Refiners Fire.

You know what makes you vulnerable. Teaching broken kids. There is no hiding how difficult it is. It sands you down so the beautiful and the ugly...the real and the raw...shine through. How you can love so much and be so tired...how you can't do it, you're not good enough...but how you can't give up. It can (it often) requires you to plead with others to come alongside of you because you CANNOT do it on your own. Some days you're more diamond in the rough and some days you're just scratchy chalk on archaic slate. After your umpteenth come to Jesus talk with the umpteenth student, after you've used up all your coping skills and you start to look to the "Social - Emotional Skills Wall" that you designed for the kids...so you can draw ideas for yourself before you melt-down, after you've eaten your 21st lunch of gold-fish crackers, after you pour every ounce of you into ONE lesson plan...and still score twos (even though nobody can score that you're changing lives)...you have no choice but to be vulnerable. I'm learning so much about myself because of teaching...I'm just praying that like gold, this refining fire produces something beautiful.