I presented the following speech at Trinity Lutheran Church, Greenville, SC, on Wednesday, September 23, 2020. You can view the speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFgUfhgNELw
All I ever wanted to be was a teacher. When I was an only child growing up on a farm in rural Georgia, I spent my summers playing Tom Sawyer and teacher. For my ninth birthday, I asked for a chalkboard, and my room was decorated with little pockets and popsicle sticks for classroom chores. I taught my family members and imaginary students. I wrote lesson plans and tests, and I sent out report cards.
When I was twenty-three, I became a teacher. I taught for a year at a small private school in Charleston, and then Ryan and I moved back to Greenville, and I began the first of fourteen years teaching high school English at a Catholic school.
It was a challenge teaching at a Catholic school, but I loved my students, I loved that we could discuss faith, and I loved my curriculum--I was able to create it myself and so it was really more like, “A Study of Mrs. Koon’s favorite books and writers.”
The best part was mentoring the kids. I loved watching them journey into themselves, and it was a privilege to walk with them through it. Over those fourteen years, I went to cello concerts at the mall, Indian coming of age rites, and many Nutcrackers. I held them through broken hearts, anxiety attacks, and suicidal episodes. When I was interviewed for state teacher of the year, I told the panel that I didn’t care if the kids didn’t remember what year William Faulkner died, I cared that they remembered that I was someone who loved her job, who found happiness in what she did. And so they would set out to find that happiness for themselves.
But in January of 2019, everything changed.
Just before the previous Christmas, I’d been asked to give a talk to the Friday morning non-denominational praise and worship group. I was thrilled. I gave my talk on the phrase “Keeping Christ in Christmas.” My position was that a bumper sticker does nothing. We keep Christ in Christmas through showing his love to others. I ended with a prayer for the students. Here’s the quote that changed everything:
Bless their hearts, that they may be open to seeing ALL people, every single one, as a child of God, no matter the person’s race, age, gender, sexual identity, physical and mental ability, socioeconomic status, political party, nationality, religious faith. May we not pass the judgement on others that we so fear being passed on us. Bless them that they may have the courage to speak out against the words and actions that harm our precious brothers and sisters.
When I had my annual review with my department chair that January, I was told that I was not meeting the mission of the school. I was told that my talk had gone against Catholic teaching (it had not). I was told that my words might “cause our students who fancy themselves ‘activists’ to think I was promoting same sex marriage.” In addition, she had looked through my blog and took particular issue with my recommending an episode of Queer Eye to my readers as well as Will and Grace.
I walked out of that review completely numb. I asked the Theology chair to read my talk to see if anything went against Catholic teaching, and his response was, “No, that’s pretty much what Catholicism is all about, loving people and seeing dignity in them.”
And yet at least once a week, the academic dean would be in my classroom with a new complaint from my department chair: I had posted a picture of me with Elizabeth Warren on my private Instagram, I had been accused of “counseling students to engage in a homosexual lifestyle”, my forthcoming novel was about a baker, a baker who bakes a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding in the last fifteen pages.
For years I had supported the LGBTQIA+ students in our school. A student cried in my room one day because a classmate had said that all gay people should be killed so they couldn’t produce more gay people, and the teacher hadn’t said a word. Another nearly hyperventilated as she told me that her parents had sent her to conversion therapy. One student’s sister threw up as she told me that she was so scared that her brother would be disowned by their parents if they found out he was gay. I have had four students (that I know of) who have transitioned since leaving the school. What it must have been like for them. It was my privilege to hold these students and tell them that they are loved by me and by God, that they have worth and dignity. That they are enough.
But as the spring of 2019 moved along, I realized that I could no longer give them the support at school that they needed. I was muzzled, and my students knew it. They continuously asked me what was wrong, why had I lost my spark. It was because everything I said and did seemed to be taken as me promoting my “dangerous liberal agenda”. Since when is kindness a “dangerous liberal agenda”?
To be fair, the school wanted to keep me. They knew I was a strong teacher and that I loved the kids. We had conversations that showed that they wanted to do better for our LGBTQIA+ students; they just didn’t know how. But I knew that if I stayed, I would continuously be second guessing everything I said and did in fear that it would be misconstrued. I would not be able to advocate for my students--any of my students--as I had before.
And so I left the school and I left teaching. It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. But as I stood in the middle of one of the messiest times of my life, I sat quietly to listen, and I knew with absolute certainty that this is where God was leading me. I can be a stronger advocate for LGBTQIA+ youth outside of that school where I can use my voice for love freely and without ideological constraints.
It isn’t an easy path. I took a job at Furman only to have the position dissolved within months of my start date. I now work in IT, which surprises everyone--especially me.
I’ve struggled, though, because for most of my life, I just knew that teaching was my vocation. I was called to it. And I knew this from a place deep inside me. So I’m standing in a mess. I don’t know what my future holds professionally. My job at Furman is a temporary, project based position, so in another year I have to start something new once again.
But here’s the thing. I’m okay with this mess. There is no part of me that regrets leaving the school. It was the right thing to do. What I loved about teaching was loving the kids. If I’m not allowed to love and affirm them as they are, then that’s not where I’m meant to be.
In these messy times, our natural reaction may be (I know mine certainly is) to actively seek. I’m always looking ahead. I’m a planner, and it triggers my anxiety disorder big time when something disrupts the plan. I want to act, and I want to act immediately. But what I have learned over the past year and a half is that the better choice is to be still. If we fill our minds with lists, ideas, determinations, and desperation, we may miss the gentle, loving voice of God that knows us better than we know ourselves. That voice that is there to guide us. The guidance may not always be clear, and it sure as heck isn’t going to work with our timeline, but it’s there nonetheless.
I’m standing in the middle of a mess. I don’t know where I’ll be in another year. I don’t know the best way to use my voice to advocate for LGBTQIA+ youth now that I’m free to do so. I don’t know how to fill the void in my life that teaching filled. But I do know that worry changes nothing. That I can force something to happen, but that doesn’t mean it will satisfy any of my questions. I am grateful that I have a job. That I love my boss. That my co-workers are kind, funny, and smart. That the relationships I formed with students all those years are still going strong. I’m working on staying in the moment. Being grateful for this moment. I’ve come to realize that the messy moments are when we really grow. They force us to listen, to contemplate, to pray. God speaks to us through the mess. God is working through me every day, guiding my words, my heart, and my life.
I may not know where I am going, but I know where I’ve been. I look back and see the good I did, the love of God that I showed his children, all of his children. I know that that chapter of my life is over, and that’s okay. I don’t know the title of the next chapter, but that’s okay too. Because God’s got this. So I’ve got this. And I am going to use my gifts and my voice to advocate for God’s precious LGBTQIA+ children, and to ensure that they know they are loved by God, and by me. For years, I thought teaching was my vocation, but I’m starting to see, through the epic mess that is my life right now, that my real vocation is lover. Thanks be to God.
