March either roars in like a lion and leaves like a lamb or comes in like a lamb and leaves like a lion. The war in Ukraine. Covid still exists. Winter lingers. This year, March is roaring in like a lion. With all the events that are occurring around us, this year March is roaring in like a lion. As a teacher, March is a marathon. The students are antsy. There are no breaks, and spring is in the air. Throughout my teaching career, I have discovered that once I see the lion coming in March, I must be strong and roar to the end. Then the lamb leads us into April.
We can fight the lion, or we can roar with it. I choose to roar with the lion. It takes strength to roar. It takes strength to fight. The winter months can weaken our muscles as we attempt to hide from the cold air, but we cannot allow the winter months to weaken us emotionally, spiritually, mentally, or even physically. As struggles come upon us, we must pounce on them as if they are our prey, which leads us to our first step to strength, to pray.
The first step in approaching the lion is prayer. Prayer strengthens our relationship with God. It creates a faith that brings us closer to God and gives us guidance to move forward from whatever storm we are facing. Storms come and go. Your faith must be stable. When our faith is stable, we can weather the storm.
In March of 2020, we all faced a lion. We were sent home for a lockdown. Some people, like me, lost their jobs and had to find new jobs all from the convenience of our bedrooms. Others thrived as they learned to navigate working from home and have stayed in that element. Some people chose to leave the work force and stay at home to care for their family and bake bread, or so I’ve heard. Some states were in the lockdown for a few weeks or a couple of months. Others of us were there for a year. It was never about how the leaders treated us. It was always about how we responded to the situation that was thrown at us.
Connecting with human beings during the lockdown was vital. While listening to a podcast, I realized how much I needed human interaction because social media was full of perfect people with all the answers. If you disagreed with their answers, they screamed at you because they knew you could not harm them physically. What they didn’t know was that their perfections and rightness were harmful. We must interact with human beings in person.
Along with prayer, we need each other. Isolation harms us socially. We are all broken. Your brokenness can either bring healing or break other people. If you choose to heal one part at a time, the brokenness will heal. If you choose to shout all your rightness, you will break other people. It doesn’t matter if your rightness is right. It matters if you are breaking or healing people. Breaking people causes a broken world. Those of us in the education world are paying for much of that brokenness. If we could understand that all people have lions, we can discover to be kind. We need each other.
We need each other in church, Bible studies, or even for a coffee meeting. Living in isolation creates an ego within us that brought made our rightness stronger. Physical meetings remind us that humans are more than a name on a screen. Being with other people reminds us that other people have lions roaring within them. We may not be able to calm the lion’s roar, but we can bring peace to the lions that are roaring within others.
Another way to tame the lion is to admit that we have something roaring, and we must take care of it. You cannot just ignore the chaos that is within you or around you. Ignoring the chaos creates more chaos. Look for ways to resolve the problems. Ask for help. So many people just ask the Internet for help. Ask human beings in person for help. I have to remind myself to ask humans for help. This last summer when we were moving, I was determined to be independent and strong. Once I broke down and asked some of the workers in the apartment complex to help me, the tasks were easier to complete. The roaring lion of moving became possible.
Finally, to work with the lions in our lives, we must move forward and strive for health. We must eat properly and exercise. I have found fun Disney workout videos that give some semblance of exercise. We must be emotionally strong and rest. We must be strong mentally and continue to learn new lessons and elements in life. With prayer, Bible study, and connecting with other Christians in a church environment, we can grow spiritually. Let’s take the lion by the throat and conquer the month that roars, whether it is in the beginning or the end.
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