Read, Write, Love, Repeat

For several years in my life as a high school English teacher, I shared a wall with the music classroom. The whole school year I listened through the wall to the gradual development of the annual musical: the early fits and starts of the large numbers, almost never any of the solos or duets, none of the dialogue. I witnessed a few moments of the dance numbers in progress as I ran to the copy room past the open music room door, but didn’t know how they fit into the larger narrative. Repeated snatches of songs got stuck in my head, following me home, to the point I often found myself humming them under my breath.

I trusted my wonderful colleagues who were directing the musical: from those learning-curve early rehearsals to the polished final product, I knew they were coaching, adjusting, and making sure all the pieces fit together.

And even though I knew they had it call covered, through all of the rehearsing I never heard, saw, or understood all the ins and outs of the full story

Until I went to see the show.  

I love this part. It’s so much fun, getting to see the results of all their hard work, to hug my students and encourage them, tell them how well they did, how much I enjoyed seeing them perform. I teared up like a proud mama, witnessing their joy and excitement in performing. Now all the bits and pieces made sense, now it was a full picture perfectly aligned, integrating all the fragments that seeped through my classroom wall during the school year with all the things unseen, all the unheard moments.

And yet this spills into my life still. I can only know bits and pieces of the roles I play in this life, like songs I hear through the wall, not sure how they all fit together, working through the hard and broken things I walk through and working to wrap my head around the purpose they serve.

I look forward to knowing the big-picture whole story someday. To receive the hug from my Lord, see the pride in His eyes. Like the songs/rhythms/lyrics stuck in my head after I left school, what I’m walking through today are mere echoes of understanding, just fragments of my whole story and how my loving God is writing it. This verse resonates with me today:

“For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” I Corinthians 13:12

I struggle seeing how the left-turns of the past year fit harmoniously into the life I’ve been called to, but I’m not the director. He is. I don’t see everything going on behind the scenes. He does. And I know I can trust my loving Father with the final product.