Last Minute Jitters

     I do not care for the term, “summer vacation,” as applied to teachers. It conjures up visions of

teachers sleeping in with nothing to do all day except catch up on reruns of “Lost,” “Mad Men,” “Community,” “Blacklist,” or “NCIS.” While it is true that I do sleep in to the unholy hour of 7:00 A.M., I work all summer; especially this summer. All the teachers I know defer household maintenance to the summer. We read. I’ve read several different books this summer. I attended professional development, which was very profitable. Then there are those pesky lesson plans. I will be teaching a new class this fall. I read the textbook and a wide variety of outside sources for the class. A new class requires new lesson plans. Old lesson plans need review and updating. All this to say my summer is full. Fortunately I teach subjects I enjoy. I consumed the several thousand pages of reading with gusto. Examine the new books I read and you will find extensive annotations, marginalia. Now, the final days are upon us.

     In a few short days I will stand in front of my students and deliver. Only, I’m not quite ready. I still have lessons to create, books to read, a classroom to put together, and I did not finish all the household maintenance tasks. Each summer has ended this way in my short tenure as a teacher. As D-Day draws nigh my anxiousness grows. My students deserve my best and without appropriate preparation my classroom suffers. I fret. As a teacher, a professional, I imbibe in continual development. Each day articles or links to articles fill up my inbox. Facebook friends deluge me with links and articles. Of course I return the favor. Despite what popular media proclaims, as a group, teachers take their profession seriously and assiduously pursue improvement and excellence. This part of our profession takes place out of the public eye, behind the scenes as it were.

     So here I sit, a little over a week and a half away from show time and my apprehension grows; so much undone, so many good and helpful books unread, and so many chores left to do. As I sit, sorting through my “to do” list, feeling the pressure mount, I wonder what to do next? Christy, ever sensitive to my mood swings, asks, “Is anything I can do?

     I sigh lugubriously, “No. Not really. These are all things I must do.”

     Later, during breakfast Christy volunteered to pray, “Lord take all the heaviness away from Matt.”

     You see, I’d forgotten a key component of my classroom preparation, prayer. In my military trained mind, I’d backward planned, created a checklist, and completed a basic plan. However, as the summer progressed and events stacked up I got behind. Now, near the end I shifted into panic mode. I looked at the mountain of work I felt I needed to do, the time I had left to do it, done the mental math, and did not like the answer I got. So often in our lives that is the case. Our world presses in on us and needful tasks stack up. Our inbox fills up with responsibility faster than we can sort, file, and act. We approach our days as if on a treadmill and then wonder why we collapse, exhausted at the end of the day. All of this is not new. Teachers have not cornered the market on endless task lists. While not historically supportable, our age seems especially angered by white-space on a calendar. As usual, God provides some perspective on this problem.

     The psalmist reminds us in Psalm 55:22 to “Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you; He will never permit the righteous to be moved.” I grapple with this verse for two reasons.  One, I drank deeply from the non-scriptural well of, “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” a nice unbiblical maxim. Search high and low, you will not find that concept in scripture. Indeed, scripture teaches us the opposite. In II Chronicles 20:17 we read of God saving Judah. Through the prophet He told the Children of Israel that

“You will not need to fight this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf,…”

This is but one of many passages that remind us that God intends good for us and will help us in our time of need. He does not depend on my good work, not for salvation, not for daily life. Second, I lack faith. Jesus reminds us that God cares for us. In Matthew 10:28-30 Jesus tells us that even the hairs on our heads are numbered; a task of ever decreasing challenge in my case. God knows what’s going on in our lives and will provide us what we need.

     In Philippians 4:10-20 Paul speaks eloquently of God’s generous provision. He boldly states that,

“¹⁹ And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

He insists that God is in the business of supply what we need. All this redounds to His glory. I need to trust more and worry less. Doing what I need to do and taking care of business is all good and proper; but, I need to place my faith, confidence and trust in God’s care for me. So as I wind up my summer, putting those final touches on early lesson plans, I should stop fretting. God knows what I need. He knows what my students need and is fully capable of meeting those needs.