Family Ties

My first day volunteering at a junior school, God revealed how truly blessed I am.  I shared with Felix and Kelly that evening how truly lucky and blessed we are to have families that love us so much and cared for us for the past 20+ years!  I don't believe we truly grasp how much our family does for us until we witness what other children/people are going through or went through as children.

We joke now as adults about how frayed the featherduster was or how many broken chopsticks there were but we now understand more clearly why our parents had to discipline us.  There is love behind that discipline, they want us to grow up into individuals who understand right from wrong, to be compassionate to others, and to have integrity, doing the right thing when people are not looking. 

As a teacher, I come across many students of various ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds.  We are taught as teachers in teacher's college and within the various school boards that we need to be accepting of all individuals.  I may comment on this another day in regards to how I can demonstrate Jesus in my workplace, but this post is about something else, something that saddens me.

Without getting into too many specifics, I was working with a boy and he had a bit of a breakdown because that morning, his breakfast consisted of one piece of luncheon ham.  It was snacktime and he was eating parts of his lunch because that is all his parent had packed him.  The teacher made him stop or else he would not have a lunch to eat and lunchtime.  He was a little upset at this fact and it just snowballed from there.  He could not concentrate on the language work he was supposed to complete, complaining his stomach hurt and that he was hungry.  It just broke my heart, but also frustrated and angered me as well.  Afterwards, speaking with the teacher, it seems like this is not the first time.

This put some things into perspective for me.  When sharing with Felix and Kelly that night, it showed me how truly blessed we are.  We have a family that loves us, a roof over our heads, a warm bed to crawl into at night, clothes on our back, and food to eat at our disposal.  In addition, we have the luxuries of attending post-secondary education, gadgets at our fingertips, and cars to get us to places.  Too often we take this for granted.  I seriously do not remember a time when I went to school hungry when I was in grade school(of course, high school and university don't count because I was dumb and too cool for breakfst).  I am so grateful for my parents who have worked so incredibly hard their entire lives to provide the essentials, and so much more, for me.  It's just sad that I needed a wake-up call like this hard situation to realize and remember this fact.