Tenth Avenue North has done it again. They've put just the right music to just the right words to capture the message I want to convey. Check out this video that I made. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_r82SYyVvQ
I love the entire song, but I especially enjoy the chorus:
One tear in the dropping rain/
One voice in a sea of pain/
Could the maker of the stars, hear the sound of my breaking heart?
The answer to this rhetorical question? Yes.
Middle school performance is a poor measure for future success. But if it were reflective of the future, then as a grade school student, I had a bright future ahead of me. I did well in all my classes. I was engaged in extracurricular activities. I had a relatively loving family. There really wasn't anything significant that I could complain about. And yet, somewhere around the seventh grade I started getting pretty depressed. Blame it on hormones or too much free time to think. Whatever it was, it got me feeling rather hopeless. I started to feel like my life didn't have a purpose. I could go on to my brother's high school, go on to some accredited university, get a job. Maybe have a family. Work. Retire. Die. Somewhere in the between I would live-- if I was lucky. If you put it that way, then we might as well all go jump off a bridge, especially if everyone else is doing it.
So there I was. Not yet a teenager and I'd already figured out that life isn't worth it if it's all about working to make money for those dreams that in the end you're not willing to pay for. Dick Cheney will probably die with more toys that I do. But I bet someone else will get to enjoy them more than he does.
I was an emo kid before it was even cool. I might not be here today if it hadn't been for one of my teachers in eighth grade. I won't go into details, but will simply say that she showed me a love I had never known before. It was a love that I wanted and even needed to accept, but that I didn't think I deserved. I had been classmates with her daughter since third grade and we had never been friends. There was no reason for my teacher to care about me. Sure, they like to tell you that teachers do what they do because they care. They (whoever they are) are wrong sometimes, though. Or they just lie.
This teacher was different. She cared and she didn't stop caring. There were times when I could be distant and cold. And times when I needed to be broken and open. No matter what my mood, she was there to offer a listening ear (or reading eye, rather). By the last few months or so of school, I was generally a happy kid again.
I asked my teacher why she didn't give up on me. Why she could make up for where my own parents had failed or thrown their hands up in frustration. Her answer was simple. She was motivated by the love of Christ. That response has been significant in my life in a couple of ways. First of all, it put Jesus' love into a practical context. Like I mentioned in the previous post, I grew up in church. I knew all the stories. I knew Jesus died for me. But the Bible really is just a story until you experience it. In some ways, we probably all experience it in our every day lives. But if it has never been shown to us exactly as such, then it's a little hard to recognize. For the first time in my life, I knew what it meant to be loved by God. After having lived for performance-dependent love for so long, I finally knew what it was like to feel unconditional love.
Secondly, her answer showed me that there is meaning in life. Or at least there is a faint glimmer of hope for meaning. It's not in a teacher's job description to actually love the students. Talking to kids outside of the classroom is not a requirement. Teaching is probably the closest you can come to have an inherently fulfilling job. Luckily, though, our lives are not defined by how we make a living but by how we live.
*Disclaimer: I don't actually blame my parents for my wanting to die. Not anymore. I don't think they failed me and I don't think they only loved me when I earned good grades. But with an older brother that is far more naturally talented than I am, I always felt like I was just chasing his shadow.
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I'll be away on a family vacation starting tomorrow until early June. Until then, fill your idle time by showing your family and friends you care about them. Do random acts of kindness. Have a heart to heart talk. There isn't enough time on this side of eternity to waste.
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