Megan Chappie is a graduate of Wright State University. She became a Seton Teaching Fellow in 2022 in the South Bronx. After her first year as a Fellow, Megan returned to Ohio and served for a second year as a Fellow in Cincinnati. After two years as a Fellow, Megan teaches 4th Grade at Romero Academy at Annunciation in Cincinnati.
The heaviest weight I carried my Fellow year was the weight of “goodbye”. The first is a “goodbye” to home and family in July, and yet the second was a “goodbye” to my adopted home and family the following June.
As a lifelong Ohioan from Cincinnati, it was such a weight to leave home in 2022 to join Cohort 9 of Seton Teaching Fellows. From the moment I arrived at my placement as a Seton Teaching Fellow in the Bronx, I struggled with homesickness. However, I couldn’t serve as a Fellow in the Bronx and stay in Ohio, and this hurt badly. I’d never originally planned to leave my family, home, or friends behind–and now here I was saying “goodbye” to all of them at once. While I wanted more than anything to teach catechism and serve my disciples in the Bronx, I also longed to stay in my home state!
That excruciating summer of 2022, I left home for the first time. I needed all the love of my community members in the Bronx – a second set of sisters – to keep me from flying back home to stay.
If I heard then, in the words of St. Paul, that my troubles were “light and momentary,” I would’ve broken down crying. Nothing in my life was or ever had been as heavy and interminable as that initial separation from home. And it never stopped hurting entirely.
“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”
2 Corinthians 4:17
Yet, ten months later, as I drowned in farewell hugs from ninety-odd first graders and my dozen precious Kindergarten disciples, I found that leaving my family the year before wasn’t the only hard “goodbye.” Painful departures bookend the Fellow Year, and this farewell to my adopted home in the Bronx was no less difficult. When I moved back to Cincinnati, I couldn’t guarantee I’d see those children’s faces again on this side of Heaven.
In my last days as a Kindergarten Fellow in the South Bronx, one of my disciples told me a story. It went something like this: “Once upon a time, there was a princess named Ms. Chappie. And she lived in a castle with her friends.” She then listed the names of all the disciples in our El Camino class.
I almost cried, not just because every female Seton Teaching Fellow wants her scholars to think she’s as graceful as a “princess.” That child gave me a glimpse of Heaven. Right now, we inhabit a valley of tears, and it’s nothing but “goodbyes” all the time.
But someday, in Heaven, it will all be “hellos”. God’s Love will have the last word. And we won’t have to worry about whether to spend time with our loved ones in New York or our loved ones in Cincinnati. All will be gathered together–not in a fairy tale castle, but in the eternal paradise of God.
Love is always worth it. Even if presently goodbyes follow our hellos, the love we show is more permanent than the separation we may experience. Every moment we give ourselves in charity to another person, we experience a glimpse of Heaven. If we are faithful, we will find all those moments gathered in the moment of eternity.
