On moving schools and change in general…

Today was a big day! It marked the completion of transferring all my stuff from Butterfield, the school I have taught at for the past three years, to Estes, the school I am being tranferred to. After loading the last of my stuff, I turned in my keys to the front office, and then it hit me… I’m leaving this wonderful place where I have formed some incredible friendships, and done more growing than ever before in my life. God has really used my experiences at Butterfield to stretch me. I had one of the toughest years of my life when I began teaching there three years ago. I will elaborate more on that year in a later post. But God put people in my life there that helped me through. I worked for (in my opinion) the best principal and vice principal duo on the face of the earth. I was like a second son to them (so they have told me), and they genuinely cared about my succes as a teacher. For that matter, the rest of the staff cared too! I could go to absolutely anyone on campus, and they would gladly offer a helping hand or advice based on their own experiences. So the thought of leaving that scares me. A lot. There’s a group of teachers there that I would meet with once a week and pray with, and it was amazing! So leaving to embark on a new journey is both exciting, and terrifying.

This gets me thinking on change in general. We all look back on life, and I think many people have a “good ol’ days” that they look back on with fondness. I remember my grandparents talking a lot about the “good ol’ days,” and how they often longed to be back in those days, instead of today’s craziness. Retired athletes look back on the days when they first started playing, or the years they won the big game. People working on their careers look back on the carefree days of high school and college and secretly wish they could relive them from time to time. I don’t doubt that someday I will look back on my time at Butterfield and call these the “good ol’ days” and wish I could somehow go back.

But God has a reason for moving us on to new places and new adventures. I remember hearing a sermon once on what the disciples must have been feeling when they saw Jesus again after He was crucified. I’m sure they thought and wished that things would go back to the way they were before Jesus was crucified. “Things will go back to normal now. He has risen, and we will go back to following Him everywhere, watching Him do miracles, and learning from Him everyday.” Imagine their reaction when He told them that He was returning to His father in Heaven, and that it was their turn to carry on the message of salvation to the world. I’ll bet they felt a mixture of sadness, terror at the magnitude of their new responsibility, and confusion too. I’m sure the disciples were wishing they could go back to the good ol’ days of walking with Jesus all the time.

I think God doesn’t let us go back to the good ol’ days however, because then we would undo all the things we have learned, all the ways we have grown, and all the relationships we have gained since then. Think about it: say 20 years down the road, I look back and think about the good ol’ days when I was at St. Andrew’s doing youth ministry, and I somehow managed to go back. I would certainly love being back there, but all of a sudden, all the ways God has shaped me would have not happened yet, all the people I have met and grown to love at Living Hope and the Crossing would not be in my life yet, and all the experiences of leading worship would not have happened yet. It would be detrimental to my walk with God for Him to let me undo all those things, just so I could relive “the good ol’ days.” Just like with the disciples. They had grown too much and learned too much for Jesus to just pick things up where they left off, and leave it at that. Jesus needed them to step outside their comfort zones and go out to their own “Estes” experiences so they could continue to grow and mature, and spread His message of life.

So as much as I would love to stay at Butterfield forever, and stay in my comfortable bubble, I think I might understand a little better why God is moving me elsewhere. Years from now I will likely be in new places, looking back on this time and thinking about how much God has grown me. God is good! All I need to remember Jeremiah 29:11!