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<\/a>One fallout of these challenges was, after over a year of contemplation and prayer, my decision to resign from my teaching position. I wanted a different course, but sometimes, no matter how long or hard you seek, no matter how much you pray for a save, for something to change that will right your world again, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t happen. And so, on an afternoon I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll forever remember, I stood alone by the window of my classroom and watched students pass between buildings, as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d done so many times before. I prayed, even came close to throwing up for a minute (just keeping it real here), and then I shut my door, walked downstairs, and gave my resignation.<\/p>\nMy purpose in sharing this is two-fold. First, since I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve talked about my teaching experiences many times on this blog, I wanted to let you know that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m no longer teaching at present. Furthermore, I know many of you are facing private struggles, too, ones you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t discuss with many or any, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a mind-numbingly lonely place to be. I suspect, however, that many of us are less alone in this than we realize, and for me, the stories of others, even the bits of them that can be told, have provided more comfort than I would have imagined.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an interesting word, resignation, with its multiple meanings. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the act of resignation, what Merriam Webster calls \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a formal notification of resigning,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the state of being, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the quality or state of being resigned.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The first one can be completed in moments; the second usually takes longer.<\/p>\n
I loved \u00e2\u20ac\u201c no, I love<\/em> those kids, even (and sometimes especially) the ones that ticked me off. I want to hunt them down, even those in college now, and hug them while editing their latest essays. I want to friend them on social media and get weekly reports on what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing, to make sure they are okay. I want to tell them to get enough sleep at night, to eat more veggies, to go to church even when they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel like it, to consider that their parents might<\/em> be smarter than they seem (no guarantees), to go out with the weird<\/em>(ish) boy rather than the bad<\/em> boy, to stay on the beach until after sunset at least once in a while, and to read and write more.<\/p>\n In my Girl Meets West<\/em><\/a> series about our family trip to the Southwest, I wrote about being overwhelmed by a mountain<\/a>, and about how the mountain was symbolic of fears I was facing. Some of what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just shared was a large part of the mountain I faced. In fact, I really \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ended\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that series intending to write another post, an epilogue with a take-away. But I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do it. Not then, anyway. But maybe that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what this is now.<\/p>\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve pulled out the draft of the old epilogue I never finished. Here it is:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I envisioned this series, before our trip took place, I thought the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153girl\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the story was going to be Baby-Girl. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I saw, in my mind\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eye, as the plane took off, Baby-Girl beside me, staring off into the sunset (literally, as she would say). After all, she was the girl that provided the take-away in our last trip<\/a>, so it stood to reason.<\/p>\n Except the girl, it turns out, wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Baby-Girl.<\/p>\n The girl, it turns out, is me.<\/p>\n Sorry. I really wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t planning on writing about her here.<\/p>\n Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s truth: When I realized who this story was about, and when the plot began to unfold, I thought long and hard about not writing this series, about giving it up. This trip was not what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d planned. It was not what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d paid for when I bought tickets, reserved vehicles, and booked lodgings months earlier. So, I started looking for a way out. By Silverton, I was seeking an excuse not to write. Briefly, for instance, I hoped my camera would fail, even if through operator error. How could I tell this story if there were no pictures, I reasoned.<\/p>\n But the pictures took.<\/p>\n Then, there were the innocuous comments I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d made, in passing, promising two people after they inquired (entirely to be polite, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure!) that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d write about this trip.<\/p>\n The rub? Over the course of the last few years especially, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve come to believe in what some call laying down the fleece, in playing the dealt deck, even when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather do anything but.<\/p>\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d rather have done anything but. But I was stuck with, among other things, pictures and informal commitments. Dry fleece lay on wet ground, and the deck had been dealt. So here I am.<\/p>\n As always happens with time, some things have changed. We are overall incredibly, incredibly blessed, and all that is sad right now will someday pass. But some of my fears have since turned out to be founded, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve cried hot, broken tears more times than I want to count. I hoped and prayed, even at the eleventh hour\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s close, for a save that, in the end, never came.<\/p>\n In literature, the directional west has certain connotations. In American literature, the regional West has different connotations. The direction, always the world over, is where the sun sets, where the day ends, where things conclude. The region in the United States, however, has traditionally been replete with hope, wide with beginnings. So there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a bit of a paradox there, a fork in the interpretive road, it seems, when a character in the U.S., as we did, travels west and to the West.<\/p>\n