Dear 2020,
As an educator, I can applaud your tenacity. You carried on with your lessons despite your pupils' resistance... despite my resistance. However, even I must admit that I have learned several valuable lessons from your controversial pedagogy, and despite my disdain for your methods, I am grateful for these lessons:
- Life is simultaneously fragile and resilient. That's what makes it beautiful. It's the dandelion springing up between the cracks in the concrete. It may not last, but for a moment the terrain is transformed. We are all dandelions in the concrete.
- The things we take for granted are the same things that others are fighting for desperately. In a moment, they may become the things we are fighting for, too.
- Children aren't the only ones who need a routine... Discipline is creating your own routine when no one else is there to establish the rules for you.
- Sweatpants are a good and perfect gift from above (James 1:17). Seriously, why do we invest in anything less comfortable than cheap sweatpants? The right people will find you beautiful when you are most comfortable.
- Humility is the nuanced distinction between taking ownership and taking charge. It is looking in the mirror instead of through a window (or a screen). We too often forget that taking ownership is always more productive than taking charge.
- The difference between inconvenience and oppression is perceived in the context of privilege. The line is thin between the two constructs, and the line of justice is easily crossed despite our best intentions.
- Sometimes the best comfort is silence. We all experience our own pain in response to our own circumstances-- no two wounds are identical even if the weapon was the same. I don't want or need you to know my pain; I simply need you to acknowledge that my pain is real.
- It's ok to admit when you're drowning. No one throws a life vest to an Olympic swimmer. Look for the surrounding ships and start shouting. As someone who knows depression intimately, I have learned that my silence only expands the darkness. I experienced my first season of depression and anxiety when I was in high school. A pastor told me that my depression was symptomatic of a lack of faith. I was holding on to a thin thread, and just like that, his words cut it. It took years to dispel the myth that my faith and my depression were at odds. Admitting depression would mean admitting to a lack of belief, so I didn't admit it, and the depression got worse. I still pay the price for several unhealthy choices I made. When I read Matthew's account of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane per the recommendation of a counselor in college, Jesus' anguish felt incredibly familiar. I know the Garden of Gethsemane all too well, but I'm not alone... my Savior knows it, too. There's a reason why most of David's Psalms are psalms of lament. God made our souls as a reflection of His own, and He gives us permission to feel our pain. It connects us to His son. Wake up your friends like Jesus did at Gethsemane. Call out to the ships. Chances are you aren't the only one in desperate need of a lifeboat.
- Sometimes hope is an act of defiance... sometimes hope entails getting out of bed without knowing why. Hope provokes the darkness. That's why it's dangerous, but it's worth it. Share your matches, and it gets a little easier.
- Fear is powerful, but faith is more powerful. If hope is the match, then faith is the flame.
Your willful and exhausted pupil,
Austen
