A hard lesson
I am constantly looking at the world around me and the world that I live in to see what I can teach my students. I know lessons come from the most unsuspecting places, so I try to keep my eyes and ears open. A couple of days ago, when I was talking with a student, I mentioned that in their current phase in life, their primary objective is not to figure things out, but to find out… But with that comes some “pain.”
One of the hardest lessons I have to teach is to say goodbye. (And it’s not a lesson that many have to learn.) We say it all the time, daily. When we end the day, with our sweat-stained faces, sore bodies, and tired minds, we wave and say bye, almost certain that tomorrow, we will get to say hello. But what if that “bye” we say today comes at the price of not knowing when we will get to say hello again?
Sidenote: (Dare I say that I don’t think students, at scale, are taught to keep solid relationships and friendships; they are taught that they can always make new friends and that the world is bigger than what they think it to be. I think this is a HUGE disservice to how the students should actually view the world. My purpose is not to enlarge the world. The world will do that by itself. I believe my job is to narrow the world a bit; make it seem consistent and manageable.)
This lesson… is hard because it is not a lesson that we can learn on our own; someone we care about must leave this point of our lives for an unknown amount of time. When students ask if it’s fair that a person or a team member leaves, I know that no amount of intellectual reasoning will suffice. No amount of philosophy, math, or science will be enough. Yes, there are things that we adults cannot explain to the students, and surely, there are things I do not fully understand because I am not a parent. So I have to walk a thin line of explaining to the student in a manner and method that they will understand about an event they cannot fully comprehend. In other words, I have to think of another way to explain the unexplainable. And time and time again, the only explanation is God. Did God know that this was going to happen? If God didn’t know, then he isn’t God. If God did know, then how can he be good? We think it’s unfair. But the fact that God put it into action, knowing we were part of the plan, proves He’s good. How?
Because we weren’t neglected, we were accounted for.
He set things into motion, knowing and setting us up in the exact place and time we needed to be. So God is God, and He is good.
At the end of it all, we will say hello again. And He knows this. But when? I don’t know. Just like I don’t know if I will get to say hello to the team again on Monday, for we don’t know what tomorrow brings. We can be here now and gone the next.
But among all things we know, this will always hold true: that yesterday, He was God, today He is God, and tomorrow, He will still be God. And He is good.
All this to say: Yes, we are heartbroken at Joyce leaving for Korea. To move to another city is one thing, but to leave for another country… that’s another ballgame. But God allowed Joyce to move, AND He allowed us to be the ones who send her off.