It Is in the Past (maybe) . . . Pro. 29

We’ve all experienced it time beyond measure, the knowing after the fact, the reasoning about what we could have or should have done in any particular moment, in the crisis of making a decision; yet the mouse-on-a-wheel pondering never does change anything. 

Contrast this with God—sinless, holy, powerful, compassionate, all-knowing—who looked perfectly forward where we look helplessly backward. He saw stretched out in front of Him what would certainly be, and He created us anyway knowing the personal cost to His only begotten Son. (This will never cease to amaze me!)

Context: Yesterday in Sunday school our teacher, Mike Stallings, who is a recently retired department head of the engineering department at Auburn University, made a statement while giving a practical application of wisdom from Proverbs that has stuck with me. He said in passing to make his point (and I’m certainly paraphrasing the gist as my memory is far too flawed) that he never felt it was his place to get angry with students when they inevitably did what students do who lack discipline and act arrogantly and fall short of the goal even when you warn them what is ahead. As a former high school teacher who has been excessively frustrated in the past by the actions of students often to the point of anger, this arrested my attention and began the thought processes turning. 

God’s compassions far exceed mine (that has never been in question BTW), but when Mike said that about not becoming angry when students do what they do, it checked my spirit. As a teacher of high schoolers (with a few angsty middle-school experiments thrown in), I should always have known better than to expect whole classes and grades of students to “behave” with decorum and abide by all the stated rules and regulations, but I got suckered into the “plan for success” model thrown at us each year by administrators. I am a rule follower, no question, and I can’t even get it right! WHY ON EARTH would I expect juveniles treading unknown waters each year to do so? And WHY ON EARTH would I ever get angry instead of reacting in  compassion?  [Disclaimer: But I did and I probably still would if teaching through this crazy thing called COVID.]

However, in all fairness to myself, I did begin to have more compassion on the children the longer I taught. The last three years particularly, I knew students were still going to compromise on papers and tests and reading and classwork to obtain a high mark, yet in my compassion, I worked even harder to create assignments that laid out the expectations clearly, mitigated the temptations to cheat or fudge as much as possible, and then I sat back and expected them to fail. That sounds horrible, but I found when I was consistently fair and compassionately flexible when required, we could get past the failures, and it really did change my mindset towards the students. I scraped them back up, put bandaids on the red marks on their papers, and we all began moving forward again. 

They were often frustrated because doing things the right way is hard and learning new things isn’t easy; they were sometimes angry because when I set a standard I held them to it no matter how much they railed at me and pulled out what they thought were their big guns (parents). They were occasionally contrite, and for the most part, I loved them better than I had ever loved any other groups of students, and I did my best to direct them back on the path we were walking together. Only in looking back at my last three years of teaching do I now realize what made it the most enjoyable and successful of all my years teaching: I rarely got angry at a student, but I overwhelmingly chose to love each one through whatever experience life was handing us and offered compassion along with consequences and direction. 

I still have to constantly remind myself that I am an adult. Students, however, for the most part, are not. I had a lifetime of experience navigating the waters of a very flawed educational system. They did not. I had experience gleaned from teaching (for the most part) the same material in the same courses year after year. Instead of being frustrated at seeing the same problems, I should’ve expected them, anticipating their arrival and doing better work to limit the chaos that would result. In reality, I failed. They didn’t. They were little sinners swimming in the deep water of life, which school is only a very small portion of, and that was so hard for me to remember! I failed often and failed big. I complained. I railed. I fought the system. I harbored grudges. I dreaded facing the same problems each year when I should’ve been rejoicing that I knew they were ahead of me and that I had experience to draw from when they arrived. I should’ve rejoiced in loving those little stinkers all of the years I taught, but I did not, and I cannot change the failures of the past, only the successes in the future.

Speaking of, I don’t know what is in my distant future. Right now, I am enjoying mostly quiet days of immersing myself in God’s word and writing and sewing and keeping our home joyfully and serving as my husband’s helpmate. But if in the future, God places me back inside a classroom filled with almost-grown folks, I hope I will faithfully remember what He has shown me and is showing me, and I hope I will extend the compassion He has extended towards me right back at them. 

God is good, and each breath I have is by His mercy and for His glory! Remember, Kelly . . . 

FYI: The verse that started this was Proverbs 29:1, which says, "A man who harden his neck after much reproof will suddenly be broken beyond remedy." Mike's comments were in relation to students who do not listen to the truth of what will happen if they do not change their behavior, and all this in the context of a statics course in engineering. 

But God was working on something different in me. Isn't He good to meet us where we are? Verse 11 followed closely behind: "A fool always loses his temper, but a wise man holds it back."