The Power of Love

About a month ago, I had an life-changing revelation in my P.E. class. Or maybe it could be labeled as one more log on the burning fire God has placed inside me, but ever since then, something inside me just screams "More!"

Everyone knows that the environment of the Physical Education department in most school has extreme potential for damage in the lives of young souls- as soon as we enter the gym, somehow we forget that yes, we are still people, not animals running after our prey. There is a girl in my PE class who was born with a weak heart or too early or something and so is quite obviously at a serious disadvantage to those who were born with the runner's gene, but she has the most beautiful spirit, soaring, laughing; many a time our good locker-room laughs come from her ability to laugh at herself. M y heart goes out to her need for love and acceptance and she encourages me to love despite the inability of others to earn it.

This incident a month or so ago involved this girl and the game of pickle-ball. Great stuff. We were playing pairs and this beautiful sweet girl fell victim to the last-picked-syndrome and was paired with a person who only chose to be her partner out of pity and probably some amount of guilt and did not try very hard to conceal it. As my pair and I played against my young friend and her muttering partner, I noticed that he was very upset about the circumstances. He made note to us that we ought to change the rules in order to allow their team a few points, something i didn't mind as far as the competition, but it broke my heart to see the feelings of a person be put behind the points of a game that won't even matter in 10 or at the latest, 20 minutes.

It really got me to thinking. When I am in PE class, I have little to gain in terms of athletic stature or olympic fame, but I have the most amazing opportunity to communicate to my classmates their worth regardless of thier ability to rake in the points. How do we as human beings miss this point so severly? sin, i suppose.

In the past few months I have just begun to understand a tiny peice of the depth of God's love. It wasn't really something I paid attention to that much in the past. yeah, yeah, God loves me. duh. read it. got it. lets move on to the really concrete stuff that I can put on my resume. But as I begin to pay attention to this thing that really makes my heart beat, the more i find that this is really the whole point.

In the end, God doesn't care how many pickle-ball points I make, but he does care about the soul of my friend which is damaged a little more each time she is reduced to less of them. I confess, i did not choose to play pairs with my disadvantaged friend becuase I wanted to enjoy the victory instead of her company. Unfortunately, her partner was also missing the most vital peice to his game- the opportunity to know love manifested in another person, even as such a strange place as the pickleball court.

As I begin to contemplate what to write for yet another college essay, I thought about my internship teaching art and the kind of teacher i want to be if this is the road God wants to take my down, and I kept coming back to the fact that so many kids get taught crap they don't care about by people who think they are doing these students a favor by maintaining their sense of worth in what they do. Specifically as an art teacher, i think the art classroom is the scariest place to be for a student, especially an insecure one, to be. As a person who finds art to be second-nature, you will probably find it surprising to know that I know this fear becuase it is very much mine- being an art student under the direction of an unaccepting teacher is tedious ground. I want to be a teacher who teachs with a love that "drives out all fear." I want to be a PE student that plays basketball with a love that "drives out all fear."

What a broken world we must live in where people must deny their deepest longing for love in hope that they can score enough points on the pickleball court in order to fill it somehow.

Abba, thank you for Hannah. Thank you for making her the way you did for a purpose and thank you for making part of that purpose be for me. Make me into a person who understands your perfect love that drives out all fear and use me to pour out that fearless love on those I teach and those I play against in PE.