The Me You See

When I was a little girl, I once owned a gold ring that was beautiful.  It was shiny and bright, and worth a fortune I was sure.  One day, I noticed that the band had begun to lose its paint, and to my great disappointment and discovery, it wasn’t made of pure gold after all.  It was just a cheap ring.  Nothing more.  I was VERY disappointed.

I have a student very much like that.  Oh, I don’t mean that he is less than priceless, I just mean that what he allows others to see and what lies underneath the surface are sometimes two very different things.

I’m referring to my student whose mother died in a car accident last winter.  The long and the short of it is, he is grieving.  He is grieving and he really doesn’t know what to do with those emotions. 

Yesterday was a day of high excitement and higher still energy.   I decided that some decompression time would be a very good thing.  I read a great book about Rosa Parks in our reading corner, then told my students to find an alone place on the floor.  The cool part about first grade is, you can do that.  Even cooler about my first grade classroom is… big room, few students and lots of floor space.  I put on some soothing music, turned out the lights, save for the funky lamp in the corner, and told them to just rest for a couple of minutes.

I was congratulating myself on my brilliant idea when a little head popped up.  Serious eyes were staring at me.  “This music is really sad.”  I knew what was coming, but paused before answering. “Why do you think it’s sad?”  Dark eyes were boring into mine.  “Because it reminds me of how African Americans have been treated by white people.”  All is quiet except for this verbal exchange.   “That IS something sad to think about, but is that why you think this music sounds sad?”  He laid his head back down then answered gruffly, “yeah.” 

I didn’t hear anymore from him during the duration of the song, but noticed he was unusually still, his little head buried in his arms.  In fact, I glanced at him often and never saw him move at all.  VERY unusual for this one. 

When the song ended, I asked a student to turn the lights back on and invited everyone back to our worktable.  My boy with the broken heart finally got off the floor and, looking straight ahead, began walking towards his spot.  His face was a mask of concentration and was blotchy, his eyes red.  I have been with this group for a month, and have never seen this child shed tears.  I watched him to see what he would do.  As if reading my mind he volunteered, “I’m crying ‘cuz I miss my Mom.”  He was nearly to his seat by now.  I called his name softly to come over to me.  I held out my arms to him and he buried his face in my embrace (you know what?  I really don’t care if hugging is frowned upon in the classroom.  Sometimes it just has to be done).  “I can’t be your Mom,” I said gently.  “But I can give you Mom hugs when you need them.  Does that help? Or not really?”  I honestly wanted to know.  Some kids are uncomfortable with shows of affection.  He nodded without looking up.  “It helps,” he replied in a muffled voice. 

(Big sigh here….), how can I have the greatest impact in this child’s life?  His world will never be more emotionally painful than it is right now.  In one fatal moment, he lost everything dear to him and it left him reeling.  You need to know right here and now that I am a fixer.  If I see a problem, I want to create a plan of action, follow it sequentially, and work towards the goal of seeing it solved.  Unfortunately (and thankfully), it does not work that way where matters of the heart are concerned.  Would I love to banish his sorrow and grief with the wave of a magic wand?  Oh yeah.  A thousand times yes.  But healing takes time.  Our inner psyche consists of layers just as our physical epidermis does.  The healing begins down deep, beyond our ability to understand it has begun even.  Then spreads upward and outward until one day we realize that the smile we wear is not forced or fake.  It is genuine.  The Sun of Hope has begun to shine within us once again.  He WILL find joy in life again.  But it won’t happen during his time with me.  His pain is too fresh.  There is too much inner healing yet to take place.  He will have to endure the night of his heart for a while longer.

So here’s the surface vs. inner turmoil dichotomy part.  On the exterior, he’s tough.  He’s a take-charge, natural-born leader.  And at times, there’s a bit of acting out that must be dealt with.  But if you peeled away that top layer of shiny gold paint, you’d find a far different reality.  His little heart is hanging outside of his chest, bleeding and bruised, longing for his mother.  He journals about little details that he misses.  They are the minute details of every person’s everyday existence.  The sorts of things that we never really THINK about doing, we just do them because they must be done.  Running errands, and putting supper on the table, and greeting our children first thing in the morning or at the end of the school day.  Amazingly, these are the things motherless children miss.  That has been a revelation to me.  I am notorious for trying to manufacture “special moments.”  Vacations, or day trips, or birthday celebrations.  Now I wonder if those are the sorts of things my children will miss when I am gone.  Maybe the mundane isn’t such an awful thing.  Maybe that’s where we shine best.  And maybe that’s the cue I need to take as I teach this boy with the inner ache that won’t go away.  Maybe the best way I can help him is to simply be.  He can decide what will be worth embracing and what can be discarded mentally and emotionally.

All I know is, we have found ourselves on the same path.  Our lives have intersected at this point in time and I will trust God to use me however He sees fit.  When you think of us, pray that our time together will be well used and beneficial both in the immediate here-and-now and in his future.  I hope that, for now, an occasional “Mom hug” will be enough.