I hate my job.

No, seriously. I hate my job.

I used to love it. When I got too sick to be a band director any more, I was offered the chance to take over the alternative school, and I took it. As a new Christian, it appealed to me as an opportunity to save souls - to save the children who had "fallen through the cracks" of society and the school system. Over the first several years here, I felt that on several occasions - more often personal salvation than Christian salvation, but it's a start. The kids had been exposed to a Christian teacher, who had a Bible at the desk and in his heart, who was willing to share the Gospel when asked (I'm severely restricted about how I can proselytize, which is fine because I don't want false religions preached to these children either, and there are tons more of those out there than the real Jesus Christ. And when I was joined by a teaching partner in my third year, as my health began to deteriorate, and she turned out to also be a full-blooded, born again Believer with a capital B, that allowed for our conversations to draw in students who might have had questions to ask.

Good times, good times...

So what's wrong now? Well, several things - my pain is increasing, for example - but there's one element in particular that makes this job no longer the pleasure it once was.

We're no longer an alternative education facility. We've become an adjunct detention facility. 

The students we're being sent are almost exclusively kids who've been suspended or expelled from the high school or middle school, but because they're on a special education plan, they're required to be taught per state orders. So we now have a population of mostly troublemakers who have either no interest or no ability where learning is concerned, and if the remaining few students who actually want to learn are going to learn, it'll mostly be on their own because our time as teachers will be spent as prison guards, not as educators.

And that's not what I want to do with my remaining years, nor is it a useful means of utilizing my strengths as a teacher. Nor am I the right person to work with these kids, for that matter - they need someone trained in special education, which I am not.

So, right now, I hate my job.

But that's a transient feeling. Feelings come and go. My purpose on this planet remains: to share the gospel with as many people as I can. And maybe this is a good place to do that, and maybe this is a good set of children to share Him with. 

When it comes to making decisions, we cannot base our rationality on feelings. It must be based on Scripture, on what the Lord tells us. 

And in the end, it may come down to the Holy Spirit leading you - leading me - to where we need to be. And us being willing to both listen and do what He says.