Do You Still Love Me?


 


The 12 year old girl in front of me dropped her eyes as she came into my classroom.


She has had a rough life.


And she has let some of those difficulties allow her to give up and make some very poor choices.  This had been a week of back-to-back events.


On this particular day she was returning from a court hearing and needed a bit of time to decompress before attempting class.


So she came over and stood by my desk and patiently waited as I helped another student. I got him squared away on his math and  I crossed the room and simply waited.


Slowly she looked up and with tears rolling down her cheeks she softly whispered, “Do you still love me?”


Those words at our school usually sound like “I believe in you. You can try again. You messed this up but I still see the good in you.”


She is hard, so very hard.  


But I absolutely saw her worth and was able to remind her that it can’t be taken away.  


So I handed her a Kleenex and a pencil and said, “Now, how about we get that test finished before you go to class.”


And she pulled up her chair next to mine and breathed a little easier.  


She had heard the true message of Christmas that the Savior proclaims to us all.


You are loved.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Details

Image
  I was staring out the window as we flew over the European Alps this morning. I was eating a decent meal of scrambled eggs and roasted cherry tomatoes and feeling the warmth in my belly.  It was toasty warm on this flight- so much so that I never even opened the blanket they gave us.  Then I noticed at the very bottom edge of my window a bit of frost on the outside.  Under magnification I could see the intricate pattern of nature in the crystalline fingers stretching from the tiny crystal.  I realized in my comfort inside the plane I hadn’t even thought about how cold it was outside. At 10,000 m up, the air is bitterly cold and that is true even if I can’t feel it.   Even if it doesn’t match what I am personally experiencing. But when I stop to look for the evidence it is there in intricate and beautiful patterns.  Sometimes in life we aren’t feeling God’s presence or love at the moment. It doesn’t seem to match what we are personal...
Read more

Answers

Image
  Friday at school, I had a student come into my room with excitement in his voice. He is a student who has some reading struggles I have been helping him with.  His low confidence has led to disengagement in the classroom for years.  We are trying to change that. He burst through the door and exclaimed, “Mrs. Potter!  Did you know that when the teachers are talking they actually give the answers to the next test!??” I bit my lip to keep back a smile at his discovery of what we assume is obvious to all. “You are right!  How have you been studying in the past?” “I just google everything, but it makes it really hard.” So true.   My young friend had figured out a piece of the bigger picture of education.   We aren’t hiding the answers.   We are trying to help them become part of their knowledge set and thinking process. Our Heavenly Father also doesn’t hide the answers from us.   They are in the scriptures.   From t...
Read more

Seeing

Image
  Even after a full semester, the young 7th grader, who I will call Anna, didn’t seem to have any friends. She said didn’t mind and felt anxious around people.   I rotated her through groups and she would participate as directed but rarely smiled, although she didn’t seem particularly sad or distraught either.   More of an acceptance that this was her life. She didn’t ever talk back or ask questions but she also didn’t complete assignments quite right.  Her other teachers also said that she didn’t follow directions well.   I was patient.  Building trust.  With her and within our classroom.  This had to be a safe place to share the hard parts. And two months ago she finally told me.  She couldn’t see the board.   As in she couldn’t read it without getting within 6 inches of the board! I immediately emailed our school nurse who gave her a screening.  When I asked Anna she said that the test was fine. But the troubles pe...
Read more