In the Top Five of My Worst Nightmares

I don't even know how to begin this post.  I guess I should start by being grateful that I am still alive and sane -- for the moment.  I just had one of those experiences that will go down in Melissa Blau lore as one of the worst of my existence.  Well, maybe it won't end up being quite that bad.  I'm still in the moment, so things seem a bit more raw than they will feel in the morning, I'm sure.

Here's what happened:

Yesterday Laurie Howell called Herman to see if he could pinch hit and teach institute this evening.  For those who don't know, institute classes are religious classes that are taught for college aged students.  It's like seminary, but it is taught more like a college class that students attend about once a week.  Herman agreed to teach, and all was well.  This afternoon he asked if I would come to the class with him and give some added comments and enthusiasm if it was needed.  It would kind of be like a date, so I agreed.  I was sitting in my room, waiting for Herman to come up from his home office to get going this evening, when Herman called me on his cell phone.  He told me that he was in the middle of a very important business meeting and would not be able to get to class right away.  He asked me to drive up to the church and begin the class for him.  I asked him what the subject was, and he told me to just find a great lesson to teach from Isaiah.

Isaiah?

Isaiah??!!!!!


Are you kidding me?  I was supposed to just grab my scriptures and come up with a college level lesson about Isaiah?  There are people who study the scriptures constantly and still can't come up with any understanding of Isaiah.  All that I could think of as I frantically tried to figure out how I was going to handle things was of some of the men who I remember from when I first joined the Church.  They would sometimes try to assert their spiritual awesomeness by saying that the Isaiah chapters that are quoted in the Book of Mormon are the easiest chapters in the whole book to understand.  I remember thinking that I never, ever wanted to marry anyone like that.  They were so pretentious.  That's all I could think about as I was driving toward the church building.  What did I know about Isaiah?  Well, I knew that he prophesies of Jesus Christ very clearly, and sometimes not so clearly.  I know that the language of Isaiah can be very complicated in some ways.  I know that I know NOTHING about Isaiah.

I brought Laney along with me for support, and that didn't quite work out like I hoped because she kept referring to mistakes that I made during the week while I was teaching seminary.  She wasn't trying to be critical at all.  They just weren't the words that I wanted to hear as I was on my way to face a terrifying gospel teaching situation.

The institute program in this area is kind of struggling a bit with attendance and enthusiasm, so I didn't quite know who would show up.  The first two young women who showed up are two very sweet young adults who were so supportive and friendly to me as I got ready to push through this lesson.  While we waited to see who was going to show up I looked through my seminary manual to see if I got any bright ideas about what to teach.  I found out that the Isaiah lessons in the seminary manual are not the most happening lessons in the book.  Nothing looked straight forward or simple.  It all seemed very complicated.  I found one, though, that would be easy enough to delve into while we waited for Herman to show up.  It was simply a list of several references in the book that pointed to some part of the Savior's life and ministry.  We were supposed to look at these references and figure out what part of the life was being foretold.  Boring?  Pretty much.  But I wasn't going to pull anything out of my hat about Isaiah that would be terribly deep or entertaining with only fifteen minutes to prepare.  All I needed to do was get things rolling until Herman showed up.

By the time class began one more girl joined the class, and this girl was definitely a "glass half empty" sort of girl.  A bit of a Debbie Downer.  She complained about her day and frowned through the entire lesson.  Not what I needed when I was already feeling completely awkward about things.  The three of us plodded through things as best we could.  I can easily say that it was the very worst teaching lesson I have ever done in my entire life.  I am usually pretty good at throwing lessons together on the spot for most things.  Obviously, I do a lot better when I take the time to prepare things.  But I just did not have the knowledge or skills to pull together an Isaiah lesson at the drop of a hat.  I had to excuse myself for a second in the middle of the lesson so that I could hide in the bathroom and call Herman to see where he was and tell him that he owed me BIG TIME.

