A friend of mine made me laugh harder than I had in a while by telling me that I invent new reasons to beat myself up. Maybe she's right, but I have to be honest and say that I feel like a failure. I do. I gave up. One of my students even said, "Quitters never win and winners never quit, Miss Smith. And you're a winner. So you can't quit." It made me want to laugh and cry at the same time.
So many of my students come from broken, desperate situations. It's in the air at the school. You can smell it and breathe it in. And I allowed it to drag me down. I got tired of fighting. Of feeling ineffective and inept. Of feeling powerless for not being able to exert enough authority to control my classes. Of helplessly watching the future get carried off in handcuffs and totter down the hallways pregnant. Of hearing vile language everywhere I turned. Of feeling disregarded and rejected and taken for granted.
I am in this world. I am charged to be a light in this world. And if I start making a habit of quitting, how can I say that I truly believe in a God who strengthens me?
Maybe the disappointment and frustration that I felt is just a minuscule fraction of what Jesus felt every day during His life among us. Broken and desperate people.
Now I'm Facebook friends with a few. I told my pregnant students to give me a call when the baby comes so that I could go visit them. Maybe I can still be a positive influence even if I'm not in the classroom.
1 comment:
You are honest. You are real. And you are right. You've already touched them. I thought that it was really insightful when you said that that must have been how Jesus felt, all the time. I can hardly imagine. I think you can definitely still be a light to them, post-classroom. You know them now. It's too late.
k
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