Gratitude

My patriarchal blessing advised me to finish my college education and states that if I would do so, I would be grateful for it for the rest of my life.
I never really understood that until this past year. I REALLY hate being a teacher most of the time. It is grueling, truly thankless work that consumes large ammounts of my personal time and that leaves me drained beyond belief at the end of every day. I also REALLY love teaching most of the time. I know that every day that I am at work I am noticed and appreciated and that I'm making a true difference in the lives of our future leaders. I also love how middle schoolers are still teetering on the verge of innocence, and how the true goodness of the human spirit is manifest in them every day. I also hate that they are noisy, OBNOXIOUS, and overflowing with puberty.
However, all things considered, it's a pretty good job. I get all weekends and holidays off without asking, I never have to pull a double shift, and even though summers are not "Free" they're a whole lot more flexible than most adults have. On top of that, I get paid about as much as my bank manager husband does. Ok. He technically takes home like $4,000 more a year than I do, but that's not bad considering I'm a woman and 5 years younger than he, I guess.
The other thing I'm really grateful for is that of all the companies that are downsizing and laying off employees, the LAST thing to go in the company that I work for will be the teachers. They are closing schools and combining jobs and laying off support personnel, but they still need adults in the classrooms so the teachers are all guaranteed to keep their jobs. Not only that, if they were to start laying off teachers, my job would be the LAST one to go. I am the only bilingual English teacher at a school with a 45% hispanic enrollment. (Spanish is another thing I'm glad I was divinely inspired to study).
In these scary times when the economy is so tight we've been blessed with prosperity. In addition to the beautiful, comfortable home that I am sitting in right now, we also still own our starter home which we rent out to some friends of Luis. If there were a true crisis and we had to lose our home, we'd still have a safe, comfortable, clean place to live. I may complaing about having to wake up at 6:30 every morning to be at school by 7:30, but there's a lot of people out there now days that would be so lucky to have that opportunity.
Luis also is greatly blessed to be working for one of the largest, most stable financial institutions in the world. Wells Fargo may have crappy customer service and they may not offer their employees any perks, but they are actually ranked the 3rd or 4th (I forget) safest bank in the WORLD. Rather than have his job cut like so many other businesses are doing, he actually was just given a raise.
We may not ever be millionaires and we may not get to retire when we're 40, but we are blessed to be as comfortable, especially since we're just starting out in life. In fact while so many are struggling to stay afloat we can actually afford luxuries like delicious, high-quality food and long vacations, which believe me, I don't take for granted.
Anyway, thank heavens for an inspired patriarch who mentioned college in my blessing. When things were really difficult my 2nd year of BYU and I wanted every day to quit I kept going simply because of that counsel. I am SO grateful to be where I am in life.