It’s been over ten months since I’ve been able to sit at the keyboard and write without deadlines, holidays, course prep, and everything else. It’s no wonder that for the girl who needs to write as much as she needs to breathe that I’ve felt like I’ve been suffocating. Minus a short two week break where I felt completely myself, I’ve been running a marathon and I’m not a runner. Cardio is SO NOT my thing.

So much has happened in these past ten months that it’s going
to take more than one blog post to fit in all the feels, all the lessons, and
all the actions, but I need to unpack this and someone out there needs to read
it. If life has taught me anything its that my story is not my own and neither
is yours. Our stories heal each other, motivate each other, and teach one
another. Thank God for the gift of a story. Thank God for the gift of writing.

I’ve just wrapped up my first full academic year as a
full time professor and like everything I do in life it was full speed ahead,
no time to think—it was go time.

During these past ten months I’ve been to the ER, taught eleven classes (six total during one semester at one time at two different schools), attended two funerals, interviewed to be rehired, fostered my best friend’s cat, moved two different people, made a 911 call when death came to my front door (subsequently fought through the traumatic trigger said death caused), fell in love, was left on the side of the road again by my truck, was diagnosed with vertigo, couldn’t drive for almost a week, traded in the truck for a new vehicle, found myself missing the living as much as the dead,  taught my most memorable class to date, experienced how much more students can change my life than I could ever change theirs, prayed harder than I ever have, kept a Lenten promise to walk with Jesus everyday for thirty minutes (found healing and physical health in that), worked more hours than I ever have in my life (and I used to work tax season crazy hours), lived knowing how deeply I was relying on God’s grace in the very moment it was happening, found reprieve and comedic relief with three amazing young men at the stool of a coffee bar, and those are just the things I can remember at this point.  (Side note: that was an intensely long sentence that is probably not grammatically correct but perfectly sums up my life recently.)

The first half of my whirlwind journey into full-time
academia was riddled with car troubles and so much work I can’t even begin to
explain it to you. I truly went from zero to a hundred in three seconds without
a reprieve until the end of December. Six classes at once—seriously intense. I
used to take six classes at once as a student and that was rough but as an
instructor that’s a whole other level.

This was the semester with my most memorable class to
date for many reasons, but they were one special group I looked forward to
seeing each week. I remember being in my car driving from college campus to
college campus being exhausted functioning only on caffeine and Jesus wondering
how in the world I would get it together to be able to form a coherent sentence
much less teach accounting. And somehow I did it and miraculously they appeared
to learn something. When I questioned myself as to why I was torturing myself
like this in my mind and often out of my mouth would come the words, “because
this is what God is asking you to do. It is the right thing. You’re honoring your
commitments.”

Do you know why people tend to have such deep respect and
admiration for people who follow through and honor their commitments? It’s
because it is hard as crap to do. If I told you it was a breeze that would be
the biggest lie ever. You would probably see flames erupt around me and hell
open up below because August to December was a serious struggle! I even landed
myself in the ER with a terrible migraine (FYI that was my first trip ever to
the ER and I only went because I thought I might be dying—dramatic much?
Sometimes but it had to be at that level or me to go.) Come the Monday after I
was walking into class with the lights half off, coffee in hand teaching
because it was the week before finals—no sick days for this gal. My students
needed me to show up for them and they didn’t seem to have a problem with the
dark classroom. Probably because it made it easier for them to sleep through my
lectures.