Saturday, September 17, 2011

How do we Do Hard Things when we're weary?

Many of you know that I am working on an ESL project for my Girl Scout Gold Award. I'm organizing a club for students in my high school who are interested in tutoring and teaching English as a Second Language to students in our school whose first language is not English. It's been going pretty good as far as the total outcome goes but I'm exhausted. Around every corner is some discouragement; unreturned emails and phone calls that completely derail a whole aspect of the project, harsh words from people who mean well in critiquing but seem to not consider the impact, clashing opinions from people I care about, and worst, the utter ignorance of my peers. I'm ashamed to admit that I am tired of explaining my project to my friends. I'm tired of working on this is school for it and being asked what they're for and trying to explain that it's a club for teaching ESL and explaining what ESL is and why I want to do it. Then when I'm done and they finally understand the thing I was trying to do never got done and they just look at me funny and roll their eyes. The bubble of ignorance I live in is wearing me down. No one seems to understand why this is a problem, no one seems to want to help fix the language barriers and no one seems to care. When people ask I just give the short answer now; "it's for a friend, I'm editing it." "it's for an after-school club." "its for a kid i tutor" I've done this before. With WIFD and the Rebelution i get tired of explaining so I just say it's a Christian blog or a church thing. If you tell a 10th grader that The Rebelution is "a rebellion against low expectations of an un-Godly culture" all you're going to get is laughed at or a blank expression. "church thing" conveys all they're gonna get out of it so much better. But I feel guilty doing this because I know it's wrong and I know I should make more of an effort. But it's just so tiring.
I guess all we can do is pray for God to work through us and give us the strength to carry on His Name and His Plan, no matter the strange looks or laughter and taunting. In the end it will all be Right. And that's all we need to know to go on.

3 comments:

  1. I'm right there with you on the weary thing. Lately it's easy to become weary of even trying to keep friendships, or doing school. Seems like every time I think I'm doing okay, I turn the corner and something throws me to the ground.

    But God is faithful, sister. Don't give up hope! What you are doing is a wonderful, caring thing! As long as God is in it, who shall be against it? Our God is bigger!



    Galatians 6:9

    New International Version (NIV)

    9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

    James 1:2 (ESV)
    Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.


    Praying for you,
    BethAnn

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm right there with you, especially with school....I'm praying for you girl.

    As BethAnn said, remeber our GOD is greater, stronger, and is higher than every other!!!!!

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