A repost from 2012. There was a hurricane:
Dear Lord,
Please protect all the people on the East Coast as they go through this big storm. Keep them in safety. Watch over Carol and Jennifer in New Jersey, and Brigitte in Long Island, and our brothers and sisters in the Maine group and everywhere else that the storm may hit.
Bless every member of this community, of this tribe that I had to wait over thirty years to be with, and who are making my last few years in teaching something far better than I ever thought could have been possible. Bless every one of us as we go through the daily sufferings and joys that comprise teaching.
Please, when school happens again, find a way to help the teachers in this community and everywhere else know and remember that our work is critical to the overall well-being of the communities we live in, and that our work counts for something, even if we suck at it.
But also help us not get too worked up about our jobs, and help us to remember that there are things of far greater importance in life than looking good as a teacher. And help us not carry fear around about what happens if our kids go into a grammar based classroom next year.
Help us keep in our minds and hearts that the fear is unfounded, and help us all learn to work in harmony as language teachers, across the board, if that be your will, since being fractured isn’t helping anybody right now in our dear country.
You know, because you know all, that I spent most of my career thinking that every day was crucial in some way to my kids’ learning and my overall well-being in the world. I thought it all depended on me. But you have shown me over the years that I don’t have to think like that, and that it is not all on my own shoulders, but is and always has been on your infinitely broader shoulders.
You have shown me that this work of teaching is your work, and not mine at all, and that my thinking that going to work every day and making a good impression on my students and my supervisors was a matter of vital importance to my life. Thank you for showing me that it wasn’t. Help me refocus, Lord, and then, after you do that, help me keep my focus where it belongs – on you.
I know now, after all these years, that if I just get out of the way in the classroom and relax, the class will go just fine. Help me remember in all those fear filled moments in my classroom that I have spent – because I didn’t trust you enough to help me – that my classes no longer need be filled with fear, because of you. (That adds up to a lot of fear filled minutes over 36 years – you yourself know exactly how many seconds that is.)
Help me remember that I don’t have to be the best teacher in the world, and help me keep in the forefront of my mind that I can just go to work and do my best and leave the rest to you and then come home and relax and have a normal life. It has taken a long time for me to realize who the best teacher in the world is, Lord, and it isn’t me. It’s you.