my inadequacy

October 3
by Alanna

I haven't blogged here lately, partly because of a lack of time, and partly because I haven't had a good enough attitude to type grace and blessings and positive here. Many times I have sat down to write, but not found the words. My husband keeps telling me to just write the truth. So today I'm going to try.

The last month of teaching school has been hard. I teach 1st grade most of the day, and also 4th grade language in the morning 6 times a week. For the most part 4th grade has been going well, but the 1st graders have tired me out exceedingly. There are twenty of them, ten boys and ten girls. They are wild, disobedient, talkative, and forgetful. I have had such a hard time managing them, and even a hard time loving them these first couple weeks. I thought I knew better how to discipline and manage kids. All my life, I wanted to work with kids in a third world country. I wanted to come to Honduras.  I thought that love would come easy, that I would have patience for them, that I would see them always as gifts and blessings and rejoice to be their teacher. In some ways, I imagined I was capable.  Loving kids is the only thing I ever thought I could do well.

Our first month of being here has taught me that I am inadequate and incapable. I don't know how to love kids well, let alone how to manage and teach them. I don't possess patience beyond a half hour's worth. I don't have the wisdom to do this job well, or the discernment of how to balance all this work with being a wife. I don't have limitless joy and gratitude that triumphs despite adverse circumstances. I don't always trust that we are right where God wants us to be, and that His plans are best. I am indeed an empty jar of clay.

Perhaps this is one thing God is doing with me here in Honduras. Revealing to me that the wealth I thought I possessed is but nothing.  He is my Sufficiency, to fill up all that I lack.  Although it is hard, I'm glad today that I am nothing without Him. He is everything. I'm amazed that He chooses to use us, weak as we are. I hope that in this weakness, He is glorified.

But we have this treasure

in jars of clay,

to show that the surpassing power

belongs to God

and not to us.

2nd Corinthians 4:7