Thank you

You know, I thought when my last day of employment at Bob Jones University arrived, that I would automatically rebound from my state of depression. All the stress would magically float away and I would return to my happy self. I look back to that time and recognize that I was ignorant of all that lay ahead. The last week of work, my friends and I celebrated in little ways every day. A fun afternoon and dinner was planned as the grand celebration.

At the last faculty meeting I was given a large crystal candy dish and asked if I wanted to say anything. I smiled and said, "Thank you." The others who were leaving were offered the same opportunity and they spoke in long, glowing, often tearful words of their years teaching at Bob Jones Academy. It wasn't that I didn't know I was supposed to say something - I'd actually labored over what to say for a month or so. I'd written down some ideas. Rehearsed them. And at the moment of crisis, nothing fit. Nothing, but "thank you." Thank you for what? an ugly candy dish? a slow shriveling of my spirit? a list of rules to live my life by?

I think "thank you" was the best thing I could have said that day. Thank you for the time you afforded me to walk through the ebbing of my life. Thank you for teaching me that I can suck it up and carry on through times of extreme discipline, both self-imposed and externally driven. Thank you for creating a world shallow enough and narrow enough that I have to search beyond it to find meaning. Thank you for giving me the students that no one else wanted and allowing me the joy of building bridges into their lives. Thank you for being so concerned with the externals that you didn't notice when my heart began to change. Thank you for limiting life to smallness, pettiness and meanness and renaming them as holiness, purity and love. Because you operate that way, I began to believe that life had to be something more. I read, listened, talked and read some more. I allowed myself to feel, to push the boundaries, to consider that Truth was bigger than the subtle lies you brainwashed me with. Oh, I've had to go through hell to get there. And I can't say I'm there yet. But I am journeying.