Friday Thought : The Patience of Repair

Friday Thoughts are back!

After taking the summer off, it’s time to get back into weekly reflections.

But before I do, I wanted to share a quick update. In hopes of exercising my personal discipline of reflection, I have started posting Daily Thoughts, Monday - Saturday. If you’re interested in seeing them, please follow me on Facebook or TikTok.

Now, a Friday Thought:

Often times it feels that things break and crumble much faster than it takes to build them. And that, for me at least, is super frustrating. Especially when it’s something I care about.

Sometimes, our humanity is responsible for the destruction. Be it from our selfish nature or limited understandings, we make decisions that have destructive consequences - for ourselves and for others.

Other times, however, the destruction experienced is just part of life.

Over the summer my son broke his arm. It happened instantly, and for a 15 year old boy who was anxious for the adventures of summer, it was devastating. And not because of the pain, but because of the time it would take to heal.

And he is not alone.

Whenever we experience brokenness, be it of body, mind, or spirit, we - like my son - are eager to heal. And just like my son, we are anxious to heal as quickly as we were broken.

Wendell Berry, the legendary American novelist and poet, understood our desires, which is exactly why he warned us against them.

The temptation for us all is to believe that the solution needs to be as large as the problem itself; that we need a positive and equal reaction to every negative and destructive action.

The problem with this line of thinking, according to Berry, is that large-scale solutions rarely produce the desired and much needed outcomes needed or desired. In contrast, the best solutions are often small and meaningful decisions, made consistently over time. Fast and large reactions often create greater problems. Slow and portioned decisions allow for healing. Just like our human bodies.

As of today, my son’s arm is healed. It took a second to break and over 10 weeks to heal. Which, for many of us enduring our own brand of brokenness, doesn’t seem fair. But that is not for us to decide.

What we can decide is what to do with our time of healing.

We can keep showing up, we can keep trying and stepping out, and we can keep discovering new ways to help and notice others.

It takes a long time to restore things. It takes even longer to restore GREAT things.

But in the end, the wait is always worth it. Even when it doesn’t feel like it.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about this week.

Happy Friday!

#doGREATthings!

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Friday Thoughts : Blog

Friday Thought : The Right thing to do

Recently, a teacher was struggling with a difficult decision. Help another, or help herself. Without much deliberation, she chose to help another.

"You okay?" I asked.

"No." She said, "But it's the right thing to do." And then, with a smile on her face, she accepted the burden that was not hers to bear and went about her day.

This short interaction encouraged the hell out of me. It also reminded me of a situation that happened a few weeks ago with two of my struggling students.

One student (let’s call him Shawn) spent an hour or so walking around my table, purposefully pumping into and kicking my chairs, and generally being pissed off. When he finally sat down, I tried talking with him. He wanted no part of it.

“You only get this way when something is bothering you,” I said. “So what happened?”

He said nothing.

“I heard you had a rough weekend,” I continued, “You wanna tell me about it?”

He started to speak, in half sentences, sharing about the weekend he had at a distant relative’s house. “She was so mean,” he said, speaking of his cousin, but he couldn’t really articulate why or how. He did, however, begin to get worked up again. Until another student joined us in my office.

When little Timmy (not his real name) entered the office, I wasn’t shocked. He was a cute little kid with little structure at home, zero discipline, and was routinely off his meds. He had been in and out of my office all morning, but this time, I didn’t have time for him.

Shawn, however, did.

“I need to go help in the cafeteria” I said. Which was true. We were down several aides that day and we needed extra hands and eyes on the kiddos as they ate their lunch. “Shawn,” I said, “I need you to watch over Timmy.” Which was not true. My secretary and the counselor were nearby and could easily have taken over. But I had a plan.

“Shawn,” I said again, grabbing some books, blank pieces of papers, and a few crayons, “I need you to read or draw with Timmy so I can go help in the cafeteria. Can you do that for me?” He didn’t really answer, just grunted, and moved towards the table. I left.

Over the next couple hours, I checked in on Shawn and Timmy but didn’t interrupt because they were doing great! Shawn even worked on his homework as he helped Timmy draw and color. You could hear their laughter throughout the whole office.

Then, after bringing Timmy back to his class, Shawn was finally ready to talk.

Shawn didn’t need to sit and focus on his needs, on how he was hurt and frustrated. Nor did he need me to remove tasks and responsibilities from his day. He needed to get outside himself, to consider another, and to get to work. He needed a bigger purpose.

