True love, mission and vocation...

Lasallian Volunteer- Andrew Ketchum

2009-2011

When I was a freshman in high school, I was required to take a class called “Understanding Your Faith.”  While discussing relationships, our teacher looked to explore the differences between “liking” someone and “loving” someone by telling the story of taking care of her teenage son while he had the flu; explaining that such devotion to go through these hard times only showed up in a relationship based on true love.  As a fifteen year old I found this story more than a little disgusting, but strangely it immediately pops into my mind when thinking about the idea of being driven by a “mission.”  As a graduating college senior I felt thoroughly confused about what my vocation might be.  I had recently been accepted into the Lasallian Volunteers program and had been placed as a middle school social studies teacher at the San Miguel School in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Although I was very confident in my goal of working with youth in some capacity, I was not certain that I would be effective in the classroom setting.  Two years have passed since my graduation from Fordham University and my time here in Tulsa has been amazing, and has pushed me to work towards my masters degree in education next year.  However, when thinking about my mission over the past two years, I do not think about the high points in my service.  Instead, I think about the numerous difficulties I faced over the past two years.  I think of the feeling of homesickness I felt during my first few months in Tulsa, the projects that I assigned that didn’t work out the way I thought, and even the small annoyances I have faced when dealing with middle school students.  Truly there have been a lot of these “rough patches” through the last two years; however I think that these hardships have been the most important to my understanding of what it means to be driven by a mission.  It means to truly love what you are doing, and just as my teacher explained when I was in high school, that isn’t an easy task.  Truly loving your vocation means doing it during the hard times as well as the easy times and, even in those times of desolation, still feeling that what you do is important.