The college I attend is a weird one.
It’s attached to a K-12 school, which means that it’s easy for college students like me to get quick, easy part-time work. The other day I was filling in for a friend’s front desk shift at the lower school. The front desk position is rife with all kinds of errands, from retrieving kids to printing worksheets, but at last I had reached a quiet pocket. I had just collapsed into my chair and opened my term paper draft when a fifth grade boy slouched into the vestibule, his cheeks shining and red. I immediately recognized him—sensitive, argumentative, and volatile—from when I had worked in the school’s After Care the year prior.
Let’s just say it was not my first time seeing him upset.
I steeled myself as he approached, expecting one of the silent treatment tantrums with which I had become familiar last year. But instead of coming to me, he shuffled towards the desk of my supervisor, the K-12 coordinator, on the other side of the room.
Relieved, I turned back to my paper. As I typed, I could tell the coordinator was speaking to the boy, though I didn’t catch the beginning of their conversation. At one point, though, I paused to flesh out a thought, and it was then that the voices of the child and of the coordinator floated into my sphere of focus.
The boy’s parents were divorced—I had discovered this soon after meeting him. I had gathered from snippets of conversation that his home life was difficult, and that as a result his teachers worked hard to make sure both he and his older sister had a good time at school. But I knew that they still suffered. And sure enough, the absence of the boy’s mother seemed to be the cause of his grief now. I let my fingers still and listened.
“I miss my mom,” I heard him mutter.
“I know,” the coordinator replied sympathetically. “When’s the next time you get to see her?”
“On Friday.”
“Friday! That’s only two more sleeps! And you get to see her every weekend at church, right?”
“Yeah.” Here the boy hesitated. “I don’t like church.”
“You don’t like church? Why not?”
“Because I don’t believe in God.”
At this my internal reaction was akin to a startled eyebrow raise, though I kept my facial expression impassive. I wondered what the coordinator could possibly offer in response to this. Surely statements of religious disbelief from lower-schoolers were uncommon at a devoutly pan-Christian school, right?
“Oh.” I could certainly tell this was not the reason the coordinator had been expecting. But she pressed on, one hand on the boy’s back, her voice steady and confident. “Why don’t you believe in God?”
“I don’t have a religion,” was the boy’s hedging, somewhat defiant reply.
“Okay,” she said. “You don’t have to have a religion. Do you know what I believe?” She paused, then continued, though the boy didn’t press her. “I believe that God had a son named Jesus, and He came to die on a cross for us because He loves us. And I love you.”
It was a simple statement of faith, a simple declaration of love, but I could tell there was absolute sincerity behind the words. I found myself wondering how often the boy heard those words from his own mother. Likely not often enough. I felt a slight wave of shame pass through me as I realized that I’m not sure it would ever occur to me to say those words to a kid who wasn’t my own.
The coordinator continued. “I know you’ve had a hard life. I don’t even know everything about what you’ve had to go through.” She offered a few more words of gentle acknowledgment. Then, artfully, she switched subjects. She mentioned her sister, whom she called “one of her favorite people in the world,” and showed the boy some pictures of her on her phone.
After a moment, the boy at last spoke up again. “She looks a lot like you.”
The coordinator laughed—really laughed. “She does, doesn’t she?”
She eased him back into easy conversation, talking about unicorns and vacuums and the collection of Target bird figurines that lined her desk, until all the red was gone from the boy’s cheeks and he became as chatty as I’d ever known him to be. Then she gently shooed him outside into the temperate Autumn sun.
Wonderstruck, I watched the boy jogging towards a group of kids, then glanced back at my supervisor. She had already returned to her work as if nothing significant had just happened. But for all I knew, her patience, kindness, and quick thinking could have saved the student from a period of disbelief in our Creator, from a pit of loneliness and existential despair that no fifth grader should have to experience.
How many conversations like the one I had just witnessed were daily held within these walls, out under the live oak trees? I wondered. For a few minutes, all I could think was: What a blessing for that boy—for all the kids here—to have a place where he can have healthy, edifying discussions like that. And that thought led to: What a blessing is good education—both inside and outside the classroom—and kind adults who love all children as if they were their own.
God works in small ways. He works in strange ways—especially when it comes to kids. The thing was, that conversation had nothing to do with the fact that the boy happened to be at school. He could just as easily have said “I don’t believe in God” in a grocery store or a restaurant or to someone who wouldn’t care. But he did say it at school, and he said it not to me—thank God—but to someone who was capable of responding in just the right way. He said to someone who reminded him of a greater truth, patted his back, and sent him back out into the world—to join his friends, to try again. To finish the day.
I think I will always remember those ten minutes—that conversation that I wasn’t even part of—as a shining example both of what pain children are capable of feeling and of what hope and comfort we adults are capable of offering them. I want to be like my supervisor. Like her, I want to be a person in whom distraught children can confide, a person who can provide them with words of hope and redirect their sad eyes towards better, brighter things. It makes me think of a quote I once saw on a brochure—of all places—from church leader Saint Theophan the Recluse. It read simply: “Of all works, the education of children is the most holy.”
I always thought the quote was beautiful, but I feel like I understand it better now. I suspect that Theophan—rightly, I think—conceived of “education” as something much more expansive than mere “book learning,” and of educational settings that transcend the confines of a common classroom. The Truth of God can be found in any place, from the mouth of any person—in the pages of Scripture or in a tiny school vestibule.
Featured image by Freepik
When she's not busy college-student-ing, Havalah enjoys drawing, sewing, and pondering the meaning of that hopeful C. S. Lewis quote,
"How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints."
- The Boy at the Front Desk - January 1, 2024
- Ice Cream Sky - April 5, 2023
Your capacity for memory is astonishing. If I’d been the one to hear that conversation, I probably wouldn’t have been able to recall it to that level of detail.
This is a lovely story, though; thank you for committing it to writing and sharing it with the world. I think the most phenomenal thing about this story is your supervisor’s simple credal statement. It’s a mere declaration, with no evidential clauses attached, and yet it is not any less impactful, I’m sure; especially for a child. The kid didn’t need to know all the arguments for the existence of God and the historic resurrection of Jesus Christ. He just needed to know the Father and feel His love, conveyed through the hands and feet of Christ. Your supervisor planted a seed in that kid’s heart, and we might not see the end result for years.
A seed that dies in the earth may yet be raised to life eternal.