The Ride Home

My music-listening, cell-phone texting, social butterfly of a student surprised me today by asking me to give her a ride. My initial thought was, “No!” Not on Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend, when the sun is shining bright and I was already dreaming of my feet running for the first time in two weeks; not to mention that I had a daughter to pick up, groceries to buy, and clothes to wash. Yet she had the courage to make this request as if I had all the time in the world. But instead of saying no, I found myself instantly saying yes—and instantly regretted it. First, she showed up 15 minutes later than the time I told her we would leave. Next, she had me take her to a post office so that she could pick up her new shoes that she was eagerly waiting to try on; and even asked me to get out of the car and wait in line with her. Then, I found out that she also intended for me to take her home—another twenty minute drive in the opposite direction. A new tank full of gas and several traffic jams later, I finally arrived at the babysitter’s house to pick up my daughter, tired, hungry, and desperately needing a bathroom. But somewhere in the middle of the conversation about the shoes she bought for $80 from Vancouver, Canada that was her first new pair of shoes in more than a year, I realized that I was the one being selfish—not her. An integral part of my Christian responsibility is to let others see Christ living in me in at all times—even when someone asks me to do something that I really don’t want to do. As we drove, she started telling me about how her parents constantly argue, never provide enough food for her, and try to control everything she does. They don’t even let her talk to any of her friends from school for fear that she might turn on them. I imagine that once she gets home in the afternoon, she has very little human interaction until she arrives at school the next day. More than anything, I patiently listened and just let her talk. Great teaching is just as much what happens outside of the classroom as what happens during class time. It’s about so much more than being just a teacher; it’s about being a listener, a caregiver, and sometimes even a mother. It’s about teaching the students valuable life lessons that they can never learn from sitting in the classroom—like how, exactly, to retrieve a package from the post office and sign for it (she really did not know!) Those are the kind of acts that the students will remember more than any classroom lesson. So, I can only hope that one day, several years from now, this student will remember me not as the one who helped her pass a test, but as the one who showed her love and compassion on a day that maybe no one else would have. If she does, then my one day of forfeiting my run and arriving at the house an hour and a half later than anticipated with no groceries and no time to make supper is one small sacrifice that is worth so much more than a typical Friday afternoon.