Hope

Hope is such a powerful part of love.  Hope allows us to face defeat, disappointment and even perceived impossibilities and KEEP GOING.  I love hope.  God is the God of second chances... He is the God of HOPE.  Hope allows me to keep trying to reach a student that is screaming at me with all their actions, behaviors and attitudes to give up on them.  Hope allows me to not listen to their external screaming but hear their quiet internal calling for help.  Hope is selfless.  It enables me to disregard my frustrations and hurt feelings.  I have to continually seek God's help to hope.  I can't well it up on my own and have any real power to it.  The hope that comes from God's love is powerful... it can change lives.  I see it happen at school.  I'm seeing it happen with a fragile little girl at school.  I am not bragging because it is not mine to brag about... but God's.

I'll call her Sara.  I've already talked about her some in previous blogs.  She is really improving.  She is my lowest student in Algebra.  A few months ago I couldn't even talk to her... she would shrink from any form of communication with me.  She wouldn't look me in the eye.  She didn't appear to try at all.  She seemed so broken and fragile.  Now she asks me questions.  I've gotten some smiles out of her.  She looks me in the eye.  I asked her to do a problem on the board the other day and she made a mistake.  I complemented her on what she had done right and thanked her for making a mistake because others must have also.  She wasn't shy or awkward about making a mistake or my talking about it.  She has her Chapter 7 test tomorrow.  I pray she does well enough to be proud of her score.  I am already proud of her improvement.  I hope it translate into a good test score.  I hope she gets at least a 70%.  I know she would be happy with that.  But I am already proud  and thankful of the improvement I'm seeing in her.  I pray that God will help me help her more and more.

Day 85