Confirmation

Location: Brighton Park - Chicago, IL

I'm quite a poor communicator.

This isn't a joke...my communication skills leave quite a bit to be desired. My thoughts make sense in my head but when it comes to expressing them to other people it's quite difficult. I attribute this to a couple different reasons:

1. Thoughts flow through my head at an incredibly rapid pace. I'm constantly writing things down on post-its, making lists on my computer and setting reminders in my phone. If I don't record something quick it enough I'll completely forget

2. My brain tends to skip steps when it comes to solving problems. This caused many problems in my math and science classes when it came to showing work. It always made sense to me how I got to the answer but some steps were so automatic to me it didn't seem necessary to write them down.

So when it comes to explain my thoughts to other people I tend to ramble, take multiple tangents and forget to connect my thoughts together. This affects the way I do my lesson planning and the way I write my update letters.

This struggle caused some anxiety in the month of July because I was in the position where I needed to ask for financial support. I prepared a letter and decided to send it out hard copy instead of via email. I agonized over whether or not I had made it clear how God had brought me to this place so quickly and why I was asking for financial support. At the time I was reading an amazing book about the support raising topic and it helped tremendously. However, there was still a small seed of doubt within me, wondering whether or not everything would come together.

Just the other day I was on the phone with my mother (who has been incredible throughout this whole process, I heard some horror stories at orientation about other families) and I was telling her about all of the new financial supporters had given. I was so amazed that in only a couple weeks God had provided all of my one-time financial support needs, a third of my monthly pledges and nearly a quarter of my daily prayer partners. Then my mom said something that really struck me:

"It's quite a confirmation"

This revealed two different things to me. One, God has called me to this work. He wouldn't have placed it on people's hearts to give and He wouldn't have provided the way He has if it wasn't His will. Two, no matter how poor of a communicator I am, I cannot mess up God's plans. It reminded me of the story of Moses, who even though he was old and had a speech impediment, God used him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. God works through broken, imperfect people to accomplish His Will. God's shown me this countless times and it still manages to astound me every time :)

P.S. I got to meet a young woman who lives about 45 mins outside of Chicago who's going to be teaching at the same school this fall and she's AMAZING!!!!! We spent a couple hours at Starbucks talking and getting to know each other. I'm so excited!