per·se·ver·ance
/ˌpərsəˈvirəns/
noun: perseverance
persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.
I’m a teacher. No, I don’t have a license, I haven’t lead a lesson, I haven’t created a curriculum, nope, none of these thing have been done… yet. Teaching saved me, from myself. Twenty-five year old me, hated the job she worked, with a degree she couldn’t use just looking for a job she could enjoy. I licensed myself to be a paraprofessional and fell in love with teaching. I fell in love, with the spark you see in the student’s eye when they learn something new, when they FINALLY get it! I fell in love with the feeling you get when a student chooses you to be their champion. I fell in love with mentoring, the young people. I’d found it! My niche. The significance of perseverance you ask? I’ve been a statistic, a young mom at 19, a college drop-out. Living paycheck to paycheck watching people around me reach destinations I’ve never dreamed of—constantly questioning what I was doing wrong. I’ve failed, tried again different ways and failed again. I’ve let myself down, I’ve had to pick myself up. I’ve cried, I’ve been confused, and in this season of life I’m experiencing what it is to persevere. It carry on striving for the teacher, the mom, the woman I know I am. We talk about failure being the vehicle to success, but we act as if it’s the end when we do fail. A conclusion I had to consider was, failure is the evident. It will happen, it will hurt, but it is on the individual to desire fulfillment more than they fear the pain of the inevitable, failure. My success has always been contingent on who I believed more, the nay sayers or myself. As life comes as at me, nothing is greater in my eyes than the hunger for greater in me.
To my readers I challenge you to find the sleeping monster in you, awaken it, and when you do feed it the doubts of your mind, the hurt in your heart and the tears of your fears as you press on to the best of what you want for yourself. Whatever that goal is, you know the one you keep putting off, yes that one, it’s possible…The question is how bad do you want it?
I can definitely relate to many things you write about. As I have had much perseverance in my life and the sacrifices that I have done just to be in school. There are people who will try and derail you from your goals, as they do not want you to succeed , and this is were you need to be the strongest and wisest . Let your wise mind speak to you and let go of things that are torturing for the self. Keep believing in yourself !! :)
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