Teaching.

"I can't find my chair." Well it didn't just disappear.  Look around.
"He looked at me with a mean face." I think that's just the way his face looks.
"My tooth is wiggly, looooooooook!!" Don't do that, I might throw up on you.
"I have to go to the bathroom." We just took a bathroom break!

I spend my days with children.

Sneezy, snotty, lack of personal space, attention span of a goldfish children.

Yes, I am fully aware that I choose this.

I didn't choose to become a teacher because I'd always dreamt of having an overflowing bank account.  I never once thought, Oh, this will be easy.  I knew before I stepped into my first classroom that I would often bring lesson plans and grading home.  I was fully aware that being a teacher would require the patience of Job.

There has always been an undeniable, indescribable certainty in my heart that teaching children is where God needs me.  To be honest, I have always known that in order to teach children I would need the Lord working in me and through me every single minute of every single day.  Even in a class made up of perfectly behaved, intelligent children, it would not possible to effectively teach and love the children without God's presence.  Especially in a class of rowdy, impulsive children, a teacher could never effectively educate her students if Christ isn't dwelling in her.  Imagine loving the children; genuinely loving them.

Without Christ, there's no doubt in my mind that it would be impossible.

Consoling a six year old boy as he enters the classroom bawling his eyes out, completely incapable of producing words, and spending the first twenty minutes of arrival hugging him and wiping his tears until he's finally able to muster the few words, "I miss my grandma."  Is she dead? Nope, she just lives in another city.

Conducting a classroom-wide search after a rambunctious boy removes and loses a hardly-wiggly tooth.  Teeth don't just disappear into thin air, but after a class of 20 students spends half of writer's workshop crawling under tables with hopes of finding that bloody tooth, the teacher takes it upon herself to write a letter to the Tooth Fairy explaining the vanishing tooth.

Crying on the last day of school.  Not tears of joy as the next few months will be booger and band-aid free, but tears of sadness and concern upon realizing the students who've received hugs upon entering the classroom for the past 180 days may not be hugged for the next few months.

There's a whole lot more to teaching than decorating a color-coordinated classroom and wearing a cute cardigan paired with comfortable flats.  There's more to being an educator than making copies of worksheets and teaching the Pledge of Allegiance.  Yes, the material we're teaching IS important.  After all, learning is the purpose for school, right?

What's often overlooked though, is that effective elementary teaching involves a relationship.  A strong, caring, supportive relationship.  The children need to feel safe and encouraged.  Loved.  And I don't know about you, but I've not met a single human being capable of genuinely loving 20 [or more] elementary children for eight hours a day, five days a week.  It's exhausting, and to be completely honest, some days loving your class is the last thing you want to do.

Those are the days when reliance on Christ is so important.  When you want to say ugly things and walk out the door never to return again.  Those are the days you must trust that your words aren't being spoken, but God's.  When you have no love left to give and your patience ran out a few days before, it's the peace of God in you that is keeping you sane.

To say that the first 12 weeks of this school year have been a struggle would be like comparing the strength of a twist tie to the Incredible Hulk.  I have shed more tears than I care to admit and doubted myself as a teacher constantly.  Many of my mornings are filled with whining and dragged feet.

My prayer is no longer for more patience and energy, but for God to work in my classroom.  I can't speak His name or answer their questions about faith, but I can love them.  And whether they recognize it now, next year, or when they graduate high school, I hope that my students think back to first grade and in some form remember that they were loved.  They were greeted with a hug, questioned about the results of their soccer games, and given countless band-aids for scrapes so life-threatening you'd need a microscope to see them.

My students are loved.  Through disciplines and praises, they are loved.  Not only by me, but also by the Creator of the Universe.  And before teaching them their ABCs, my first job is to teach them that they are loved.  They are loved by some strange, blonde haired teacher, even though she doesn't have to love them.  She does it by choice.

My hope is that one day, when first grade is far in their pasts, my students will be open to receiving the love of their Savior and making the choice to love him back.  Because after all, if they never learn that humans can love them, how could they ever fathom the love of the Lord Almighty and his son?