Welcome to the “stone tired” part of the school year. If you have not already arrived, you will soon. What is “stone tired” you might ask? It looks slightly different on all of us, but it focuses around this time in the year where we have exhausted our new strategies, great ideas have become old, and we are truly weary. It happens to the best of us. It happens to the worst of us. It happens to all of us.

Weariness is not unique to the teaching field. Our culture includes many memes sharing our weariness and a weary emoji allowing us to quickly share our feelings with others. 😩 Work schedules drive us to accept weariness as normal. Our personal lives push us beyond weary to exhaustion often leaving no room for our faith to grow much less thrive.

Jumping back (or for the “stone tired” life -limping back) into the field of teaching, we find it difficult to know how to battle this weariness. Many times we continue to push forward, adding more to our schedules, staying up later each night and spreading our energies more thin each day. Sometimes this pushes us to the point that we stop where we are, crawl up into a teacher ball, and let the flow of expectations cover us as in the story of Pompeii. The people struggling to survive the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius came to the point that no matter how they battled or where they ran, they were unable to outrun the flow.

The sad part of Pompeii’s story is that once the people were overtaken by the flow, there was no way to recover. There was no “I just need to make it until May.” There was no “It is only temporary. I will be alright.”

While our weary teacher stories may not exactly match, we do want to be sure that we not reach the point that we are overtaken by the flow only to be later excavated out as the “what not to do as a teacher?” example.

Each year about this time, my principal shares this verse “Do not grow weary in well doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not”. It is a verse that I have often clung to tightly as I read papers into the late hours of the night. “Do not grow weary”. It is a verse the replays in my mind as I push to create amazing lesson ideas even through the drought of the teaching year. “Do not grow weary”. It is a verse that my peers and I repeat to each. “Do not grow weary.”

I would encourage you to read this verse within the context of its chapter (Galatians 6). Not only are we encourage to not grow weary. We are encouraged to carry each other’s burdens, to not be tempted by the expectations of the world, to be wary of pride working its way into our lives, and to not be deceived. I truly feel like our tendency to be weary comes from lack of success in these other areas.

If I walk through my day falling to temptations around me, it is different to not grow weary. If pride fills my heart and distracts my mind, it is difficult to not grow weary. If I refuse to help others or to allow others to carry my burdens, it is difficult to not grow weary. Paul later states in verse 14 of chapter 6 “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…” If I glory in anything other than Jesus Christ, it will be difficult to not grow weary.

Take away thoughts:

• What fills your day? Is your mind and heart distracted by things other than the glory of Jesus Christ?
• Is your pride keeping you from allowing God to fill your weariness with His grace?
• What provides your strength to “not grow weary”? If it is anything other that the Savior, I would encourage you to spend some time in His shadow.

” And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. ” Galatians 6:9 KJV