at least in the traditional sense of the word.  If I asked people about it, they were pretty quick to agree with me.  After all, if there's one major that you're supposed to know what you're going to do when you graduate, it's education.

The only thing that I couldn't shake was that when I prayed about it, I really felt like God was telling me to stay in education.  This meant that I would have to complete student teaching, go through the certification tests and everything else that came with it, all the while knowing that I didn't want to teach.  Even though it seemed like a crazy decision, I chose to obey the best that I could, trusting that God would work something out through the madness.

In the years since, I've been amazed at how God has used that training as a background to prepare me for so many opportunities that I couldn't have imagined.  I went into Student Ministry for 3 years, and used my training to write curriculum, teach lessons, and get some kind of preparation to understand the middle school psyche (although I don't know that you can ever be fully prepared for that).  The 3 years that I spent in Kidz Ministry further expanded my background, especially in understanding the "Early Childhood" realm of things.

And over these past few months, God's added another layer to "Aren't You Glad I Had You Major in El Ed?" as I've been working in a couple of the Detroit Public Schools through my job with Kaplan.  I'm helping to prepare high school juniors to take a state-wide test, the MME, in about a month, which includes taking the ACT (the college prep test that most mid-westerners use).  Initially, my greatest challenge was to try and remember geometric and trigonometry formulas, but in the months since, I've been stretched in an entirely new way.

My school assignments are very urban schools, in 2 different areas of the city.  For a girl who has spent most of her life in a very non-diverse, suburban neighborhood, it was a challenge that I wanted to do in theory, but when it came down to my first trip to the schools, I found myself nervous, scared, and terribly intimidated.  

After 2 months, I can honestly say again that this is yet another experience where I am truly thankful to see how God has blessed me in spite of myself.  I truly look forward to these times and have a genuine love for the kids and desire to see them succeed beyond their expectations.  My prayer has been that God would use it as an opportunity to speak life into their lives and show them gifts that they have that they may have never even known about.

I can't even begin to imagine how God will continue to use all the events of my past, but the older I get, the more I find that I am completely amazed at His masterful handiwork, often using a circuitous road to craft a wonderful journey.