One Step at a Time
“Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.”
Psalms 119:105
Last May, I started to pray.
I was praying for clarity as I felt unsettled in my heart, and I was trying to figure out why. I was working at a school that I loved, teaching alongside my best friend, and after two years, I was finally starting to get into a rhythm with the content, which allowed me to design some really awesome learning opportunities for my students. The two years I was at that school, I was nominated by my peers for two leadership awards, recognized by my district as a “Digital Navigator”, and asked to speak on behalf of my district on an advisory panel to discuss the benefits of one-to-one technology for learning. Now, no one teaches for the accolades, but I was in a place where the work I was doing felt valued and appreciated.
With things going so well, I couldn’t understand why there was this unsettled feeling in my soul. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I should have accepted and signed my contract with glee, but for some reason, I felt hesitant. I searched for other jobs in education, other jobs within corporate education, and even wondered if I was supposed to leave education altogether.
With so many confusing thoughts and little clarity, I prayed.
I prayed for a vision.
I prayed for clarity.
I prayed for guidance.
As I reflected I started to think about my struggles as a teacher.
The past two and a half years, I have been faced with the challenge of teaching through the pandemic. But aside from learning how to navigate digital learning and extended quarantines, I struggled the most with student behaviors in class. And while many want to blame the pandemic, I started to look beyond that. I started to wonder what happened during the pandemic that caused an increase in challenging behaviors, a decrease in respect for authority, and why students seemed to have a newfound sense of entitlement. When reaching out to families about my concerns for their children, I started to uncover the answer; Parents were absent from their children’s lives.
In a world where parents work 8-5 while the kids are off at school, there are clearly defined blocks of time where adults are free of the responsibilities of parenting their children as they are under the supervision of the school and their teachers. Parents had the freedom of being able to compartmentalize their lives, giving their attention to one thing at a time. On top of the work/family balance, add in society’s pressing “me first” mentality in which people are encouraged to focus on themselves and their wants and needs as a prerequisite for “healthy” living. Now, while I think that self-care has its place, I do not think that it deserves the emphasis society has tried to convince you of, especially as a parent. (More on that tangent another time…)
What the pandemic did was it forced parents to choose between work, family, and self. It was the ultimate challenge of being able to not only juggle wearing many hats at once, but to prioritize which ones were deserving of your attention. And it is from my experience that in many homes, work took president and kids were left with devices as babysitters. Parents were so consumed with trying to figure out their own lives and how they were going to navigate the pandemic, that they completely neglected the importance of leading their children through those times. And where there was an absence of parental supervision, children were given free reign to the internet as entertainment. As a result, these children gained power and independence while parents not only lost respect, they lost control.
Many of the conversations I had with parents were, “I know what you are saying, I have that same problem too, but my child doesn’t listen” and/or “I don’t know how to change it.” We have a generation of children who are being raised without reverence for their parents because their parents aren’t simply involved in their lives. Their respect hasn’t been earned. And if these children have no reverence for their parents, how can we ever expect them to have reverence for God and His Word that calls us to live counter to cultural beliefs? As much as I can try to make a difference at school as a teacher, I know that nothing will change until change starts to happen in the home.
It was in that time of reflection and prayer that God started to show me how He wanted to use my gifts as a teacher and my wins as a mom to start reaching other women. It was during this time that God showed me a vision for Growing Paynes. And it was during this time that I felt God make a promise to me that, in our obedience, He would use this ministry to bless our family with time and finances.
I remember crying as I talked to my principal and told her I wasn’t coming back. In my flesh, I wanted to stay. I wanted to return and I wanted things to stay the same, but I knew that God was starting to pave a new path. I left that job, leaping off the diving board of faith, head-first into the unknown.
In the last six months, I have struggled to maintain that faith. I believe in God’s vision and His promise to me and my family, but I feel like I’m not holding up my end of the bargain. Usually, you look for fruit as a sign that you’re headed in the right direction, and right now, I don’t see any fruit. In fact, I see the opposite of fruit, I see a desert. I see the desert as our family struggles financially month to month. I feel the desert when my husband and I are spread thin emotionally between working multiple jobs, taking kids to practices and games, unexpected life events like getting into a car crashes (yes multiple) and feeling uncontent with our current circumstances. I’m in the desert when the devil attacks and feeds me lines of insecurity, inadequacy, and makes me feel like I’m just writing to myself, wondering what’s the point?
But today, I choose to write.
Even if I’m writing to myself and no one reads this, I write this for inspiration; to prove that I’m not going to give up. To show that I do believe in God’s plan and His vision, even if I can’t see the path. Today, I hold on to this verse, that even if I can’t see the path, His Word will be a lamp unto my feet, showing me the next step, fruit or no fruit.
God, please continue to show me the next step and help me to be obedient in that.
Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path.
(Psalms 119:105)