Wednesday, September 16, 2009

the days that make it worth it

it's so tempting to just want life to be all sunshine and daisies all of the time. who doesn't want to sail through life with one good thing after another coming their way?
no hurt, no pain, no frustration.
but what good does that do?
i learn over and over again that through challenging situations we are stretched and grown. this is the stuff i teach to kids. but it's hard to believe for my own life. i try to get kids to transfer the things they learn at the high ropes course to their lives back at home, but i have a hard time doing it for myself. just this week we talked to the group i'm working with about how we will most certainly fail if we never even try.
but quitting is easier.
it's safer to not care than to have your feelings hurt.

i look at my life sometimes and think i'm crazy for the way i choose to live. it is by no means easy. it is by no means a get rich quick scheme.
it's tough. it's challenging. and it sucks sometimes.
but, as i feel like i'm always trying to explain to people, it's rewarding in different ways.

every once in awhile there is this moment, maybe even just a short amount of time in an entire week, where it's worth it. sometimes it comes in the form of a look on a kid's face when they finally connect the dots and grasp a concept you've been trying to teach them for days. other times it comes in watching a group of kids learn to work together and include the kids who have been labeled as 'outcasts'.

the kids i'm working with are rough. they are not always full of sunshine and laughter. this week they have been rude, disrespectful, and cruel to each other and staff members. but today we had some really good moments. i think my favorite came in the form of an unplanned event. kory was dealing with some discipline issues (about 1/5 of our class...) so i had to stall before our evening event. so i had my 20ish kids sit in our classroom and i read off a bunch of "would you rather" questions. we laughed so hard as we went through the deck, and it was so fun to watch them be so into the activity. it was the longest anything had held their attention all week. it was the first time i really feel like i got to laugh and connect with a lot of them and it happened purely by accident.

i had to remind one of the girls today (while she was being incredibly disrespectful to me) that i was a person with feelings too. it's easy to forget that these little 6th graders are hurting, confused, frustrated, broken people too. today i found myself constantly begging God to give me a heart to love them, even in their ungratefulness, knowing they may never show me any kind of love in return. maybe that is one of the lessons i'm here at the OEC to learn.


"lost and insecure, you found me... laying on the floor, surrounded.... why'd you have to wait? where were you?.... just a little late, you found me..." - the fray, you found me

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