Dear Child

I have learned more from my students than I could ever teach them.

I have been changed more by my conversations with them than they could ever be changed by me.

The more lost they are, they more I find myself drawn to them. To smile at them, and laugh at their jokes. To act like their tragic stories don't shock me and tear my heart apart, and to tell them how proud I am of them.

I hear the things they say to themselves, and to each other.

Sometimes they look at me and say that they don't like teachers or school. This is just because somewhere along they way, some teacher or every teacher, at some school or every school, failed them. I don't want to fail them. I don't want to be there with a front row seat watching them give up on themselves.

To all of them, I write this letter. To each dear child.

Dear Child,

You are loved more than you know.

You are special. What you will do in this world, to this world, for this world...no one else can do.

You will make ripples in the lake of your life, that will vibrate out and touch people that you cannot even see. That you don't even know.

You feel weak. You feel like a failure. You feel like you can't do anything right. You are wrong.

You are stronger than you know. You succeed every time you choose to keep trying. You are doing great.

You look around you and see people who have it all together, and you feel like you are the only mess that showed up today.
Take heart. Everyone around you feels like a mess too, and they are all so afraid that someone will figure it out. They look at you and think you have it all together. They wish they were more like you.

You feel disheartened. People tell you these are the best years of your life, and that just makes you worry. Don't worry. They are wrong. These are the most awkward, confusing, insecure, walk-in-the-rain-down-a-dark-muddy-path at-night years of your life. It will get better. You will figure out who you are, and who your people are. Your world is small right now. You only know your family, your friends, your classmates, your teammates. Sooner than you can even imagine, you will enter a bigger world where there will be people like you. People who get you. This little world you are in may make you feel like you don't fit, but that's just because you are bigger than what you can see now. You will find your place, and you will thrive.

You believe the lie that it is best to be like the others, and it torments you that you are different. Whatever it is about you that is different, learn to love it. That is what will make the world notice you, and that is where you will bloom into the beautiful flower that you are meant to be.

You look around for someone to be better at life than you, and you always find someone. Your mistake was in looking around. Don't compare yourself to anyone. There is always someone better at something. Change your focus. Focus on what you have to offer the world. Just like there is always someone better than you, there is also always someone looking up to you that needs you.

Be kinder than necessary as you go through this world. We are all hurting. We can't fix each other's problems, but kindness builds bridges, and bridges lift us up above where the waves and waters can hurt us.

I am inspired by your life. Your little, oh so very significant life.

You have given me purpose.

And I am forever grateful for you, dear child.

Grief is Just Love with Nowhere to go.

Riding in the passenger seat, tears fill my eyes- blurring, elongating, and distorting the normally crisp reds, whites, and greens of the street lights. I am not crying in the usual sense, more like leaking from the eyes. No noise, no movement or motion, just tears without ceasing. It reminds me of videos I have seen of the tsunami in Indonesia many years ago. It wasn't the violent wall of water I expected to see. It was more the constant encroaching of the ocean upon the land, as though no boundary had ever existed between the salty depths and the roads where cars now floated. My cheeks felt cold as the tears dried on my face. I had so many thoughts and images that filled my mind, but only one feeling. Deep, gut wrenching, overpowering sadness. I happened upon a quote last week that said something about how grief is merely love with nowhere to go. That is what I feel. I feel all kinds of love with nowhere to go. And so it creeps out of my eyes, and down my face, and nearly takes my breath away.

My uncle Phil died today.
My dad's little brother, the one he spent his youth protecting, is now gone.
Without warning.
Inexplicably.
And I cry for my dad who could not call to give me the news. Who couldn't yet speak the words into being, that his only brother is now gone.

I cry for my aunt, Pam. She is my dad's older sister. Neither of them could have ever conceived a life without their youngest sibling. How lost and sad she must feel.

I cry for his kids- my cousin Luke who has now lost both parents in just a few years. I hate that he is now raising his kids without his dad getting to see what a great job he will do. And I cry for his brother and sisters because their kids won't grow up with their grandpa in their lives.

I cry for his friends. Friends who have loved him like family. People who, unlike me, had him in their lives every day. I cry for the hole they now have in their hearts.

Riding in the passenger seat, feeling all kinds of love with nowhere to go. And so it creeps from my eyes and down my face. Yet, in the midst of this blurry sadness, my heart, which is broken in a new way today, thinks of my Uncle Phil, and smiles. This is how I know his life was lived well. I am broken over the loss of him, but I still can't help but smile at the remembrance of time spent together.