After a half hour of excruciating lesson time Herman finally arrived.  He sat at the table and comfortably took things over.  He decided to talk about times when Heavenly Father has influenced our lives.  He didn't continue our study of Isaiah but instead focused on this topic as he spoke with the three girls and one young man who showed up later.  The reason that he was late to class was that he had had a miraculous experience in the business meeting that he was attending, and he needed to make sure that he didn't ruin the moment by leaving the meeting too early.  I'll tell more about what happened in another post.  But it was a great discussion that really got the young adults there to participate in a good dialogue about the experiences of their lives.  It didn't end up being a true institute type class, but it was a valuable lesson, nonetheless.

I was sitting in the class, thinking that things had turned out okay -- definitely not wonderfully, but we all survived it with our testimonies still intact, I think.  But for some reason in the middle of Herman's discussion he was talking about how he felt the Spirit during the dialogue, and Debbie Downer started talking about how people should understand that the lessons in the manuals are only meant to be guides.  She pointed to the list of scriptures that I had listed up on the board and said that that was not how a lesson was supposed to be taught.  I just sat there without saying anything.  Herman just moved the discussion on to something else because her comment really wasn't what we were talking about, but still I was upset.  I held it together for the remainder of the time.  We ended the class and Herman started making noise about going out to eat with all the students there, but I think Heavenly Father was looking out for me because Herman very quickly sent them on their way to eat together, and he said that he would just go somewhere separately with me.

Herman was super excited to talk to me about the neat things that he discussed during his business meeting, but I was still very upset about having to teach this class and doing such a poor job at it.  I'm a good teacher -- or I can be, and I hate it when I fail so miserably, and I really, REALLY, hate it when someone who has no business criticizing me feels like they have the right to do that publicly.  So as we were driving away toward a place to eat Herman was talking away about his business meeting, and the tears were flowing down my cheeks.  I was trying to keep it together, but I just couldn't do it.  The thing that was so frustrating to me was that I don't need some 20 year old girl talking to me about how to be a better teacher.  I have woken up every day for the past three weeks teaching these sorts of lessons.  I am not perfect, but I am not a "read the manual" sort of teacher.  I know how to teach.  I felt like I had been judged unfairly, and my pride was wounded, I guess.  It just upset me so much because it wasn't my choice to show up tonight unprepared.  It just was what it was.

Well, I got the tears out, and I'm all better.  I don't really need any sympathy or reassurance.  I just needed to get the tears out and move on.  I feel all better, except for a giant headache that has come on because of my excess emotions.  So now I feel as if I have gone through a sort of refiner's fire tonight.  I have faced a nightmare and come out on the other end without any lasting harm.  The one thing that was really good about trying to teach tonight was that it gave me a better idea of some of the challenges that I will face as I try to teach Isaiah to the seminary students next month.  Maybe that was the reason for this.  I know that I'll need to have a better teaching idea before I begin these lessons for the high school kids.  They won't know the craziness I endured in order to give them a better lesson.  I probably won't tell them either.  I will be so super grateful on Monday, though, to see their supportive and happy faces as I greet them at 6 am.

I did think after the lesson about my AMAZING and absolutely wonderful in every way institute teacher when I was in college, Michiel Anderson.  Oh, how I love Brother A!  He had an amazing ability to teach gospel principles in such a simple yet touching way.  I always felt as if I left his classes better than when I entered them.  I would head to my institute classes in the middle of my college day and feel like I was just given a giant spiritual hug, and that gave me the strength to get through anything that came my way that day.  I wish I could have given a Bro. A kind of lesson tonight.  Someday I hope to get to that level of teaching.  I'm just glad that I had such an amazing institute teacher while I was in college, and I'm glad that in the midst of a potentially horrible evening I was able to remember him and his teaching, making the evening not so bad at all.  I just hope that I never, ever, ever, ever have to do a spur-of-the-moment lesson on Isaiah again in my entire life.  Once is enough.

But the good news -- after my difficult teaching assignment, Herman bought be chocolate!  It was almost worth the anxiety for a good batch of chocolate heaven, I think.