This is part one of a two-part series on life’s problems. Today my pastor quoted someone as saying, “You’ve
either just left a trial, are right in the middle of one, or another trial is
around the corner!” In other words,
tough situations are a consistent part of life.
In these two posts, I’m going to share stories of problems I’ve faced
and how God gave me a different perspective in the midst of each.
PART ONE:
Problems That Refine
or
The Sass That Made Me Stronger
He always stood up to talk to me.
Not as respect, but as a challenge.
Zero eye contact. Hands clenched
in fists at his sides. I had thirty-one
ten year olds in my class that year. The
one that made us thirty-one came in February, took me beyond my anticipated
class-size, and far beyond my teaching ability.
“I overheard my mom on the phone saying that she has cancer. I was crying too much to get anything done.”
This was TJ’s missing homework explanation on
his third day of school. His mom laughed
at TJ’s creative lie when I called to check in.
“I should tell you,” she said with an apologetic chuckle, “TJ really
doesn’t respect women. You’re in for a
tough time with him!”
In the end, TJ only spent two months in my classroom. He and his mom moved again in April. Two months with TJ taught me more about
teaching than a year of college courses.
True to his mom’s warning, TJ's behavior was absolutely terrible. Scary, even.
And, you know what? I’m really and truly glad to have walked a
little life with him.
Before he came, I had a class that teachers dream about. Half of them had been in my fourth grade
class and looped up to fifth grade, so deep relationship was already in
place. I was getting my Master’s degree
and trying out new research on them every day.
The kids were enthusiastic guinea pigs, delighted to learn
unconventionally and contribute their opinions to my projects. When disagreements or behavior challenges
came up, we had class meetings where the students deliberated and decided how
we’d proceed. The classroom was a
community.
When TJ came, we could all feel the shift. The first time TJ told me to shut up, several
students gasped. One boy, Aaron, defended me. “Um, dude, you should not
talk like that to Miss Caldwell.” Soon,
the behaviors became normal: backtalk,
picking up chairs as a physical threat, refusal to comply with even basic
routines.
One afternoon, I went and cried out my frustrations to Becky and
RaeAnn, my co-workers who ran the special education classroom. “Every day, I end up yelling at him and then
he smiles like he won some contest and I feel like total sh**!”
They heard me out and then Becky told me something that changed my whole perspective.
“When TJ has a bad day, it does not determine the kind of day you
get to have. You have no control over
how he chooses to behave. If, at the end
of the day, you handled whatever came your way with the best tools and care
that you know how to do, then you had an awesome day.”
Becky and RaeAnn also helped me structure a behavior chart for TJ
and gave me tips for implementing it without confrontation. Let me just say, TJ was not a fan.
One morning, I put the behavior chart on his desk and he looked me
in the eyes. ‘Progress!’ I thought, ‘There’s
a little respect!’ Locked into this strong
gaze, TJ gently picked up the slip of paper, crumpled it, shoved it into his
mouth, chewed, swallowed, and smiled.
“Thank you, TJ,” I smiled back.
“Why the heck are you thanking me?” he coughed a little, as the
paper probably tickled going down.
“You are making me a great teacher. I used to be kind of lazy. I’d just tell the class what to do and they’d
do it. I could go take a nap, you know? When Drew over there does his homework on
time, do you think that’s hard for me?
No way!
When you do stuff like this, sometimes I have no idea what to do about
it. I have to go talk to other teachers, read
articles, pray, and try new things with you.
I want to get you excited about learning and you are making me work! It wears me out, but everything you do is
just making me teach better. I really
appreciate it.”
The classroom was silent. Thirty-one kids gaped like goldfish. Both the eating of the behavior chart and my little speech were unexpected, I suppose. TJ helped by breaking the
silence:
“You’re a wacko. You know
that?”
“All great teachers are a little wacko, my friend,” I smiled and
slipped another behavior chart on his desk (my back pocket was stuffed with
extra copies, thanks to a tip from Becky and RaeAnn).
So, dear reader, what does this have to do with you?
I’m betting that you have a TJ in your life. Maybe it’s a person, maybe it’s a financial
situation, maybe it’s an addiction. What
is disturbing your peace? What is
requiring more than you know how to handle?
God is using that problem to refine you; to make you more like Jesus.
The Bible calls it sanctification. Our holy God gets closer to us when He allows persistent problems to be the sandpaper on all our unholy rough spots.
God is also using that problem to honor Jesus.
1 Peter 1:6 & 7 says it this way: “In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little
while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater
worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in
praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
Because of my time with TJ, I had daily practice with not letting my circumstances (or students) dictate my emotions. My persistence grew. I better learned how to reach defiant students. Best of all, I finally stopped fixating on TJ as a problem. Under those onion layers of sass, he was an awesome young man. His creative ideas and sense of humor brought a richness to the classroom that we missed when he had to leave.
