Category: Worth Of All Persons

“Look for God in everything you see. God is there.”

4/3/2024

Sarah Marolf

Working as a special education behavior interventionist can be difficult and stressful. I oftentimes come home exhausted from the mental exertion of remaining calm in the chaos. I’m tasked with educating the most challenging students – the ones who don’t want to be there, the ones who come with an alphabet soup of mental health diagnoses, the ones who’ve endured significant trauma in their short lives.

Let me remind you: I am a teacher. I’m trained in methods of teaching reading and math. I am not a trained psychologist, social worker, or counselor. And yet I spend the majority of my time consoling the broken hearted, motivating the distraught, giving life advice to the naive, de-escalating the enraged, and listening to the burdened. I am a teacher, but teaching academics is secondary.

My formal education did not prepare me for the real life issues I would have to discuss.

Like when my student is crying about having to face her rapist in court
Like when my student repeatedly hits himself in the head because he believes he’s the reason why his parents abused him
Like when my student was worried her step dad was going to throw all her stuff in the front yard while she was at school
Like when my student’s father figure committed suicide
Like when my student was emotionally abused by his adoptive parents and had to go back into foster care.

Sadly, the list is long and continues to grow each school year. In these moments of despair and vulnerability, I feel very ill-equipped to respond. I don’t know the different therapeutic techniques. Each time, I take a few seconds to say a little prayer asking God for guidance, to give me the words that particular student needs to hear so that they will leave my classroom feeling heard, loved, supported and empowered. I can’t say that we always solve the problem – their struggles are much bigger than me – but they always get to a secure enough place to go back to class and ready to face the challenges.

I have a reminder on my phone that goes off every day at 3:00 pm (just after the school day ends) that says, “Look for God in everything you see. God is there.” This has opened my eyes to all these little moments in which God has guided my interactions with my students. Even though public school is – and should be – secular, God is still very much present. If not anywhere else, I can only hope that my students see God’s light shine through me.

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Be a Neighbor to a Stranger

9/13/2023

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Elder Beth Franklin

The parking lot of the grocery store was the perfect place to remind me that being a neighbor isn’t about who or where, relation or proximity. Jesus teaches us in the parable of the Good Samaritan, being a neighbor is about caring and connecting with others – even the neighbors we don’t know.

I had stopped at the grocery store on my way home from work. As I was walking through the parking lot, towards the store, I heard a man say, “Thank you for your service.” I quickly looked around and saw no one else in the area and realized he was talking to me. Just as quickly I realized I still had my name badge on my left shoulder with the big bold capital letters RN by my name. In a nano second - so many thoughts and a quick decision. I quickly said, “Your welcome” with full intent to keep on walking, after all, I was ready to get home and still needed to get my shopping done. But in that nano second, I decided to stop. He followed his first “thank you” with “I know how important you are” in the time it took me to take 1 or 2 steps then decide to stop and connect.

As he began to share his story, I was once again having nano second thoughts: he’s not very old, maybe in his 40’s, he’s sharing his thankfulness – not his grief or anger, he is kind. As a nurse I often encounter those who have lived through medical trauma and need to share their story to process their fear and grief. This gentleman was telling me his story for the purpose of sharing the heroism of his medical caregivers. It was a story of appreciation. I listened. We connected. Strangers in a store parking lot sharing as neighbors - caring and connecting. In a nano second, he decided to say thank-you and I decided to listen. Blessings of Community, one of our Community of Christ Enduring Principles, reminds us that we value our connections even if we have never met.

After this experience, I decided I would take opportunities to reach out to others as I passed them by. To the mother with her 1-year-old in the shopping cart, “Your daughter is beautiful”, to the shopper looking at greeting cards, “your tattoo is an awesome work of art”, to the elderly gentleman struggling to find his groceries, “how can I help you”. Each one is my neighbor, each moment a chance for caring and connection.

Spirit, open my heart to the joy and pain of living. As you love, may I love in receiving and in giving, Spirit, open my heart.

May I weep with those who weep, share the joy of sister, brother. In the welcome of Christ, may we welcome one another. Spirit, open my heart.

Community of Christ Sings #564 Spirit, Open My Heart

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“Look for God in everything you see. God is there.”

Be a Neighbor to a Stranger

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