When my sister Katie was 22, she took a job as a preschool teacher at a Christian church.
She laughed, blithely, as she told me about it in one of our sporadic phone calls. She was in charge of twenty three-year-olds for a full day. Most of her students had not been fully potty trained. She only had an aide once an hour, for bathroom breaks.
She had no teaching experience.
I was nineteen, in college studying English. Had I tried to describe one of the circles of hell back then, I might have described my sister’s job. Children scared me. Little children especially: their noises, their abundant need, their unexpected screams.
Their aching, horrible vulnerability.
The reason children terrified me was because as a child I had sworn, over and over, that I would not forget what it was like. I was afraid of children because I was afraid of how I might hurt them if I lost control….
I learn so much from my sister’s headlong pursuit of wholeness. Won’t you join me over at SheLoves to learn with me?
The parable of the succulent