Adventure Time!!!

For those of you who might find this blog sometime in the future and wonder... where the heck did she go?

Never fear! I am still writing. My life just changed in a major awesome way and I started a new blog to tell people all about it!

I am moving from the US to Indonesia to teach at an international school in Jakarta!

If you wanna keep up to date on my shenanigans, you can hop on over to:
https://shespeaksfromthatwhichfillsherheart.blogspot.com/

My new normal is a grand adventure!

-Rachael

Five Years Hence

Five years ago I was told I had cancer. So it is time I wrote another letter to myself. Oh, if there were any way I could post it back in time, what a difference it would make. But I can't go back, only forward. So her is the open letter to 18-year-old me:

Dear 18-year-old Me,

So this week has sucked, right? Like more than the time you thought that boy like you but it turned out he didn't. Like more than when you couldn't see your best friend for a year because your parents were fighting over something you didn't understand. Like more than the time your friends laughed at the idea of you ever french-kissing (like sure you thought it was gross at the time but 15-year-old you could hope to french kiss later in life, right?). 

Yep, this week blew that way out of the water, way off the radar; you can't even believe you were once upset about such trivial things. In fact, you are wishing something so trivial could bother you. You wish you could let spats with friends and misunderstandings of teenage hormones consume your mind, if even for a moment. 

Because then you wouldn't have to think about cancer.

I wish I could warn you, dear one, that some of your hardest days are still yet ahead of you. And just when you think it is over, it won't be. Not yet. I wish I could save you the tears cried into your pillow at night, the pain of staring into the unknown. 

But most of all, I wish I could tell you about today. About how five years later, so very much will be different. And the good kind of different, too. You will have fulfilled three lifelong dreams in the span of the past year.  You will visit England, graduate college, and become a teacher. Yep, that is right. You. You who lie in bed and want it to be over. You who will suffer so much pain you will wonder if death would be kinder. You who will lose all of your hair, confidence, and sense of self. 

You.

You will grow. You will find strength when you did not think there was any left. You will reach into your soul and discover something: God made you strong. Even when your legs tremble beneath you, you will stand tall. And you will reach for your dreams at last. 

I can't promise easy, but I can promise worth it. Oh, so worth it. 

sincerely, 23-year-old Me

My new normal taught me that when nothing is certain, everything is possible. 

-Rachael

Gypsy Teaching

Confession time: I am a planner. Okay so if you have read a few of these posts you would probably know that already. I am not a change-the-plans-last-minute kind of girl. If I could know just what I am doing for the rest of my life, play down to the minute each moment, I would be a happy person.

Naturally, life is not like that. So for this planner, substitute teaching is a bit of a nightmare. There is the whole mystery around if I will get a call the next morning or if I won't. And if I do get a call, where will I be? Which school district? Which school? Which class? Which subject? The lists goes on. I step out in faith each day, not knowing where the day will take me.

In a weird and twisted kind of way, I got a certain peace when I was sick because I always knew where I was going to be the next day, what doctor I was going to see, and what drug I would need to take. I had a schedule. The planner in me was happy even if the rest of me was not.

As a substitute teacher, I feel a lot like a gypsy.

Why? Well, it all started my junior year of college. That was when classes ramped up, and I had to face the reality of my career choice. I knew college was going to be hard but being an education major is a whole nother level of hard. The amount of homework involved still makes me cringe. Add to that field work, lesson plans, unit plans, state company tests (That cost over $100 each) and just the general pressure of my family and myself to do well.

So in the midst of the chaos, my two college besties and I are doing homework and for the 100th time that month we feel stupid. Fed up, we start to joke. "Maybe we should just run away and be gypsies!" I proclaim. "They don't care if we do well, we can wear cute clothes, travel, every day will be an adventure, and we will never have to do college again!"

We all had a good laugh and tried to focus on our homework. After that, whenever we were frustrated or confused about college, we would joke that we were going to run away and be gypsies. We often invited others to go with us. The story kept us cheerful on the long weekends of lesson planning and early morning observations.

And yet here I am. Graduated. Degree in hand, teaching. Ironically, the thing I thought would be the exact opposite of being a gypsy is what has turned out to be just that. I never know where I am going to be the next day. I have to bring everything with me when I go. I travel a lot. each day is an adventure.

Not what I had in mind. But, hey, will take the daily adventure.

My new normal is teaching me that the unknown is a good thing; where nothing is certain anything is possible.

-Rachael

I Survived... Again

There have been exactly two times in my life that I wasn't sure I would make it. Not like die, but give up. Mentally or spiritually I would give up, or be forced to give up and that would be that. I would be exposed for the useless weakling that I am. The world would finally discover that I was only faking it the whole time. That I only looked strong. That I only seemed wise. The first time I felt this was during my battle with Leukemia. I survived that. 

The second time was during my student teaching. 

And yet, here I am. How about that? I not only survived. I graduated. Me. The shy, self-conscious, homeschooler walked into a high school for the first time and somehow got 150 9th-graders to learn something. And learn I did right along with them.

Student teaching is the second hardest thing I have ever done next to surviving cancer. There are so many different things I could say or ways I could describe student teaching. It was wonderful and horrible. It gave me confidence while making me feel stupid in every way. I could feel on top of it all one moment, and the next be humbled by a simple mistake. My students challenged me, pushed me to places I never thought I would go, and we all learned so much. 

And yet I still feel like I have no idea what I am doing. 

Four months of that was supposed to teach me all I needed to know? Sure the four years of college before that were helpful and all, but in the end, I had to face the reality that it is to be a school teacher. Nothing looks the same as it does on paper. Nothing works the way it is supposed to. If it works for one class it crashes and burns in another. 

And here I am, standing here with my Bachelor's Degree, being shoved into the world and told, "Okay, here you go! Now you are ready to teach." And I stand, blinking in the bright reality of it all. And I have no idea what I am doing.

Now, I have been told all first-year teachers feel inadequate. That it is a struggle each and every day. And so maybe this is normal first-year jitters. Maybe nobody understands what is going on and what should happen. 

As of right now I do not have my own classroom. I am living at home again and finishing up the paperwork to be a substitute teacher. It is hard to find a job in the middle of the year. I feel displaced and even more unsure. However, there is a part of me that says I did not get a permit teaching job yet because I am not supposed to stay here. 

I know that may sound a little silly, and perhaps that is a subject for another blog, but I am just not secure in the idea of living around here, even in the Midwest, for the rest of my life. I used to think I would grow old and die in the area but I guess my heart has grown wings. Between flying out of the country for the first time last spring, living out of state for two years, working in still a different state for summer camp I have learned a few things about myself. 

I have learned I can make friends with strangers, and it isn't as hard as I thought it would be. That a place can feel more like home when you love the people there. And that it is gonna be easier than I ever thought possible to leave my childhood home. 

I have no clue where I am going, but my new normal is teaching me to be ready for the winds of change to come.

Happy New Year!

-Rachael