Once a week I go and observe a 5th grade classroom at Mark Twain Elementary. While I'm only with my students for a short time. I have learned to love them each so much already. They are just such a great group of kids. There's Michael T., who has diabetes, and is constantly looking for and noticing how many sugars and carbs are in everything, even food that he isn't eating. There's Trevor, who has had a very rough home life, his mom is a meth cook, his dad is a leader of a gang in Tulsa. He told Mrs. Morgan that while his dad's gang robs stores in Tulsa, his job is to stand outside and be a lookout. Yet, Trevor is usually pretty happy. I think the resiliency in kids is incredible.
Which brings me to the topic of this post. Kids can teach us such valuable lessons I think. Their purity and love for life is incredible to me. But it's their simple-mindedness that I think we can learn from. They are so straight-forward and don't feel the need to make thinks so complex. Every morning, the fifth graders have journal time. They each pull out their journals and basically just free-write for a few minutes. They aren't restricted on what they can write about so as you can imagine some of the entries get pretty crazy.
As I was walking around the room, I noticed one girl, Trinity, was particularly smiley. She looked almost giddy as she wrote in her journal. I decided that I wanted to see what was so funny, so I casually walked around behind her to read over her shoulder. "Dear Mya," it started. It drew my interest because there was a girl in the class named Mya. I almost said something about how she needed to not be writing notes, but I decided hey, it's free writing, let her carry on. So I continued reading instead, "Michael H is my future husband. He's so smart and funny. We're going to get married."
I smiled and moved on to the next journal. I didn't really give it much more thought until later in the day. Recently, I've been thinking about it even more. Why do adults make relationships so complicated? I think much can be learned from Trinity. Now, i know the chances of Trinity and Michael actually getting married are next to none, but still. I think she knows what she wants from her future husband already. She wants someone smart, who makes her laugh. That's so simple. Adults request so much more. We want someone with money, or someone who has a college degree, or someone who doesn't like onions. Why can't it be more simple?
I think this has been on my mind because I realize how much I expect out of people. Especially Lucas. I know that I am usually asking for too much, but for some reason I continue asking for too much, and then getting disappointed. The reason I fell in love with Lucas isn't that much different than Trinity's love for Michael. Lucas is smart, he makes me laugh, he cares about me, and he cares about God. These are the things that are most important to me and so I'm going to try to step back and see those things in him, instead of continually asking for more.
I don't really know if that makes any sense. Possibly not. But to me it does. And to me, it was a good reminder of what is important to me in my relationship with Lucas.
-Kristina
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