Miss Fix-It Has No Tools...

For those of you who don't know, I work in public education (government schools), and I was thinking today of how I dread my job. Of course, I could be very coarse and say that I dread it because my students have no retention abilities, or that they are "plain dumb", or that I can say things several times over and over, and they still don't remember or they ask me a question about it. I COULD say those things. But that isn't what bothers me, even though I get impatient sometimes.

What bothers me, what just gets me to the point where I am depressed is that I can't fix it. I can't make sure every kid succeeds, though I desperately want them too. I can't emphasize the frustration and the pure heartbreak that I feel when I can't get through to a student; when I can't make them feel that they matter.

Of course, we can never "make" people feel things - they feel emotions because they perceive a message that we give. But we don't always believe the things people tell us, good or bad; we don't always take them to heart, so we can't be "made" to feel. But, oh, I wish we could when someone's feeling of value and love are on the line.

When I teach, I am responsible, accountable to about 175 students, each of whom I know by name and each of whom I know how to gauge in several different ways. But each of whom I can't fix. I think I have had the plight of being "all or nothing" since birth - this do it all, be it all, perfected human that I will never achieve desires others to be the best, though I know they won't be perfect. I just want them to be better.

Many of my kids didn't have parents who really loved them and intentionally taught them good things and how to live well. And I think most of these kids just settle for less. That breaks my heart when I think there is a God who has an unimaginable plan for your life if you just heard TRUTH. I want them to feel so loved and precious that I cry sometimes when I think about my most disadvantaged kids....especially the ones who are constantly in trouble. I weep for the depravity that I witness, feeling helpless.

It's at these moments when I feel like the world most desperately needs Jesus. Where you see the difficulties, and you are one teacher in a sea of 175 teenagers who have seen divorce, neglect, hunger, and there isn't enough time to pull each one aside and tell them that you care and that you BELIEVE life can be better, regardless of situation, because of the joy God gives and the love He offers despite what a fallen world spits in their face. You feel powerless, wholly dependent, urgently in need of prayer, and insecure in your lack of knowledge of how things will pan out.

It's so easy to feel hopeless, but I have to remember what C.S. Lewis said, "If we consider the...staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak." My desire for all my students is that they would be healed of the emotional hurts that have damaged more than their hearts to the glory of God in Christ Jesus. And in thinking about it, I think that is my prayer for myself as well...