Ending Well

With so many things filling our minds and plates, sometimes in the midst of all the chaos all I have been able to mutter is “Lord, please help us end well.”  It has been our prayer these past few weeks as we have said “good-bye” to our  current lives as teachers.  Good-bye to our students, good-bye to our schools, good-bye to friends and colleagues, good-bye to a huge part of our lives.  It has been the prayer I have taught Ella as she struggles with leaving her school family as well.  “Let’s end here well.  Enjoy these days.  Make happy memories.”    

Ending school is just one closing we will deal with but it has been an emotional one.  Mike and I are both teachers and Ella is in first grade.  Callaghan Elementary has been my first and only school home for nine years.  Working at Callaghan has made me part of a family that I love dearly.  The teachers there are an amazing group of people.  Each one is dedicated to the children…not just their own students, but all the students.  They are a loving group that has your back when you need it.  They have treated Ella as family and started her off on a great path of learning.  I love each and every one of them. 

My little Junior Kindergarteners did not really understand our “good-byes” were for the long term.  They just hugged their teacher and stepped out the door a little bigger as new kindergarteners.  I will miss my “babies” so much!  It was not easy to “end well” as I walked out of my empty classroom for the last time.

But with endings come new beginnings.  As I close the door to my classroom, we open the door to work on the field, a calling that God has given us.  A calling to a life closer to Him.  This Sunday we travel to Candidate Orientation where we will get to meet other families with the same calling and affirm our decision to follow God down this road.  I am SO excited to take this step….so excited to begin our journey and watch the amazing things God has planned for us.  I pray this will be a time of closeness for our family.  A time for all of us to see the joy in the door we have walked through. 

So now I pray “Lord, let us begin well.”  Lead us and give us the courage to follow.

 Ella's last bus ride home!

A newspaper photographer captured my last group hug with my kids.  Happy memories!