Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Tributes and Carnivals and Miracles, Oh My

I'm doing this. How about we ALL do it?

The new Carnival of Education is up. How about we all click here and go catch up on all the educational doings that so drastically affect our children's lives?

My new classes? So far, so good. My first impression is that I have lucked into six classes of lovely people. My youngest? 17. My oldest? 64.

On Monday afternoon, a lady handed me her assignment and said, with tears of pride in her eyes, "This is my first college class and this is my first piece of college work." She is in her early forties, and is taking classes while she's laid off from the factory job she's held since she was eighteen years old. She is worried that she's "not smart enough" to do it, but I am here to tell you that she most certainly IS smart enough. She will be a wonderful asset to the class.

Yesterday, a younger student asked, with a different sort of tears in her eyes, if she could wait inside the building until her ride drove up. She's being stalked by a man and is only just out of the hospital because last week, he caught up with her. She showed me her back and her neck. Her ride was late and she was frantic.

This young woman has also reinforced my belief in miracles.

All she did, really, was ask if she could use my cell phone to see why her ride was late.

I had turned my phone off because the battery was almost dead, and I told her that she could certainly try to use it but I wasn't sure there was enough power left to even turn the thing on. I also told her that cell phones didn't work inside the building and she'd probably have to walk halfway across the parking lot to get a signal. I told her that she was welcome to give it a try but I doubted there was enough power left in the phone even if she COULD get a signal inside.

The miracle? She was able to get a signal INSIDE THE BUILDING where nobody had ever been able to get a cell phone signal before, and there was just enough battery power left in the phone for her to make contact with her ride.

She thanked me and left to stand in the lobby.

I tried to call Hub on that phone and it went dead in my hand.

I know that a cell phone isn't what most people would think of when they think of a miracle, but miracles in modern times will concern modern things.

I believe that the dead battery in that phone worked for this girl because she needed that phone to work for her. I believe that this girl was able to get a signal inside the building because she needed to get a signal inside the building.

These two small things gave her security and reassurance, and her tears dried up.

I held that cheap little phone in my hands and stared at it in wonder.