Last night, Mr. Squire and I had a long talk about our work futures--well, mostly his work future. He has decided, after many weeks of our praying and straining to listen for cues, that he will not return to teach next year. This isn't what I had been hoping for, but it certainly didn't come as a surprise. And I support him fully in this decision: it is the product of much prayer and thought, and as much as I'd like to see Mr. Squire go back for just one more year to round it out to five years of teaching and more importantly, to see his kids graduate eighth grade, I more or less agree that one more year of teaching will adversely affect Mr. Squire's health and well-being.
Still, it makes me sad. And it makes me wonder a lot about our lives: what is God doing? What is He up to? He runs our lives, and that ought to (and sometimes does) bring us much comfort... and yet... right now, a lot of things just don't make sense.
Our bedroom wall bears a laminated set of posters that comprise a mock New York Times article that I wrote about us (in movie review format) after our first year of dating. In introducing the main characters, I described Mr. Squire as a cog in the finance industry who was leaving finance to become a teacher in the inner-city. I described myself as someone whose primary passions are criminal justice and compassion. That is indeed who we were four years ago. And at the time, we were both on a certain trajectory, preparing and aiming to launch into the social-justice skies that we felt God calling us to.
Not sure what has happened since then. The image that comes to mind (seriously, no desire to be political about this, it's just really the first image that comes to mind) is North Korea's 2012 missile, which was launched with great expectation, and instead landed in the sea. We are left to wonder what our Commander-in-Chief has in mind, and to what end all of these events have taken place. Mr. Squire struggles with this less: he understands it as God calling him to education in the inner city for a season...and finding that that season is coming to an end. He doesn't know what lies ahead, but he trusts that God will work it all out. And while he doesn't understand the change in seasons--or even the point of going through this last season--he doesn't question it so much...
Not the way I do, anyway. All of this always makes me wonder, makes me second-guess myself and my sense of who Jesus is and what God wants from me. Have I been listening all along? Or have we been deluded? Have we dreamed up our own plans? How could the path be so non-linear? Professionally I am not where I expected to be at this time in my career, nor do I see a predictable future. It all looks murky, and foreign. That scares me. Not that I'm not in a good place, because I am. This current working environment is the best I've been in since my college interning days, and I am so grateful. But substantive-work-wise, this is not what I expected to be doing.
So we continue to journey, not knowing what lies ahead, not seeing what awaits around the corner. It's an uncomfortable position, particularly given my type-A sensibilities. But I have been asking God to help me learn what it means to trust Jesus...and at the very least, I can see that He is answering that prayer.
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