a filament of light

Today I am feeling the weight of the brokeness of the world. Last night Josh & I went out to dinner and were talking about our future and what direction we are heading. This kind of led into talking about the struggles we face at our job.

I often get angry with my students. I am constantly peeved by the lack of effort, the lack of focus, and the lack of value for education. It is beyond frustrating to see a good mind wasted into things that will only set them back in life.

I try to understand but my patience runs thin and my worldview is often skewed to how I grew up and my own experiences and environments.

Last night though, I reminded my myself in our conversation that I have to continually think about where my students are at and what they go home to. A good portion of my students leave school and go to houses- not homes. Many of them do not eat meals at night. Many are fatherless. Many are mothers themselves. They are surrounded by a culture that glorifies sex, drugs, gangs, and violence.**

I forget that the hour and a half I spend with them is just a blip in their daily lives.

I have been burdened with the brokeness of the world last night and today thinking about this and other things happening in my own life that just remind me that this world is not the way it was intended.

It should be different. The pain and brokeness is real and intense and it has only been intensified in my life since working at Booker T.

Confession: I love Blink 182. And their song "Stay Together for the Kids" has been ringing through my head today. "It's not right. It's not right"

Putting aside my own struggles and pressures in my job, today has been especially sad. The reality is sinking in and I have been left with a deep longing for something more for my students, my family, and my friends.

Glad to be reminded of this verse as I struggle with this:

10I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.11He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet^a no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 

Ecclesiastes 3:10-11

So after a long frustrating day of being painfully aware of the brokeness that exists in and around me, I sat at my favorite coffee shop, read a favorite book (Brave New World), and reminded myself of something a dear friend told me. In a culture full of darkness, I am but a filament of light in their lives. Regardless if they realize it or I realize it, or if it changes anything, I am there and it is not total darkness. Some good exists.

a filament of light