When we’re only thinking about ourselves we only think about ourselves. But when we consider others, when we see beyond our pain and sorrow and frustrations we see that there are others who are in need. Helping them gives us purpose and a better more clearer perspective.

“No,” my teacher said, knowing full well what the extra work and stress was going to mean for her. But she also knew would it would mean for the one she was enduring it for. “It’s the right thing to do,” she said, truly joyful.

Because it was. Because it is.

Friday Thought : Evolving, not Revolving

Often times, themes present themselves in my life. When they do, they pop up, almost overwhelmingly, in a variety of ways: conversations and tv shows, books and podcasts, songs, and Saturday morning fires.

Most recently, the theme of growth has come to the forefront. Most notably, the concept of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is hard. Both in asking for it and receiving it because they both demand something from us. If we need forgiveness, we must admit we’ve done something wrong, giving up our ego, our pride, maybe even our stature (at least we think so, anyway). To provide forgiveness means giving up payment or revenge - we incur the debt owed, rather than enforcing it.

Forgiveness is also beautiful. It reconciles relationships and springs forth life and opportunity - it is the catalyst to evolving. As individuals and as a community.

"It’s easy to make a prison out of our pain, out of the past” Dr. Edith Eva Eger writes in The Choice: Embrace the Possible, because it allows us to hold onto our victimhood and be in control. Forgiving others who have caused the pain means letting go of our hope and desire for justice. It means letting go of our longings for revenge.

“At best,” Dr Eger continues, “Revenge is useless. It can’t alter what was done to us, it can’t erase the wrongs we’ve suffered, it can’t bring back the dead. At worst, revenge perpetuates the cycle of hate. It keeps the hate circling on and on. When we seek revenge, even nonviolent revenge, we are revolving not evolving.”

The only way to stop the revolving - in our lives as well as in the lives of those around us - is to forgive. Even when those who have hurt us don’t think they’ve done anything wrong. And that, for me at least, is one of the hardest things to do. If not impossible.

But that’s where the theme has hit me. Not on the importance of forgiveness necessarily, but on how to forgive, presenting itself in three truths:

1. Allow space to grieve. “For what happened, for what didn’t happen - and to give up the need for a different past. To accept life as it was and as it is” (Dr. Eger). This one is tough because grieving - to me at least - means thinking about what happened, reliving events, and letting “them” win. But it doesn’t. And they don’t. An essential part of forgiving is to acknowledge all that needs to be forgiven, that the burden of hurt and grief and anger is heavy, and that we are willing - even begrudgingly so - to lay it down at their feet. For then and only then are we able to truly begin the process of evolving.

1. Allow space for the bigger story : When someone does us wrong it is easy to define them only as that wrong. They are no longer a complex person with gifts and talents and a few fallibilities (just like us), they are cowards, betrayers, and terrible people. They are suddenly holistically and completely bad. Which makes it easy to hate them and wish sweet revenge. An essential component to forgiveness is allowing their failures to exist in isolation. In that moment they were flawed, or in that moment their weaknesses came through, or in that moment (or string of moments) their ugliness was on display. But they can still do good things. There are very few Hitler sort of people in this world, and allowing space for people in our lives to not be Hitler also provides space for them to be good people who do good things and, by and large, want to make the world a better place. They just really suck or fail miserably at times. But not all times. And seeing them in that way allows for the door to forgiveness to open. Even if just a crack.

2. Allow time for the wave to build. This image, from one of my favorite Instagram/bloggers says most of what needs to be said:

@semi_rad

We don’t need to holistically forgive in one moment. We don’t need to invite those who have hurt or scarred us over for dinner, plan a Christmas party together, or pretend that all is fine and dandy. Because it’s not. But it can be, someday. But only if we start with small acts.

Why not start today?

Friday Thought : Leave it at the Door

This week, gratitude and generosity have been on my mind. Especially when times are hard or seem extremely bleak, it is hard to be grateful or full of generosity because, really, we’re just trying to survive, to put food on the table, and to not cry in front of the kids.

How do we move on from these moments of sadness? From these pits of despair?

I don’t know. But ensuring others don’t feel the same and trying to make them feel seen and heard and loved - even if just for a moment, sometimes seems to help. Not fully, not completely, but a little. It helps to know we’re helping.

This is what teachers do, almost daily. They give of themselves by leaving their shit at the door and loving the hell out of their students. They give, even when their marriages are a mess, their homes are in chaos, and their lives seems to be falling apart. Because that’s what quality teachers do. And as educational leaders, we must therefore work even harder to ensure that they are replenished, that they feel loved, appreciated, and known. We must fill them up.