I just heard from the best math teacher I ever had, Hazel Struby. She was googling and found a devotional I wrote. In her honor, I'll copy and paste another.
When One Person Cares
All the pieces for a disastrous fourth grade experience were there for me.
My appearance - only a Mother could love (since she pretty much decided how I'd look) that geeky boy with glasses, wierd wavy hair and hand me down clothes.
My point of origin - we were new in the community, just having moved out from the city into a rural area.
My timing - it's better to be new when everyone else is too. We didn't move until a month into the 4th grade. So everyone had picked their friends and the new had worn off everyone - except me.
My personality - didn't have one. I did though have horrible allergies that would cause me to break out into hives that made my skin look like a 3-D map of the world, swell my lip up until it turned inside out, and cause my eyes to close.
So if you were looking for someone to pick on, I was your huckleberry.
All those factors were crushed by one person's care. My home room teacher, Mrs. Pyles cared about me.
Somehow, without ever raising her voice, or making me a teacher's pet, she helped me find a place there, helped me when my allergies took hold, just helped me. She was only one person. But she was more than enough.
Later, much later, I was stuck in a dead end job, having thrown away my chance to get a college degree. I had bills, a young family, and a crushing need to do better. But it had been so long since I was in high school, I knew there was no way I could pass Math.
That was before I met Hazel Struby. She was a math teacher who would not allow me to fail. Shoot - she wouldn't allow me to make a B.
On the eve of back to school frenzy across the street at Valparaiso Elementary tomorrow, I think about those teachers God placed in my life at just the right time and just the right place to do for me what no one else could have done.
Friend, you'll never convince me God doesn't care.
Thing is, He works best through people.
You might be the one He's chosen for someone.
Or someone you know might have been placed within your circle of people just for you.
I'll never be able to repay everyone who has helped me.
But I know Who to thank. When I look back, I feel like this:
2 Samuel 22:24 (Msg)
I feel put back together,
and I'm watching my step.
God rewrote the text of my life
when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.
Do this for me today - open the book of your heart to God's eyes. Maybe there's a secret hurt, an unfulfilled longing that you've suffered for too long. If you give it to your loving Father, He'll take the fragments of your life story and rewrite it into His masterpiece.
When one person cares, it makes a difference. When that person is God, He makes all the difference - forever.
Grace!
David
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