You can be as close as to being perfectly good but, still, does not the bad and the ugly around feel the need to take you down, seeing and feeling you as a threat to their existence?
If there can be no good, will not the bad and the ugly win?
Contrarily, in the side of light, will not the bad and the ugly continuously be at work to try and ever gain victory just as long as the good remains?
When the world has you under attack in heart, mind, body, and spirit, you must be reminded of those, even if very few, who saw good in you before you understood the importance to withhold and protect such character.
I wore special earrings last week for several days, very dear ones to my heart.
My husband knows the story to these earrings and whenever I choose to wear them aside from all the pairs he has bought me throughout the years, there is a silent understanding that it is more of a need rather than just a want to put them on.
They were given to me before any pair my husband ever did.
They are from one that I must accept in my heart I will never see again.
Her name was Ester, one of the lunch ladies at Franklin High School I attended throughout my blessed high school life.
One day, Bolten, our security guard, came to my first period class to excuse me, noting I was requested to head down to the cafeteria.
It was the last half of my second semester senior year and so, four years of getting to know staff and teachers, there is this ease and comfort whenever one just happens to pop in to a classroom.
My classes perhaps served to be the silly but non-threatening students, those who, for instance, found it entertainingly necessary to glue a penny on the floor at the front entrance of our math teacher’s door (Adam and Joel), giggling with pure satisfaction as they watched from the corner of the hallway our teacher trying to pry the penny off several times. Even Mr. Bender had to chuckle at that one.
Hence, when Bolten stood at our classroom door entrance, tucking his thumbs into each front side of his pants belt as his keys jingled to announce his presence, the room didn’t stop. We all just continued to settle in before class officially commenced.
I had already seated myself as my long time high school classmates such as Bret and Geoff were finding their own seats around me.
As the normal talks were chanting away into my ears, I got to watch Bolten just stand there at the door, just taking a moment to gaze upon the room with his gentle smile.
Perhaps my non-responsiveness to those around me drew their eyes to Bolten as well.
I had just arrived, myself, as even though my home was only a mile walk away from our school, I somehow was never in a rush.
Having settled in and being on time, ahead of others that morning, that very day had already begun to a peaceful start.
Making first period just in time, I had not stopped by to get breakfast and just wondered if Bolten had seen me come in just now.
Perhaps he kindly and thoughtfully got accustomed to me going into the cafeteria after others to get something to eat.
With me having made no such ask, it was a unique request I head down as all students had already settled to their seats, class clearly at its brink to begin.
Too early to think or question, I could only get up to follow Bolten out of the room.
I believe he asked me if I had anything to eat with me responding I was fine, eliminating my conjecture this would have anything to do with me missing breakfast.
As I started to get closer down to the several cafeteria doors, I began to think that there was help perhaps needed since I have stepped out of line at times to serve during lunch.
Although I could see the gentle smile on Bolten’s face still plastered, it was still too early to start any further conversation with him so I just continued to walk with him as he opened and then, held, the closest door to the kitchen for me to enter in.
As all were in class, I arrived to our cafeteria, ornate with high ceilings and Greek architecture. In its quietness, there was nothing to hold me back from quietly gazing at its beauty. I have always loved that room.
Bolten had continued to walk toward the kitchen sector where he then proceeded to open the door entrance towards where the lunch lines would eventually fill up again with gathering, hungry students in just a couple of hours.
Thinking I was right but now wondering why so early the need, I took the cue to continue to follow Bolten inside the corridors toward the inner part of the kitchen area.
The lunch ladies were there and immediately, as they took note of me walking in, one headed to the further back of the kitchen to call out Ester.
There she was, as I will always remember her- Ester, with her grayish-white curls tucked neatly beneath her signature hair net, wiping her slender peachy hands arrayed with light, aging spots on her apron.
She was such an inspirationally, elderly slender lady, with a remarkably swift and strong balance to her hard-working nature.
I could see from the angle of where I had been standing, she had quickly hurried out to join the rest- all now looking at me with Bolten just standing a few feet to my side, his innumerable keys still jingling in my ears to this day.
I never get to see the lunch ladies this calm and peaceful. It was a treat to get to see them all standing there instead of being in their usual hustle and bustle movements during the craze of all hangry students coming through.
Standing there, I realize that although they had just finished breakfast, they were all well into their routine already to get lunch prepared next.
Ester always looked the busiest. All could be walking around the kitchen to and fro at a normal pace. There would be Ester, moving faster than the rest, quickly carrying a tray with oven mitts if not rushing off to get another one.
This moment, however, after I saw a glimpse of her usual rapid movement as she walked out from the back kitchen, she stopped and looked at me with a smile.
She had this ever-so-gracious grin on her face, as if she was holding back from deep excitement, clearly knowing something with the rest I did not.
