Fearless

One of the unintended consequences I have experienced because of losing Jackson and the quick arrival of Dash caught me completely off guard.

When my husband and I were dating and for the first year of our marriage, he made it clear that he wanted to live overseas as a civil servant, to show any children we had the world outside of our country, and to enjoy the benefits of living as an American outside of America, and so many more hard-to-put-to-words experiences like those he had growing up. After our first year of marriage, he interned with the State Department and had an absolute blast, getting the overseas-bug even worse.

I was nervous. Scared. Petrified.  I don’t speak anything other than English and can follow the tiniest bit of conversational Spanish so how would I go grocery shopping? Make friends? How would my children learn the gospel if we attended a ward that was in a foreign language? What if my children could learn new languages easily but I couldn’t? Would I be taken advantage of?
What if I had to drive on the left?!?!??

Fear of the unknown ruled my decisions in those early years and because I was too scared, my husband gave up his dream and went to law school, a very expensive endeavor that caused our marriage a lot of strife because our stress levels were so high and our communication skills sucked and that decision continues to feel more like a financial burden than it ever should have.
Fast forward a few years and one economic collapse later and he’s working in the job he wanted all along.

And he’s happy. And I am happy.

The man that I fell in love with 16 years ago came back when he switched careers but he’s different. And while I am not comfortable talking about his personal changes in a public forum, I am comfortable saying that my fears almost ruined us because of the decisions that followed when he gave up on his dream 12 years ago.

Losing Jackson changed all that.

Everything.

I am no longer afraid of living outside my comfort zone

. . . of living in a foreign country

 . . . of learning a new language

. . . of cooking with new foods

. . . of attending church where I don’t understand what is being said

. . . of raising my children away from their peers

. . .of living in an area filled with poverty and civil unrest

. . .of being alone.

I am fearless.

Not only am I no longer afraid, but I am eager to leave the country I have known all my life in exchange for experiences that can continue to help me learn and grow and be a better me.

I want my children to grow up seeing the world through eyes that have seen and experienced differences in culture and to walk with feet that have trod near hallowed ground, and to use their hands to serve others.

I want them to walk and talk with children of God who look different than they do and to recognize that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the same world-wide, even though the words we use to express our feelings are different.

It used to horrify me just a little that my husband didn’t know most of the primary songs because he so rarely attended primary in English but he knows the tunes and can attest that the Spirit can and will testify of the truth whether you understand the words or not. I want my children to feel that and I want to experience that myself.

I want my preconceived notions about freedom, equality, and economic stability challenged because I believe that living in a world outside my own will make me a better person.

I am ready for it. I crave it.

When you’ve lost your only son, and God reassures you repeatedly that everything will be okay, and you begin to see those changes all around, then it’s time to embrace the path you should have walked over a decade before but were unprepared for.

Losing my son prepared me for change and growth and I hope and pray that when I look back a decade from now at the current lull in my life, I’ll be able to smile and say, “Wow. Living overseas was everything I thought it would be and more.”

From a practical standpoint, it will be almost two years at the bare minimum before we move but we’ll have the assignment in a couple of months as long as everything continues to move in the direction it’s currently headed. During that time, we’ll probably give ourselves one last chance at growing our family. That’s one thing that we have discussed often in recent months but haven’t prayed about. We both really want another chance at having a son but also know that conception is very difficult for me and that my pregnancy would be high risk because of my clotting/auto immune disease and now my age.

I am getting old and even though I don’t really feel it physically, there’s no denying that my fertility is on the downslide. I was diagnosed with borderline Diminished Ovarian Reserve over 3 years ago. DOR is a fancy way of saying your eggs are old and there aren’t very many of them left.

But again, I’m not afraid.

Is that weird? Because it seems like after all I have been through, I should be a lot more apprehensive about giving pregnancy another shot. Instead, I feel a steady calm. I know my Father in Heaven has heard my prayers and that the next few years of my life have been very carefully placed before me. Whether that will include a child or not is yet to be seen but I’m excited for the adventure either way!

Six Weeks Later

Where do I even begin?

I miss feeling obligated to update my little journal/blog every week with pregnancy or developmental updates for Dash. That time in the afternoon to sit and evaluate my little life is meaningful to me but I have been so busy trying to take care of everyone else that I haven't taken much time to take care of myself.
That little problem won't be going away anytime soon, either. When I look at my schedule, I have work or family commitments M, T, and Th from 6:30am, when my first daycare client arrives, until 9pm when I finish tutoring. Tutoring just got underway last night but I can already tell that it will take a decent chunk out of my "me" time in the evenings.
I love tutoring though, and the money is very helpful for paying off outstanding debts.
How else can I earn $50/hr and maintain my dignity? There aren't many options, that's for sure.
Tutoring is good for my mind, too. I intend to go back to teaching soon. "Soon" is, of course, a relative term. I filled out my request for updated information regarding licensure in Virginia. I had completed almost everything when I left teaching but one thing definitely remained incomplete: The Math PRAXIS.
If you have any friends in education, specifically for math, you can ask them about it. I was reminded again by the local math chair for our county that the math praxis is by and large the hardest content area test required of public school teachers. The content goes so far above what a math teacher will ever teach as to be ludicrous.
To give you an idea of just how nuts this test is, take a look at the passing rates here. For teachers who are just finishing their degrees, and so have the most recent experience with the material, the passing rate is roughly 60% but for those who have 3 or more years of experience, the pass rate is 17%.
SEVENTEEN. As in, fewer than 1 in 5 who take the test will pass it.
Those scores are about 10 years old though, so let's take a look at some that are newer and from a specific university.
From UC Denver, The PRAXIS pass rates in 2013 were:

English: 82.6%
Social Studies: 94.5%
School Psychology: 95.1%
General Science: 89.2%
Mathematics: 57.1%

Yes, you read that correctly. A full 25.5% lower passing rate than the next hardest test. Why UC Denver? Because they published this data and it showed up in my google search. That's not a very scientific way to go about this, but it adds to my point that the test I have to take is going to be HARD. Well, hard for me, that is, because it's been such a long time since I grappled with higher content mathematics. My last college math course that wasn't an education course was taken 15 years ago and although I've kept up with content through the trigonometry courses via tutoring, I haven't touched calculus or anything beyond since my time at BYU.
I'm nervous!
I suppose this is going to turn into a bit of a rant. You see, finding good math teachers is pretty hard if my experience with tutoring gives me any credibility in that sphere. I have this personal belief based on nothing more than observation that the majority of the teachers and professors who understand the ins and outs of higher level mathematics make really crappy teachers! Why??
Because they can't understand students when they don't grasp the material.
When a student comes to you and says, "But I don't get it," a good teacher can back up and figure out why and where.
What step in the mathematical chain is broken?
How far into the process does the student understand?
Can the teacher relate to the students' frustration and use a little bit of empathy as s/he works towards helping the students learn?
And yes, I think empathy is an important trait in a teacher but I don't feel like going into the why of that right now.
The vast majority of the teachers I know who really know their math beyond calculus lack the ability to do those things.
And that opinion is based on my experiences as a student in high school, with professors in college, and with a small group of colleges that I worked with as well.
It's time for me to be back in education in a formal classroom setting but making that shift is going to take a little time and quite a bit of preparation.
I have to pass that PRAXIS . . .