Guidance . . . why wait? (Part 2)

The Lord had given me Psalm 25 to memorize.  I did start the process from the first verse onward.  Some months later, my principal advised that the school would not renew my teaching contract.  Suddenly I felt bruised and shaky.  My head whirled fast like a tornado was crashing everything inside.  Sometimes I couldn’t sleep at night, and still too I felt sorry for my principal, who had clearly been through a wrestling match himself in preparing to deliver me the news.  Looking at my span of teaching years, I was going from Teacher of the Year at one school to losing my job at another.  Yet soon I began to see the beauty of the Lord’s guidance.  One sleepless night, He reminded me that no one whose hope is in Him will ever be put to shame.  In the midst of my wounds and weakness, He was showing me verse 3 of Psalm 25 all over again.  He knew I would need to rely on those words, and He enabled me to recite that psalm, even amidst the agonizing pain that had swallowed me whole.  I kept asking the Lord to lead me through, and I sensed Him saying to keep in mind these two words: honesty and respect.  And indeed the two words held crucial in dealing with bitterness among students and fellow teachers for all kinds of reasons in the remaining weeks of school.  One weekend, my daughter was checking her financial account online for college, and she asked, “Hey, Mom, what’s all this new money doing in my account?”  I cry still today to realize how the Lord increased her scholarships to compensate for the fact that I wouldn’t be teaching the next year.  And at school I had multiple opportunities to tell my students how the Lord was providing for my family and that He would provide for them too.  The Lord’s blessings were abundant, pouring through words of kindness from many directions.  I pondered whether the Lord could call someone to lose their job, and I knew the answer was ‘yes.’  He calls people to lose their lives sometimes, and certainly He could call someone to testify in losing their job.  Mine was a painstaking experience that is now a favorite story.  The Lord had guided me all along—before the storm and through it as well.