It's a quiet morning for me. Mr. Squire left at the crack of dawn to play in an all-day softball tournament so I'm all by myself until a friend comes at 5pm to pick me up for the softball BBQ tonight. I sit here at our "kitchen" table, my feet propped up on the neighboring chair, rice simmering away in the cooker. Just four feet in front of my toes, I see our sheer white curtains (which are five inches too short for the window, which is taller than me) gently inhaling and exhaling with the breeze generated by the massive gingko beyond our fire escape. This is a peaceful, God-given morning.
And so full of possibilities! This morning when I arose, I made a list of things I'd like to do today before 5pm:
1. hit the gym
2. find and buy big smile peaches somewhere (preferably at 99 cents/pound)
3. call a friend to discuss her alternative career in law
4. cook the chicken dish that my dad taught Mr. Squire (and which I really should learn myself)
5. reflect
6. continue my fish research (we're getting a pet fish! It's been 9 years since Sam died at 8 since Cruiser died, and it's time I got another betta fish)
7. write a letter to my brother
8. call my parents
9. scope out photography locations for our photo shoot that we're doing next month (a gift that we got for hosting the photographer's husband for 3 weeks)
I already accomplished numbers 1 and 2 (had to beat the crowd at the gym!) but now I am thinking that I should skip down to number 5 before moving on to anything else. As our pastor said during last week's sermon: do the important things first! The fish, for example, can wait.
These days, the main talk of the Squire household surrounds what Mr. Squire will do in the way of work for this coming year. After college, Mr. Squire worked in a banking job for two years, then traded the six-figure salary for a master's degree in education because he felt God calling him into education. This is when I met him, and I loved that about him. He spent the next four years teaching in various inner-city schools (some more troubled than others, but altogether very, very needy) and really learning how the "other half" lives, and walking--to some extent--with them in their journeys. Come the end of last year, when he could barely make it through the last six weeks, we knew Mr. Squire needed at least one year off from teaching. This devastated me, but I knew it was necessary.
I also knew, however, that as frustrated and exhausted as Mr. Squire was with the school and his kids and the daily grind, he would miss it. And...not to say I-told-you-so, but...I was right! Within days of his last day at school, he was back on the phone with parents, agreeing to walk their kids to summer school. He dropped by summer school to see his students, and he spent two-and-a-half hours tutoring one of his former students this past week. He also agreed to substitute teach three days in September. He misses the kids, but he knows his limits.
In the meantime, while other teachers are filling their summers with travel, fishing, sleeping in, and beach reading (these are all examples from his colleagues), Mr. Squire has been working a full-time, unpaid internship with a friend, doing finance work. It has been the oddest thing for me to see him rise at 7am for conference calls, and to travel to Denver and live up the lavish lifestyle at an oil-and-gas conference, and to hear him speak so intelligently about various companies as they release their earnings reports. I've also been very entertained at his attempts to get Jane Q. Public's view of various brands by g-chatting me throughout the day:
Mr. Squire: ever heard of bebe? are they any good?
Mr. Squire: how about white house black market? what do you think?
The most fun part is watching Mr. Squire and his friend have fun when they win on certain trades. They went out for burritos after winning on Chipotle. The next day, they got lattes at Starbucks. I get my pet fish (Mr. Squire jokingly says) because they won on Petsmart. Mr. Squire is hoping his friend will get us a Tesla if they win on that company, but I don't think it's going to happen. They will probably just get ice cream, which is what they do to celebrate the companies that don't have an obvious token reward (like LinkedIn) or companies that we just don't like buying from (Abercrombie is racist).
The friend has offered Mr. Squire a full-time job for this coming year, and there are certainly many upsides to it: flexible schedule, Mr. Squire gets to continue learning from the best and he enjoys the work, frees him up to serve at church more and have more time and energy to build relationships, and he would be free to continue working on a 20%ish basis at his old school--keeping his connections with his kids and their parents. Seems like the best of both worlds (finance and education), really...and should God give us children in the next year, he would be able to continue working part-time for his friend while raising our kids at home. All of these things are good.
Notwithstanding these obvious advantages, I find myself concerned about him taking this opportunity and walking this path. I know that there is redemption in almost every kind of work.. but it's just so much easier to see the eternal value in working in an inner-city school than making money off of the stock market. This is a personal bias on my part, and as my coworker pointed out to me recently: "I know you care a lot about the story that your life tells. But really, the story that you tell to other people isn't what matters: it's the story that you tell to your God that matters." She's right, and it is all about the heart. Man looks at outward appearances, but God looks at the heart (I Samuel 16:7).
I wonder about my heart, though. I am very skeptical of my heart and my motives. And I think being in urban education for the past four years has been a very good thing for Mr. Squire and me. It has given us incredible insight into a world far beyond our own--a world that we would not otherwise have any occasion to encounter, much less know intimately. I think that spiritually, that insight has been a good thing for us: it has reminded us, time and time again, of hurting and struggling and resilient and courageous people around us. That's spiritual progress, which I have valued so highly.
I think about how our conversations have changed over the last six weeks. We talk much more about how various companies are doing, what the street thinks of the companies and what the reading shows. We talk about whether we won, or lost, and by how much. It's interesting. But I'm having trouble seeing the eternal. And I wonder if, long-term--or even in the medium-term--this will hurt us spiritually. Will God shield our hearts? Will He enable us to walk in the world but not be of it? Will He keep our hearts soft and centered on things that really matter?
Mr. Squire maintains that this gig is more of a good thing spiritually. After all, it's this little internship that got him back into reading the Bible on a regular basis. And it is true: now that he is no longer a zombie, he is much much MUCH more emotionally and energy-wise available to the people around him, to be a better friend, brother, neighbor, husband, and leader.
So I don't know. I am brought back to the exhortation in Proverbs to trust in the Lord with our your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him (yes, Lord, help us!), and He will direct your path. I am leaning on these promises, Lord. Your Word does not return to You void, so help us, Lord Jesus.
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