Compassion

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong.  Someday in your life, you will have been all of these.”  George Washington Carver

I graduated from UGA in the spring of 1972 with a BS in Education.  I felt fully prepared to teach any child with the expertise I had acquired.  I was so wrong!!

My first assignment was a fourth grade class at Terry Mill Elementary school in Decatur.  I quickly realized that my training had targeted the “average” child, and these children, through no fault of their own, were as far from average as it gets.

Most of the children came from broken homes.  Many had no parental presence most of the time.  They had witnessed gangs, drugs, robbery, abuse, and murder!  I was at a loss as to how to identify!  Nothing in my training had prepared me for this, and none of the strategies seemed to be working.  Nothing could win them over.  I felt like a total failure as a teacher and a person.

One morning as I was driving to school listening to the radio, I heard a familiar last name connected to a stabbing death that had taken place in the school area.  I knew immediately that it had to be a family member of one of my students.  I had no idea what to do – so I prayed for the answer.

As the class arrived that day, they  were markedly sad, quiet, but quickly confirmed that the victim was their classmate, Nancy’s, brother.  This was devastating to me, and I couldn’t imagine what they must be feeling.

I wasn’t expecting Nancy that day, and I was selfishly relieved,  but she came in late.  When she walked in with a tear stained face, I said nothing but only walked to her with my arms open wide.  She walked into my arms, and we cried together.  When I looked up, all the students were around us crying as well.  Compassion in the face of tragedy.  It bonded us as a class that year when nothing else would.  God answered my prayer in a most miraculous fashion!

“His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning.”  Lam. 3:22-23