Halfway through my first grade school year, my parents and I moved from New York to Lancaster, PA.
I was excited about the move at first, but I soon began to miss our old neighborhood. I missed all of the family and friends who used to live so close by, and I especially missed my half-sisters.
I also discovered that my new classmates couldn’t understand my supposed “accent.” When I spoke to them, they’d look at each other, shrug, and then skip away. When I followed, they'd inform me that only kids who spoke English could play with them. I argued that I was speaking English “poyfictly,” but they didn’t buy it.
One day at recess, my teacher took my hand, pulled me up from the curb, and brought me to the guidance counselor’s office. There, I sat across a big wooden desk from a lady in a periwinkle suit and answered her questions about why I “looked so sad.”
At the end of our session, she handed me a little monster made of a fuzzy pom-pom with glued-on googly eyes and felt feet.
“Now don’t you feel better?” she asked.
I didn’t. But I nodded anyway.
I continued seeing the lady in the funny-colored suits day after day, until I had a whole troupe of googly-eyed monsters stuffed into my desk. I wanted to explain to my classroom teacher that the guidance sessions weren’t working, but I didn’t have the confidence to speak up.
So instead, I wrote a story.
I titled my confession, “The Ugly Butterfly.” It was short and sweet. The heroine flew away to a new garden and didn’t fit in with any of the bugs there. She was sad until she made new friends. The End.
When I handed the story to my teacher, she read it with tears in her eyes. Then she asked me to describe why I was having a hard time fitting in.
“Awl da kids say dey don’ undastan’ me when I tawlk,” I explained. “An’ nobody wansta play wit me.”
“Well, we can do something about that,” she assured. “We’re going to work on that together.”
Through the rest of the school year, my teacher coached me to listen carefully to her enunciation as she spoke. She asked me to read aloud and try to pronounce all the consonants in every word.
By second grade, I spoke like a Lancaster County native, more or less. I learned that frankfurters were now hotdogs, johnny pumps were fire hydrants, and shoo fly pie tastes much better than it sounds. Making friends became a lot easier, and I felt eternally grateful to my first-grade teacher.
Sometimes a googly-eyed monster just won’t cut it. Band-Aid solutions won’t make an impact if they don’t address the heart of the matter. Grown-up bandages often come in the form of those behaviors or substances that seemingly help ease our troubles... at least temporarily. Some examples that come to mind are excessive shopping, vegging in front of the TV, or abusing addictive substances. My personal bandage of choice is avoidance napping (see my post on that).
Thankfully, we serve a God who knows us inside and out (see Psalm 139). He waits for us to bring our anxious thoughts, and He offers peace beyond understanding in return (see Philippians 4:6-7). Through His Word, His Spirit, and Christian community, we can find true healing and wholeness.
At times we each feel a bit like ugly butterflies, fluttering around seeking peace. If you can identify with that feeling today, I pray that you’ll find the courage to forego the Band-Aids and place your trust in our loving Savior's leading.
