Sunday, September 30, 2007

Blessings and curses are choices

Most of my life I've heard that my attitude affects everything I do, but suddenly within the last few weeks this has made sense. Deep, real meaning has come from my experiences.

I've struggled this year with respecting my administrators mostly because we've had major changes that have been theoretically in our best interests, but in application are sucking the joy out of teaching. Discouragement is wide-spread and I have a co-worker so negative that people are avoiding her as much as possible. I know I walk in the opposite direction whenever I see her.

Anyway, it's evaluation time and people are on edge anyway, but the process is so beleagured this year, it's almost comical. Almost. I had some choices to make. I could put on the sour face, complain endlessly about the paperwork, and make my administrator as miserable as possible. But then I remembered two things:
1) John Waller's song The Blessing reminded me that I had a choice to either be a blessing for life or a curse for death and
2) in John Eldridge's book Waking the Dead he talks about how Satan plants suggestions in our minds and if we agree with them, it allows him to gain a foothold.

So as the thought of saying things like, "This took me forever and now you want me to do more!" ran through my mind, I banished it, knowing that it would not bring blessing and it was not from God. Due to the extra work required for my evaluation, the post conference took 3 separate sessions to cover everything and each time it was a battle for my attitude: blessings or curses. Everytime I chose blessing and it made a world of difference. Has my situation changed? No. Has my administrator changed? No. But I have. I've grown and mature in a very tangible way.

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