Differences

“let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” –Gal. 6:9

Part of my job that I really enjoy is getting to watch the infinite variety of children in our school. As people, we have much in common: our humanity, our homo sapien-ness, our biological make-up that makes medical books possible. But leaving that behind, we are as different as snowflakes. Even within the same family, it does not take long before parents begin questioning the origins of their offspring. “How could this child have sprung from our loins?”

I see ‘bouncy tiggers’ that were born into sedate homes. Intellectual types give birth to athletes. A musician emerges from a non-musical family. I marveled the other day at the flexibility of a youngster who could not sit in a chair without sitting on one foot or the other or both. It was as natural and compulsive as could be for this bright student while everyone else sat in comfortable conformity. To force either the one or the group at large to exchange their posture for the other would be excruciating torture.

I watched a young boy work a math sheet the other day and his rate of speed was exceedingly slow. It made an expediter like myself want to grab the pencil from him and race across the page. The teacher assured me that he was bright and fully able to handle all his math facts. But he was never one to be in a hurry. That can be so frustrating to parents who like to move quickly, racing from one job to the next.

One parent has commented repeatedly how one of their two children will quickly report any infraction of the rules he may have committed while the other one is impetuously breaking the rules and quite willing to cover it up. The one is a dedicated, task-oriented, first-born people pleaser. The other is a free spirit that soars quite often into places it should not go, fearless of the consequences.

The moral is that we cannot be held responsible for the children we bring into the world in any sense of personality, ability, temperament, or handicap. They are who they are. Some will write with perfect script from day one and others will fight legibility issues all their lives. Some will never be able to dribble a basketball and others exhibit the skill with no coaching whatsoever. The variety and genetic surprises are never-ending.

While we cannot control who they are from birth, we can shape their character. In fact, that is one thing which often characterizes a whole family. Your kids may all exhibit different giftedness, but I am always impressed by the character that children mimic in the same home. That kind of talk always makes parents nervous for they well know that their children are fully capable of embarrassing the family name at any one point in time. I have stories to tell as well as anyone. But to know your families over time, to be with your children day after day, to see them struggle and triumph in little different ways, I am pleased to say, is to see Godly homes and young lives being carefully built, line upon line, stone upon stone.

I grieve when I see beautiful and gifted children crash and burn as young adults for lack of Godly character. And I marvel at seeing children who are average in every way go on to build solid and productive lives because of the Christ-like character formed within them. The secret is not in the cards we are dealt but how we play them. Trite truth? Perhaps, but it is also a fountain of hope for all because the race is not to the swift, or the beautiful, or the rich and famous. Keep up the good work.