A Middle School Heart

I have a middle school heart.

It's the feeling that every whisper and every snicker is about me.

It's the insecurity of feeling surrounded by awkward moments and feeling unable to take control.

It's the heart that wavers under the weight of what people think.

My middle school heart wants to be liked. Wants to be acknowledged. Wants to be known. Wants to be heard.

My heart is going through that awkward brace-face phase where it's being pushed and tugged and straightened as I try to acknowledge the Lord in my ways, and as He makes my paths straight.

My heart is going through that awkward zit-on-your-nose embarrassment where it feels like all my insecurities are bubbling to the surface, unable to be masked or hidden, visible for all.

My heart is going through an awkward growth spurt as it learns to love deeper, love less conditionally, and love in ways that don't come naturally to me.

When I tell people that I teach middle school, I love watching their faces. There is always a kind of cringe in their response. Everyone has some kind of horror story from middle school. The cringe says it all.

Five years ago I sat in a class learning about teaching middle schoolers. I had just added a middle school endorsement to my major, and I was feeling good about my decision. After all, adding a middle school endorsement would make me more marketable in a year and a half when I was looking for a job.

As my textbooks and notebooks were sliding off that tiny desk in Mount Memorial Hall, my heart felt a tug. I want to teach middle school. It wasn't just about making myself look good anymore. It was the longing in my heart. I want to be a part of this in-between!

Despite the awkwardness, I think middle schoolers are beautiful.

They're the unfinished bowl on the potter's wheel, lopsided, rough, ungainly, yet so very moldable.

They're the primer on the walls of a freshly painted room. They're a shade of what is to come. They are the beginning of something new and good and beautiful.

They're the caterpillars tucked away inside the chrysalis, wrapped in webs of confusion and self-doubt. And yet, in a few short years they will emerge as confident butterflies. There is beauty in that confusion, that self-doubt, that slow transformation.

I want to draw out that potential: from the smoothing of the wet clay, to the hues of color to come, in the depths of the chrysalis.

I want to challenge them to be shaped, to shine bright, to step out.

And in doing so, I realize my own heart is being transformed: molded and formed in the hands of the Potter to leave the warmth of the chrysalis in order to shine brightly for Him.