Forgiveness

I have been reading a lot on Forgiveness lately. It says that the only way you can move forward is to forgive those who you have held grudges against. Forgiveness is easy when the act they committed isn't big. When someone forgets something they were supposed to do for you it is easy to be mad in the moment but forgive soon after. Now when the act is a lot bigger and life changing I think forgiveness is a lot harder.

Last year at this time I had just started a new job. I started that job because my old boss( lets call her J) had told me she wasn't going to renew my contract for teaching. Now you talk to most people in the teaching community and I was a great teacher and this non-renewal was not due to my teaching abilities but a grudge the boss had against the district. For two years J had made my life a living hell. She would turn parents against me, she would try to turn other teachers against me and she made sure that my class was packed with the kids that had the most behavioral and learning issues.

For two years I would show up each day and do my job to the best of my ability. I would sit in countless meetings. The day she told me that she was not going to renew my contract I thought my world was going to end. All I had ever wanted to do was be a teacher and when your contract is not renewed it makes it a thousand times harder to get a teaching job.

So I left the district with 9 weeks left to start a job at Head Start. It was an okay job but I was bored. I didn't have a classroom of kids and I found I really didn't care for the gossip at the center I was working at. Also the job they had promised me for August all of the sudden in June was not promised anymore.

Now in June I was searching for a job like no other but I was 13 + weeks pregnant and people weren't interested in hiring a pregnant person. That is how I ended up starting my own business and running my own daycare.

I sit here a year later happier than I have been in 3 years and enjoying my job more than ever before.

If J had renewed my contract I would be teaching this year. Talking to my friends that are still in that school and teaching I would have had another year that would have been hard. If J had renewed my contract I wouldn't see Colin doing all the things for the first time or Alyssa forming friendships.

I know that my life is so much better all because my contract wasn't renewed, something I thought was going to ruin my life has made better.

For all this I know I should forgive J. But still every time I think about her I get a pit in my stomach and get frustrated with all that she put me through.

So my goal is to work on forgiving her and looking at the wonderful blessing she has given me instead of looking at the negative side.

So if you have it in you say a prayer for me that God can help guide me in my journey to forgive this person.