On Monday, June 10, I found out that I had been bumped from my position at my school by a more senior teacher in our board. Everything in teaching is based on seniority first, and then qualifications. Someone who has my qualifications and even a day's more experience than me had taken my job, and they (the board, the union) hadn't found me a place to go in the fall.
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I remember being in my classroom, starting my lesson, the Vice Principal and a supply teacher showing up to my door, being whisked to the Principal's office, seeing both him and the Union Rep sitting there, and having an envelope pushed at me across the table. My name. The board's logo. The end of my time as a teacher in that building coming to a quickly-approaching end. My heart shattering, my stomach bottoming out. Shock. No adrenaline, just pain.
I sat in silence and stared at the envelope. Awkward silence. Disbelief. The principal and my union partner not knowing what to say. Me not knowing what to say. What can you possibly say? Being assured that there is a supply in my class who can stay as long as I need them to. The only thing I said in the meeting, the only words, "I'm going home."
I cried. The union person held me, as I cried into his shirt. He took me to a better, more private place to cry than outside the staff washroom. I had to walk through the foyer of my dream school, past the door I entered almost 4 years ago, to the staff dining lounge where I cried some more, voiced my pain to my friend, and then back to my department office where I packed up for the day. I called my mom and wept through the phone, her weeping on the other end. I remember hanging up and jerking my eyes open, trying to wake myself up from this nightmare. I didn't wake up. It was real life.
Barring some miraculous placement, I'm out of a job in September. I have only a handful of pay cheques left, and then.... and then?
I cried all the way home. I shouldn't have been driving. Thoughts racing through my mind, I breathed (sniffed?) some relief: I'm lucky, I thought. I don't have a mortgage or kids, I don't have really big bills --- oh wait. My car loan! I realized then that money I'd saved in my Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) will have to take a hit to pay off my car. I can't afford to have car payments with no pay cheque every two weeks. Ouch.
The last time I cried that hard, practically heaving into my mother's chest, was when I failed my first practicum in Teacher's College, 4.5 years ago. Though that situation hurt more than anything prior, there was still hope. This feels hopeless. This hurts more than anything ever. A failed practicum you make up later in the year. A lost job... is a lost job. Unemployment. Ouch. Later in the day, lying on the couch, mom asked me if she could bring me anything, did I want a drink? "I want my job back..." ... tears. Endless tears. I asked my dad to come visit, to come for dinner; I needed both my parents. He did. He helped with perspective (as he'd been laid off from work in the early 90s). It's still so difficult.
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I marked tests. I went to bed. I woke up. I've been on auto-pilot since, dealing with all the things working in a high school brings.
A kid stole my USB on the same day that I was bumped. I dealt with the class, the kid, the cops, the parents, the Vice Principal all week. I heard 5.5 different stories from the kid about what happened to the USB.
- On Monday, he said, "I don't have it!"
- Tuesday morning, he said, "I put it back!"
- On Tuesday afternoon he told his friend, and his friend told me, "He lost it!"
- On Wednesday afternoon he told the police officer and me, "I'll bring it tomorrow morning"
- On Thursday morning, he said, "I can't find it"
- On Friday morning, he confessed that he threw it out.
- The .5 part of the story is that he stole it on a dare.
Big deal, right? Maybe, except that USB stored ALL of my courses, tests, exams, union documents, supply teacher letters, a few personal photos, video clips, test- and exam-review games, just basically my entire career, not to mention teachers college and specialist course materials. While most of that stuff is backed up elsewhere and I have paper-copies of almost all of it (except the review games), it's still MINE and it was still STOLEN. Kid wasn't charged, but kid now does have a notation on both his school record and a police record for a "caution". Officer said that if he so much as sneezes in the wrong direction, he'll never get the benefit of the doubt again.
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Here's something I wrote on Monday, the day of my bumping:
In the past when friends have gone through tribulations and trials, I have given the advice that they must give thanks to God because He is doing a work in them and is about to give them something even better than they are asking or hoping for. So I will trust in The Lord with all my heart and I will not lean on my own understanding. In all my ways and in all things that come my way, I will acknowledge His greatness and omnipresence, His unending and infallible love for me, and wait on His perfect timing to direct my path to where He needs me most. I will give thanks and be glad in all the ways He has saved me, and I will allow His hand to pull me out of this, since I can do all things through He who strengthens me, and can do nothing without Him.
I am more thankful for my salvation than I am angry about what's happening. I love God more than I love my job. I must keep my eyes on Him, and listen to hear what He's trying to tell me. I will choose Him above anyone or anything else, I just have to live it and trust, even when it's this hard. This tribulation must be used for HIS glory, not for my selfish human purposes.
So here's what I know is true:
I may or may not have a job in September, but I will always have Jesus.
Though I am scared about what my life is about to look like, the Lord will always provide. I am His, and He will not give me or allow for me anything more than I can handle.
My God is bigger than losing my job. He gave me this one, He can take it away. He is doing a work in me. I am being refined, I'm being moulded. I am being pulled back to Him after boasting in my own works, my own savings, my own knowledge. I must boast in Him, and in nothing else. I must give Him the glory for the wonders in my life, because it is Him who has given me everything, and it is through Him that I can do all that I do.
My entire time at my job has been a witness to my faith - and God must be glorified in this. I have prayed out loud in front and for four non-believers and each and every single prayer was answered, and they saw it happen. I ran the Christian Club at my school.
My friends, my family, my colleagues and some of my students need to see me at this breaking point, with nowhere to go, no one to Save me, because when there is no hope, when there is nothing but weakness, God is made strong. HE WILL BE GLORIFIED IN THIS, I know it.
Fear is not of God. I was not made to be afraid or worried. I must put my life and my career, and my hopes and dreams and needs and finances in His hands. They are His to give, His to protect, and His to take away.
I have said time and again this week that teaching is my whole life. I need to make God my whole life.
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What's been revealed:
I woke up this morning thanking God for this week, as awful as it was. For He knows the plans He's made for me, to prosper me and not to harm me, and I'm waiting on finding out what that Plan is.
After being awake for a little while, a telemarketer from one of my banks called to offer me an American Express card (I'd been pre-approved, y'know!) I told him that I may have lost my job this week and didn't need another credit card. He went almost into a tail-spin and told me that he'd worked at TD in HR and had been involved in laying off even senior executives. He said, "It's a small world, and many times I have bumped into those people on the streets, in restaurants, and 100% of the time they have told me that it was the best thing that ever happened to them." He told me that he wished me well, that I just needed to be positive, and that he just knew that no matter what happened, that if the big "if" happens, that it will be OK. It was not a religious or spiritual conversation at all, but I heard the message loud and clear. God spoke to me through someone else, just as I needed to hear it.
Thank you, God. Thank you for having plans for me and my life. Thank you, God, for loving me, for giving me hope in the middle of a very dark time.
Wherever I end up (and my specific prayer is that I will be pulled back to my current school, but again, God's will be done...), it will be even better than I expect, even if it doesn't feel that way. Perhaps God is in the motion of sending me my future husband! Perhaps he's taking me on a totally new route. I'm not sure, but I will not fear because I know that the spirit is working overtime on my heart -- to keep me calm, to protect me, and to prepare me for what's coming; the Spirit is pleading on my behalf already, and God knows my heart intimately. Who better to be in charge?
I will wait on the Lord.
Finally, James MacDonald of Harvest Bible Chapel sent this scripture out Friday. How timely. Thank you God.
"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life. Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you.”
—Isaiah 43:2-5
xo Heather
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