Choosing grace: YPA

There's this kid that's fourteen years old, just over six feet tall, whose body releases growth hormone at a faster pace than his peers, and as a result he has poor muscle development.  His muscles can't keep up with his growth so he is left weaker than his peers.  He walks everywhere, but he walks as an older feeble person may walk, taking stairs one at a time, slowly.  Holding up the whole line behind him kind of slow.

There's another kid, a would be popular kid, his peer, that loves the first kid dearly, and so he helps him every day and every time they must take the stairs.  This kid holds his arm out and supports his friend and offers a steady, stable balance for the first kid. 

It's beautiful to watch. 

There's also a kid in a wheelchair with limited body movement.  Pinching a bite of food and moving it to his mouth can be called labor.  Yet he does it.  Every meal.  He could just get his shadow to feed him everything.  But he chooses to labor for himself when at all possible.  As a tool to help him get around, he rides in a motorized scooter, and since he's eleven, it's a pretty cool thing to own.  Every day before lunch he rides his scooter in the gym in circles as fast as he can go, entertaining the detention kids with his tricks.  They clap for him if the other teachers aren't paying attention. 

I stuggle to decide between public, private, and homeschool.  I mentally second guess our decisions for our kids' education.  This school has lots of problems that accompany its newness and its lack of funding.  But what I love about it is that the school's shortcomings have not translated into lack of grace among the students.  Mixed in with the normal population is the understanding that each person present is socially acceptable.  Each and every one.  It's a matter of choice, of these students choosing to extend grace to each other and therefore accepting each other.  Of offering the opportunity for joy in place of fear.  Just grace.  It seems small, but it makes all the difference.

Again, it's beautiful to watch.

And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

Matthew 25:40