 |
| You are never alone even when you think you are |
“That’s $4.00,” she said. I gave her the money and took a seat at
my favorite table.
Once seated, I unpacked my schoolbooks and set them on the table. As I
reached down to get my laptop out of my bag, I saw a pair of black dress shoes
scurry past me. A scrap of paper floated down and landed beside my bag.
“Excuse me!” I yelled,
“You dropped something!” But my call was met by the jingling of the bell on the
door. The person had vanished. Curiously, I looked down at the paper in my hand
and unfolded it. I gasped. There in black and white, was my name. Underneath,
tiny words ran across the page. “Thank you. I am better. Really. –Lauren” I
smiled.
That day. Simply another day in the week before
finals. Another day of studying and revising. Another day of hard work.
Lauren and I had decided to meet to study for
our finals at the café. We were
not really close because of our busy schedules, but we often studied together.
As perfectionists and straight-A students, we had a common language and a
mutual respect for each other, despite our different upbringings and viewpoints.
I got A’s because I liked to do my best in everything. For Lauren, however, her
parents pressured her to keep straight grades, fearing failure.
After ordering our coffees,
we settled down in our regular corner, wasting no time to set up our laptops
and notes. We filled in our study guides rapidly, summarizing what we had
already known in a few words, only stopping occasionally to ask a question. As
the shadows grew too long to ignore, we shut our books quietly, mentally
calculating how much we covered.
“Ash, have you ever wondered why?” She broke
the silence, her voice wavering.
“Mmmhmm,” I replied,
still trying to plan my revision tonight.
“Why we study so had for straight grades? They
are just letters on a sheet of paper. Why?” She let out a long breath, letting
the question hang in the air.
I
looked up and closed my eyes briefly, thoughts dashing in and out my little
cabinets.
She steadied her voice and
continued, “Have you ever dreamed of throwing all these grades out of the
window? So that you can just not care about the results for once? Do we not say
that good grades glorify God and that they bring honor to His name? I always
thought that glorifying God meant that others would see His goodness in us and praise
Him. Have you ever noticed how others see us?”
I
nodded, waiting for her to elaborate. “They always say, ‘Hey, could you help me
with this? You always know the answer.’ or my favorite ‘Oh wow, you didn’t get
a high-A either. So I’m okay.’ Really, we are like their standards. A name on a
board. Something to measure up to. But what cost do we pay to get those grades?
Sleepless nights? Ones that force you to escape into another world? Have you ever
had nights in which your thoughts run too fast and you briefly contemplate things? Is this, this fear of failure, all
worth a good grade? Are those scores worth a troubled adolescence?” She trailed
off, lost in her own mind and pain. Pinching herself, she tried to hold back
the tears threatening to fall.
Choking
down her emotions, she questioned, “But where, where is God in all this? Why
doesn’t He comfort me? Does He really understand? Why do I feel that He is so
far away? Don’t we say that He should satisfy all our needs? Where is He?”
With a jerk, she shut
her laptop and stacked it on top of her schoolbooks. “But do you understand? Do
you really?” her voice sank to a
whisper.
“Yes,”
I heard myself saying, and reached over to hold her hand. That tiny word had reignited
the pain I had long buried and nearly forgotten. I had not wanted to relive it,
but to fetch my conclusions.
“I
don’t know how much I told you before,” I started haltingly, “In my darker days
I had wished I wasn’t a straight-A student, and yet. . .”
Words started pouring
out when I stopped thinking about my next sentence. “I think we fear rejection.
We want people to respect us.”
I shrugged, “Who knows?
Maybe good grades would really give us more choices in the future.” She smiled,
encouraging me to go on.
“Perhaps we study hard for
the satisfaction and admiration, at least I do sometimes. Only later do we
realize that we’ve built ourselves onto the pinnacle of a tower. Suddenly, we
fear to fall. Loneliness comes crashing down. But God is always with us. He never
leaves. Never. Even when you feel like He has left. He promised that you will
find Him if you look for Him. When I study, I can feel His pleasure. I know
that He is smiling at me. When I look at the beautiful sunsets and clouds, I
think of His favor upon me. Besides, people change their opinions of us easily,
but God never does. Neither does our reward in heaven rot nor perish.” I stopped
abruptly, suddenly bereft of words. I stared at the wall, holding her hand,
praying in my heart for her.
“Thank
you,” she smiled faintly, “I really have to run now, or I’ll be late for
practice.”
We
put our things away and hugged each other good-bye. “Look up, not down,” I
breathed.
“You too. Take care,”
she said as we parted ways in front of the café, going in opposite directions, weighed
down with our heavy backpacks.
Returning back to
reality with another tinkling of the doorbell, I knew that she would pull out
all the better for it, just as I did. For the rest of my study session, my
heart felt strangely warmed.
