a decision made

I will not be renewing my contract.

The decision is borne out of a host of reasons, not chiefly because the decision was strangling me and I desperately needed to breathe. It also has to do with missing my family, and wanting to move in a different direction professionally, and just a tiny minuscule little bit has to do with the temperature here (just kidding. um, kind of.)

The great support from my boss makes it a little easier. When I met with her, Mrs. O reminded me that our God is not the Author of confusion, and that she wants me where God wants me. Praise the Lord for employers with supernatural understanding! I definitely cried in my meeting with her. She has been so instrumental to the positivity of this experience.

I do not have total peace about my decision, but I think we can chalk that up to the fact that I'm still in a community for whom this isn't necessarily good news. I'm pretty sure there isn't a soul on the continent of North America that wanted me to return to Nigeria, so at least I know there's rejoicing 6,000 miles away.

Very specific prayer requests for the days and weeks to come:
- To eventually feel peace about this decision.
- To find both the right time and way to tell my students.
- To discern where I go from here.

My heart is very heavy over this decision. While I can't really make a wrong decision, neither can I really make the right one - somebody is going to be disappointed, me first of all. My dad picked up on my distress over the phone yesterday and emailed me the following quote from Ellen Goodman. It really lifted my spirits.

There is a trick to the graceful exit.

It begins with the vision to recognize when
a job, a life stage, or a relationship
is over and let it go.

It means leaving what is over
without denying its validity or
its past importance in our lives.

It involves a sense of future,
a belief that every exit line is an entry,
that we are moving up, rather than out.

The trick to exiting well
may be the trick of living well.
It's hard to recognize that life
isn't a holding action, but a process.
It's hard to learn that we don't
leave the best parts of ourselves behind,
we own what we learned back there.

The experiences and the growth
are grafted into our lives.
And when we exit,
we can take ourselves along
quite gracefully.