This week has been kind of rough. Monday was a perfect day (as I already mentioned) and then the rest of the week kind of went downhill as far as attendance and student productivity. Today was Thursday. I was bracing myself for what would probably continue to be a frustrating day as my students make choices that don't exactly put them on the path to success. Tuesdays and Thursdays at our school are internship days, so the students SHOULD be out on their internships and I SHOULD be able to go around and visit them and watch them learning and push them to go deeper with their projects. As you can guess, that has not exactly happened yet... I guess something to look forward to in the future.
Anyway, today started out as expected as one of my students ditched me again and didn't show up as I waited early in the morning to take him to his internship. Deep breath. But as the day went on, God continued to show me His goodness. I ended up taking that student anyway even though he was very late, and had a good conversation on the way. When I got back to the school at 12:30 I was greeted by one of my students who is just soaring (let's call him Nate). Nate has been a star shining in the darkness of struggle. He was even asked to speak at a Big Picture Symposium this evening. He came to school dressed professionally in a button down shirt and slacks. He had his notecards and he had been practicing all morning. He was ready. And it made me smile a bit.
Before heading to the Robert Treat Hotel, where the Symposium was being held, we stopped by his internship and set-up his project. Then I took him to Burger King for lunch (fancy huh?) and he actually started asking me about church. It was awesome. We talked about denominations and the Bible. It was a good lunch (praise God). Then it was time to head to the dinner.
So this part of the story isn't very exciting. Nate was nervous, but he did a good job. He was proud of his short 10-minute speech about his life story. He was critical of his mistakes, as he always is. He was looking to me for support, encouragement, and approval, and I was happy to give it to him. But I want to jump to the end of the night...
As we were leaving and we were walking out to the car, I asked Nate how his dinner was (he sat at the other end of the table and I could see he was uncomfortable for most of the evening since it was such a new environment for him) so I was expecting him to say it was boring and he didn't want to go back to the workshops being held tomorrow.
Instead he replied, "I had a really great time." Surprise.
Then I thought about it. After some more discussion I asked him if he had ever been to such a fancy dinner before. He said that he couldn't remember if he had and that he "felt like a king."
The smile on his face made me realize that all of this is totally worth it.
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