A POST OF SIGNIFICANCE?

It's no secret to people in my church and family that I've been struggling with . . . identity lately. Maybe it has to do with being officially "in my 40s", or maybe it's unrelated, but I've been trying to grasp a holistic and God-centered vision of who, or what, I'm supposed to be.

In the late 1980s, when I graduated from college, I knew that I wanted to be a high school math teacher. I did that. I don't regret those 15 years, and I feel like I impacted lives for the better. In the early stages of this new century, this new millennium, I began to feel some unrest. My job at Massena High School seemed frustrating. I was spending more time dealing with the "politics" of my job than I had before. Although I can be diplomatic when I need to be, I don't enjoy the sense that I have to "tip-toe through life" to avoid confrontation. I still haven't (and perhaps never will) completely quantified the reason(s) why I left Massena, and moved from K-12 education to higher education. It seemed to me that the doors I found open were Providential, and so I made the move. The enjoyable thing about my SUNY Potsdam position is the continued interaction with former colleagues and friends from my K-12 years.

So here's a trigger - this may seem strange if you weren't there, and you certainly weren't, but let me relate it anyway. When I was deciding to resign from my Massena position to accept the job at SUNY Potsdam, I had meetings with my principal and superintendent at Massena. I'd like to think that they wanted me to stay, and perhaps they did, but that was not the topic of conversation. They were both saying that I needed to do what was "right" for me. Interesting, this idea that society thinks we have to do what's "right" for "us." I was always taught that I had to do what's "right" in "God's plan", and I've always wanted to do just that. Anyway, in my conversation with the principal, a nice person with a nominal church connection, in my opinion, I was expressing my uncertainty about the actual reason(s) why I felt compelled to make this move, that I had not really identified them concretely. (As a math person, the need to quantify is strong for me; perhaps you can (or can't) relate to that.) Her response continues - now close to FIVE years later - to ring in my mind: "Do you think that you'll end up in some kind of church ministry?"

Where did that come from? Was God using a professional colleague to make me think? Or was it more direct than that? Does God want me to not just make a career "shift" (a term that I used in my resignation letter at Massena), but rather a complete career change? Has my move to a completely different type of position this year (teaching at Clarkson) been another step to prepare me for a bigger change?

I believe that God made me, and I believe He made me with certain character traits. One of those traits is a desire to know an answer definitely and concretely (see math person reference above). Thus, I do not believe He'll cause me to have these questions without providing answers. Many spiritually mature people in these last few months have told me that He'll make the way clear; I'm waiting for that to happen. Several have also said that I shouldn't rush into anything, and I don't intend to.

So I'm working hard at what I do. I prepare carefully for each math lesson, knowing that in the "big picture" what I'm doing may not seem to make a deep difference spiritually, but also knowing that I can set an example and a standard for my students and my colleagues. I complete my own assignments carefully, endeavoring to be the type of student that I would enjoy having enrolled in MY class. And, I continue to tell God (and others) that when He makes it clear what I'm supposed to be "when I grow up", that I'm all His.

My father had mentioned when I was younger that he wasn't sure he was originally supposed to be a preacher. He had an uncle (I think it was an uncle) whom dad felt was called to preach, but he never answered that call. Dad thought that he was called as a substitute for his uncle.

We have a lot of churches without pastors. We have several churches running lower numbers consistently than they used to. We have vacant mission fields with financial and personnel-related needs. We have American and world populations that are higher than they've ever been and, as Rowan Fay put it recently in Brushton revival, "many of them are regularly dropping into hell to burn forever."

It certainly doesn't sound glamorous, but if I'm supposed to be a "substitute", then I want to know that. If so, then I'll be sure to work just as hard at that job as I have as a teacher for these last 20 years.