Many Changes.

Professionally, I'm adjusting to my new job.  It is much more physically demanding - teaching and caring for a class full of infants is very busy!  Each one is very different with their own personality...not a new concept, but so very much obvious as I've gotten to know them the past few weeks.  Mentally it is learning their cues, voices, and likes/dislikes.  Discovering their current skills and challenging them to develop further in ways that they find enjoyable...not always easy!  Physically it is comforting, rocking, bouncing, varieties of facial expressions and eye-contact, bending over, holding my arms and legs out for periods of time as I care for multiple babies at a time.  My body is remembering muscles it forgot it had! 

Emotionally, I am up and down.  Sometimes I am very positive and can easily see the ways that God has worked in my life through the trials I've lived this year.  Other times the negative emotions and memories weigh on my mind.  My life has gone through major changes on all fronts and living it is sometimes uncomfortable because so much of it is new.

Spiritually,  God is bringing me back into a place where I can learn and grow, rather than be overwhelmed and trying to make it work on my own.  I was so far out of my gifting and so far from where I needed to be for my own whole-ness.  I don't miss my old job at all.  It still seems strange to say that, after all the loyalty and passion I had for it...it is not even a concern at all.  It's completely in God's hands and out of mine.  I do miss the relationships.  Thirteen years in the same place is a great way to develop relationship, and I miss the encouragement of my fellow Christian women.

Personally, I still wear hats of responsibility at home that keep me busy.  The time God gave me between jobs enabled me to be home with my children for a good portion of the summer and beginning of the school year.  Instead of working to achieve the goal of being WITH my children, there was not much else in the way.  And now, with the job I have, I get to pick them up from school every day and work rarely follows me home.  Work is work and home is home.  That piece is very refreshing.  I feel more able to serve from compassion rather than obligation in both realms.