In PAUs throughout the central part of Los Angeles County, I encountered different types of people. As a substitute teacher, I was resigned to doing as little as possible yet driving as far as possible. I just did not want to settle into a job that I felt conflicted about from the moment that I walked into the room.
Throughout the earlier part of the year, I found that I was getting used to being in my own skin once again. I stopped spending so much time looking over my shoulder trying to make sense of what I was doing in this world. For so long, I was cruising under a lot of stress and strain, not sure what I was doing or where I was going because I had no peace within myself, so convinced was I that I could not settled down and receive any peace until all the other fires burning in my life had been put out first. Of course, trials and tensions produce fires in their own due course, no matter how hard any one of us attempts to make due to do our best to outdo the problems that attempt to do us in.
The one class where I worked a few times meeting the same people – an emotionally disturbed class in Lynwood, had an interesting assortment of people.
One lady refused to do all but what she was contractually obligated to do. She was in deep with the union, and thus refused to be put to work doing things that were not clearly outlined in her contract.
Don't get me wrong — she worked really hard, but she took as much time as she could to complain about other people, including the teacher she worked with, whom I was covering for that day.
Another lady was a real team player, the type who worked with students after school. She liked putting together fun activities for students to participate in.
The third lady was a svelte young person who liked to cook, liked to bake, and loved to share all the good things that she made with the staff. She was a substitute paraeducator, but she treated every job as if she were the full-time staff member.
Then there was Sandra. She was a larger lady, a mother and a grandmother who loved sparring with the union lady for fun. They loved making fun of each other, giving each other a hard time. Yet Sandra in many ways had also failed to grow up.
She had been married four times, "she had worn that T-shirt" she liked to admit. She was still taking unemployment pay for her time. She loved referring to trite phrases to express herself, like "are you clowning on me?" and other weird phrases. She was supposed to be a grandmother, but she still complained about the abuse that she had suffered as a child, complaining about the pain of a mother who had abused her when she was young, then telling her to wash her face.
Once, I pointed at her because I agreed with a point that she had made, then she snapped at m: "Don't go pointing at me like that!" she exclaimed. I told her not to take it personally, to which she admitted: "When you point at me like that, it reminds me of my mother, when she used to scold me." Then she would tell us again how she was abused as a kid and did not realize until recently how abused she was as a kid.
I can relate to these discoveries, but I must also add that life is more than reliving the pains of yesterday. There is no excuse whatsoever for continuing to blame our present on a past which for all purposes exists solely in our mind. The world, our experience, our lives are greater than a collection of recollections in the back of our minds. Sandra had not learned this, sadly, yet here she was teaching children, still talking about all that God had done for her, praising Jesus for His love for her, yet still talking about God as if He played but a minor role in our lives.
Sandra needed a savior for every day, not just for eternity, one who respected her as more than one speck of sand on the seashore. She was good with kids, no doubt about it. But the students that she and I ended up working with toward the end of the year suffered with the greatest degree of multiple disabilities. Most of the time we were talking and singing with them, but they could not say anything back, even if they wanted to. Most of the day in those classes, I would sit and tell a story or two, sing some songs, then we would serve the students their breakfast and lunch. Those days were some of the lowest and slowest points in my life, more likely designed for women who had already raised children and missed the daily challenges and joys of raising children once again.
That was not me.
Sandra may have been living in the past, but she was present to those young people, no matter how deficient they may have been. I only hope that she received enough grace in her life to rest in New Life as opposed to the old way of trying to get by, crying about what parents had done to er, instead of rejoicing in the love of her real Father in Heaven.