An Uncomfortable Truth

I was driving home from school today and passed by a Sonic. In the parking lot were two police cars and four policemen. As I looked closer I saw they were handcuffing a woman... and to the side stood a little boy still in his school uniform looking on at the whole thing. I was looking at the back of him, but I could tell by the slump of his shoulders and the way he was shying away from it all that he was feeling fear, sadness, and maybe a little shock. It made my heart quite literally lurch out of my chest with pity. Not for the mother, but for the little boy. How devastating. How traumatic. What must it be like to see your own mother arrested before your eyes? As a little boy or girl, how do you live with that? And so many of our school children do. A lot more than we probably realize. I started thinking- this boy is probably not going to his home tonight because there probably won't be anyone there to be with him. He may not have supper. He won't get his homework done. He probably won't sleep very well either, whether it's because he is being taken care of by his aunt's boyfriend in a noisy apartment or because he's worried about where his mother went and when or if she'll be coming back. And the next morning he'll get up, somehow get to school with no breakfast and in the same clothes he was in yesterday, and be yelled at all day long for not having his homework done, for sleeping in class, for not paying attention, and for not answering when spoken to. How tragic. How tragic that I be one of those teachers that does not care enough about every detail of my students that I won't be able to recognize a hopeless, worried, pitiful child sitting right in front of my nose. We all think that incidents such as this boy is experiencing right now as I speak don't happen. But they do. We all intentionally put aside these thoughts because we don't like to think about the uncomfortable truth. But it doesn't matter, because the truth is, it happens every day whether we choose to think about it or not. I drove down the street with tears literally streaming from my cheeks in sadness for this boy. For his lost innocence and lost security, his lost trust and lost faith. God, let me see past the exterior of my children in class to the real boys and girls they are underneath, the hurting, scared, helpless, hungry humans that they are, and let me meet whatever need I can when I have them for those few hours at school. Let me give them love regardless of how they act or what they haven't done right. Let me be a consistent source of love to them.