Hard Lessons from 2020

Years ago when I was new to teaching, I taught about 30 students from Bulgaria, Pakistan, India, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Honduras who did not know any English. This was during the late 90s in Beaumont, Texas. I spoke a little Spanish and a little French. That was it. My job was to teach them English, Reading, and Social Studies so they could pass a state-mandated test in English which would demonstrate their content knowledge. It was a tall order, and I knew it would require more than classroom time; it would require their family cooperation as well.

So I wrote down their addresses, pulled out a Rand McNally, and marked every address on that map. For several evenings after work, I got in my car with map, notes, and translations in hand. I went neighborhood to neighborhood, house to house, door to door. I got lost in unfamiliar neighborhoods in the dark. I took wrong turns and ended up on dead-end streets. I walked up to fences with barking dogs and approached houses with barred windows. I knocked on doors, unbidden, uninvited, and unknown to them. I explained with school papers, my name, who I was. I had memorized a few friendly words in each language. I sat down in their living rooms, on their stools, chairs, and couches. We looked at each other and laughed awkwardly. I tried to explain the test and how important it was to practice English at home and what they’d need to do to be prepared. Sometimes they seemed to understand; sometimes they just nodded and smiled.

In return? They fed me. They thanked me. They bowed to me. (!) They sent homemade food from their various cultures for my lunches. They asked me to be the godmother at their daughter’s Quinceañera. There was one dad from Pakistan who ran a convenience store. Every time I went into that store, he came out from behind the register and clasped my hand with both of his. He refused to ring up my drinks. His wife bowed to me in the grocery store.

Loving beyond our fears is the biggest favor we can do for ourselves. When we limit whom we love and interact with based on skin color, race, language, religion, we imprison our own hearts.

Before I became a new mom, I could not imagine that burst of explosive love, totally new and completely different from other kinds of love. Some moms compare seeing your newborn to seeing God: whole, pure, perfect, and miraculous. When I walked past my fears and opened that door and shared a meal with people from different backgrounds, races, and religions, I learned the author of humanity is in all of humanity. With their broken English, I saw fear dissipate, love beam, and hearts burst.

This quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry has been popping up in my head and heart all week. “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” 

Looking with our hearts means looking past our invisible bars and looking past some story we think we know. If we only allow only what we already know, how can we comprehend the unprecedented joy of holding a newborn, the unexpected delight in laughing without language, or the sublime clarity of seeing the author of humanity in the most glorious of skin tones?

If we only go where we’ve been before, how will we know how big our hearts can grow? If we limit our hearts, how do we love like God? There is so much more we can do – but all growth takes place out of its comfort zone.

There is no breath left for George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor – no running, no medical assistance, no more generosity of spirit to offer the world that we have failed to protect.

We must move from our confined hearts into their breathing spaces. We must knock, sit, stay, listen, love hearts we haven’t honored, stories we haven’t heard, experiences we haven’t shared.

2020 requires us to move out of our comfort zones, to run and breathe and love as if God actually depended on us to do His work, be His feet, speak His words.

2020, you are a hard lesson. You are a painful lesson. But you are the lesson we need.

We can do better.

We can be better.

We can love better.

We must.