I've been a bit tender ever since I opened the letter this afternoon. It was a normal day, and it was a normal letter. We often get letters from the principal over the listserv, so I started to open it without really thinking. But then the subject caught me off guard this time: "Death of a Student." I thought it was an accident--a high school student or someone from one of the other schools. I figured it would hurt as I thought about it, but I never dreamed it would hit me this hard.
A 7th grader at a local middle school passed away yesterday. He committed suicide. He went to the same elementary where my oldest daughter is a student. If we stay in West Michigan, then in a few years she'll be at that same middle school--with most of the same kids she started school with in Kindergarten.
I don't know why this young man, this baby really, decided to end his life. I pray that some day his parents get answers and find hope again. As I think about what happened, though, my heart breaks--for him, for his parents, for his friends, for his classmates, for his teachers, for my daughter.
Middle school sucks. There's no way around it. It's so, so hard being a teenager. But it gets better. It sounds trite, or perhaps it just sounds like I'm stealing it from something different, something that this might not have been. All I know is that it's true. And when I walked in my daughter's classroom to read to her class this afternoon, I was tender. I looked at their little faces and wondered what middle school holds for them. They have a little better than five years before they get there, and so much can happen in that time. But all the same, I wonder. These are Ellie's classmates. They're beautiful children learning to read and be friends and eat from all of the food groups. And I love them.
So this is a tender day. May God wrap His arms of peace around this young man's parents and his teachers and his friends and his classmates. May God protect those kids, those babies, from themselves and from the only choice that can't be fixed. And may God help all of us know what to say, how to help, what to see, how to be tender.
God, I love those kids. The big ones and the little ones . . . please keep them safe tonight.
1 comment:
This makes me so,so sad - especially as the parent of a tender 12 year old. I want to wrap my arms tightly around him, and protect him from all the world's hurts. I'm thankful I can at least do the arm-wrapping. And thankful for the "village" surrounding him that does the same. What an incredible debt we have to the God who loves us, and our kids, better than we can even imagine in this sad world.
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