So much more than we ask for

The end of a dream?
The scene is indelibly marked on my memory: I am sitting in the Headmistress’ office, where I have been summoned like a naughty child; with the Head of Year and the Maths Tutor all in attendance. But I am not a child at school; I am a Graduate Teacher Trainee – and, unbelievably, I’ve just been told that ‘if I pass the course I will be a mediocre teacher’ and they are ‘not asking me to leave but are unable to support me any more’!!

Is this an end to the dream of being able to serve God in some kind of meaningful children’s work? Or another lesson in how God is in everything and can bring meaning to everything that happens in our lives?

Isn’t it amazing how God works? How we might want or ask for things and he doesn’t give them, but then turns around and showers blessings unimagined on us.
How opportunities that arise – or circumstances into which you can seen driven! – can seem so random & unconnected; but are all still in God’s loving purpose for us, his children.

Well I’m still hanging in there for that dream. And in the mean time I’m learning and changing so much, in so many ways.

Failure from God
I know my struggle with the intensity of the year-long, school-based course is partly a result of the continuing battle against Chronic Fatigue (CFS). But there is no doubt that a poor mentor and an in-experienced tutor has led to my current situation. However, although I feel sure that God confirmed the course as a step from Him; and I’m sure that given time, experience & support I could have done it; the catalogue of disasters that have led to this moment prove beyond doubt that God has been in it all along. And, nightmare-ish as the situation might have seemed; and my long-held dream to work with children, apparently coming to naught – the sheer incongruity of what they are saying makes me laugh out loud. I am still laughing as I leave the office. Praise God for his ‘peace that passes understanding’!

From bad to worse
I thought I was well past the bad times, those years in my 20s when the CFS was so bad that I had been directed back to the family home & unable to work for months. Surely now, I’d thought, being able to do this course & maybe gain a few years teaching experience before moving into some children’s ministry – surely now things were finally getting better for me. Little did I know that I would end up temping again for months then only able to find a part time, low paid job; still living ‘at home’ yet struggling with finances more than ever before. No improvement in my health, no prospects and desperate for something to change.

Time in the ‘desert’
I tell myself that all the best people had to go through years of experiences and growth before God can use them in some work (!) After all Abraham had to wait years & years before having the children needed to prove God’s promise. Moses had 40 years shepherding in the wilderness before he was ready for God’s work for him. But he needed those years; God knew this angry young man that had thought nothing of murdering someone, was not ready for the work of leading God’s people to their promised land.

Corrie-Ten-Boom – a great inspiration to me – was 51 when she went into the labour camp & so in her mid 50s when she embarked on her work ‘tramping for the Lord’. But during that first part of her life, nothing was wasted; she learned skills in the watch making business with her father, helped look after children of missionaries in the home and established groups for teenagers that were to be the forerunner of guides in Holland! And we know how amazingly God used her in the prison camp.

So these people had great work to do – but it didn’t happen straight away, they had to wait. Sometimes they didn’t know what it was they were waiting for! But during that time, God was doing all sorts of work in their lives, ensuring they were ready.
During these waiting/preparing years God may have lots of work to do in us. But he also has for us many unexpected blessings. So often He has so much more for us that what we ask him for.

Unexpected learning curves
Well it’s 3 years since that potentially traumatic moment and I’m far from realising the dream. But in the last 6 months I have been blessed with living in a new town, with a new church fellowship and more friends my own age and able to manage a job that’s a bit more of a challenge. The previous job within the organisation – working for & with adults with a Learning Disability – has given me an experience and knowledge in areas about which I was previously very ignorant. I wonder if this is all part of the preparation for something else? And teaching experience confirmed that my heart for children is definitely more pastoral than educational.

Unexpected healing
Sometimes I cannot believe that I am the same timid person who was frightened to speak in front of the class – as I now address a hall full of children (& leaders) to teach them about Jesus. Or that the closed young woman withdrawn from the world & happiest alone, is now becoming more sociable, enjoying sharing my testimony to encourage others and reaching out to those who are in need.

As well as gradual inner healing of confidence & from fear & rejection, begun during a healing retreat on my return home 10 years ago; the Freedom in Christ ministry has been another means by which God has been showing me the lies that I was still believing about myself, deep rooted ones that are crucial to my health & well being. I now realise that it is sometimes only when hurts have been completely healed, that we can come alongside people/children who are in need and minister to them God’s love & healing. God works miracles every day; but he works though us, through our own experiences & understanding, and through practically applied wisdom gained from him.

Unexpected gifting
The 6 months teacher training certainly weren’t wasted: it helped my children’s work at church immeasurably and I learned some skills to help deal with difficult children. A real heart for children has been revealed. Other experiences have been more obviously useful: co-leading a week-long kids club at my church as well as the weekly club – these have taught me loads about handling children en masse as well as individually. Even now, doing children’s work in my new church, confidence is being increased as new challenges arise with a bigger group of kids. I can see that my skills & experience can be used here.

Unexpected blessings
And there were the 3 boisterous & insecure children of a single parent with MS that I was able to help. Their father showing insufficient interest and mother nearly housebound with MS; being able to support the family in all sorts of ways and have practical & emotional input in their lives was such an honour from God! (It’s been hard to lose them, though; when their father eventually took them to live with him)

Romans 8 ‘we know that all things work for good for those who love the Lord…’ With God – everything is for a purpose. Nothing is wasted.
I want people to be encouraged that God can be working in, blessing & gifting us in so many ways, while we may not be doing what we feel to be our dream or getting what we so badly want. Things are far from being as I’d like & it’s sometimes such a struggle to be patient & to keep waiting on the Lord; both for healing and working with children in some way. But all that I’ve been through, discovered and all the change in me – like the dream in my heart – it’s not for nothing. With our father God, nothing is ever wasted; and everything that happens to us has a meaning; everything is for a reason.

And he gives us so much more than we ask for.