Hello DAB Community! I need your prayers.

After 11+ years as a middle school teacher, I reached a point at which I no longer can go into the classroom. Last school year found me so overwhelmed by crippling anxiety and fear that I knew already by October I could no longer do it. I survived the year but only barely. I gave notice at the end of May that I couldn’t return. I called it “career suicide” but knew it had to be.

What is most difficult is that I was actually really good at it. I helped students achieve great things and many of them won academic competitions over the last 8 years. I was selected for many opportunities and honors. My state even named me a “Top Ten Teacher” a couple of years ago. I’m saying none of this to brag- I’m stating it because, to all observers, things were going well. And it suddenly crashed. I burned out and lost it all.

I now do NOT know what to do. Admittedly, I enjoyed the success and the appreciation that many showed. Teaching became my identity. (But truthfully, inside, I still felt a failure and that the rewards were undeserved.) I am now in the “desert.” I am 54 and have no plan. I feel that I have lost my identity and my purpose. I don’t feel valuable any longer. And I don’t know what to do for the rest of my life. I don’t know what to “be.”

I want to write and create and I am frozen. I want to live a life fully giving myself over to God yet I fear giving it over. I fear he may want to do nothing with me at all. I fear- in general. And I am terribly paralyzed and depressed. (The good news is that I’ve picked up where I stopped with DAB in January and am getting to listen to two or three segments a day. Drenching myself in the word can’t hurt I know.)

Please pray for me. In whatever way the Holy Spirit leads you. I honestly don’t know what to ask for because I don’t want to “tell” God what to do. I want him to tell me. I hope all of this I’ve written makes some sense. Thank you in advance for your prayers.

David from Minnesota.