Deciding on Being a Teacher

It is interesting being a teacher. Hard sometimes, but mostly rewarding. It can be embarrassing, too. I wax didactic because it's just the way I'm put together, and everybody groans. Or at the very least, my wife is gently, discreetly touching my elbow. That means I am talking too much again and hadn't noticed.

I never thought about being a teacher growing up. I wanted to be a pilot or an actor; movies or Broadway both seemed reasonable to me. When the Navy took me up in that plane the summer after high school (1973) and gave me the joystick, I signed up as soon as we landed; but that didn't happen. I entered college and became consumed by a fairly broken but demanding bunch of emotions that lead me into many, many foolish, dangerous or just plain stupid decisions. Among them, I quit school and that meant the Navy didn't want me anymore.

By 1979 I lived in a basement cubicle, 8 x 8 with a six foot ceiling, in a rooming house across the street from a state university. I had spent two years in college and four years wandering around the country--San Francisco, New York, Key West and places in between. I had owned first a car, then a motorcycle, followed by a ten-speed, but finished my travels either using my thumb or by Greyhound, depending on how much cash I had at any given time. I slipped into this small NC, mountain town escaping the big city life I had known and was surprised by grace! I had become a believer in Jesus, but only weeks separated me from the dunk washing my sins away and rising to new life in Him. Resisting the urges to walk on the path I had known a month prior was still my main daily occupation. I worked as a tree-planter in the western NC mountains. I'd lived twenty-four years, and the six lived on my own had left me, hmmmm, pretty much warped. I did believe Jesus was the answer; but I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. One afternoon when I had the day off (can't remember why), pondering the future while having my daily punching battle with the desires of the old man, I said out loud, "God, what do I do with the rest of my life?" The absolute, split-second, next word in my brain was teacher.

I stood, walked acrossed the street to that university and inquired about transferring my records from the small two-year school in north Georgia I'd attended. It would take me five years to finish with an education degree--marriage and children kept interrupting school work, wonderful!--but now 25 years into teaching vocationally and avocationally, I understand I had something written on my heart from God.

I think this is the reason I have become a blogger. There are endless aspects of the Father I want to understand and hearing others share facilitates learning; and the few aspects I feel I understand about God, I need to share...but it will probably sound like I am teaching. Oh well.