Having been fixated on everyone’s gathering around, I hadn’t noticed at first that Ester had taken something out from the back that she now held in her hand, a small jewelry box.
As everyone stood to watch, she asked me to open the box now at the palm of my hand.
Before I continue, I want you to know that I recall being ashamed and afraid at the same time to do as she requested.
I didn’t want to open the box handed me, even as I watched it being placed so eagerly on my hand by Ester.
Why? You ask.
I felt unworthy of whatever would be inside.
“Oh, why did she get me something?!” I shamefully thought to myself as I began to feel extreme timidity overcome me.
Whatever I would open to, there would be no expression or gesture I knew I would be able to give to equate to such, what I truly felt, unworthy of me to receive.
I believe it was Bolten who I heard say, “Well, go on now! Open it.” as I came back to my senses and carefully did just that.
They were my birthstone earrings I am wearing today, given to me before all those pairs of eyes including Bolten, by Ester.
I gave Ester my thanks. I pray I remembered to give her a hug but inaffectionate as I was then, I ask additional forgiveness that I might have even forgotten this simple expression of gratitude.
I was unworthy of Ester’s good heart along with the brief moment the other lunch ladies and Bolten gave me of their time to see me open that box they all probably knew about before me.
They saw and thus, believed, something in me that was beyond my acknowledgement of myself then.
They not only saw but believed something good in me.
I was helpful. Perhaps I was respectful above average of my peers.
Would that guarantee me as one worthy to be purely good for life, however?
No. Trials and tribulations test out the level and tenacity of one’s goodness.
Ester would know nothing of what I would become or if I were to create any positive impact in this world.
How could she? She could only simply gamble her own earnings on me for what she believed. She had faith in me. A lunch lady.
That gamble on every child sowed upon that the fruit believed to be good is and will actually remain good inside.
I envision her seeing me as a mother, wife, and teacher now.
Would you believe that since that time, I had probably only put on those pair of earrings perhaps every five years, if not, every ten, partly afraid to lose it, mostly because I still felt unworthy to put them on?
Ester placed her bet on me. Harsh and forthright to address her kind gesture upon myself as so but nonetheless, she chose to spend her hard-earned wage on me.
How could I ever think to let her or any few that have believed in me, down?
Goodness within must only be refined in time to where someone like Ester, I can only hope, would see me wearing the birthstone earrings she gave me so many years ago and smile.
She could have bought herself several pairs of shoes or a new coat. Why, instead, did she think to acknowledge me with a such a loving gift?
My goodness must not only continue to suggest of being worthy but work toward having earned such belief in me each day.
Being a parent of five and a teacher of many who have come my way, I can only tell you I understand what I am saying beyond perhaps I am able to convey.
You see, you look at a child and see all of what they can become. As much as you’d like to believe every child holds the same potential in heart, mind, body, and spirit, believing in each of them to be amazing and to do amazing things, the good, the bad, and the ugly plays in front of you over and over, one remake at a time.
Once in a while, you have one that stands out. That one.
Whether Ester believed I was that one or not, she surely gave me the impression I was to be that one worthy of her time and treasure.
I didn’t want to be that one.
I feared to think anyone would go as to subliminally suggest I was anything close to being that one.
That responsibility to bear- I silently feared it.
Ester was well past her retirement age, looking to have been the oldest out of all the ladies who served each day. Thus, the earrings she gave me represented indebtedness.
Why me? How could I ever repay?
Fifty years I am, over thirty years since that time I first opened to find these earrings graciously given to be mine, and in confession, I finally have reached worthiness to wear them without fear or guilt.
No. Not because I have finally claimed myself to be that one but instead, when I actually woke up one day to feel a must to have them on, I needed to be reminded of such invested belief in me.
The bad and the ugly nag at my heart, at my mind, at my body, and at my spirit, to a point where having the earrings on just one day was not enough last week.
I believe I had them on for three days straight (possibly more times total than all the years I’ve had them) before I felt steady enough to go bare again.
Sometimes our armor is a belt of truth, shoes of peace, shield of faith, a helmet of salvation, and a sword of the Spirit but when you can’t even carry around a sling shot with stones in your pocket under professional and domestic circumstance, you remember you have angels instead.
To one of my rarest regret, I stopped going to the cafeteria in the mornings, even when Bolten would so kindly let me in at times breakfast had already stopped being served to all other students.
I stopped going to the cafeteria for lunch, choosing instead, to dodge it altogether.
Worst of all, I stopped going to the cafeteria to see if I could help serve the line of students.
I completely stopped going to the cafeteria after receiving those pair of earrings.
Oddly, I had run away from amazing lunch ladies who were left to only wonder what had happened to me.
What had happened to me is that I feared to be inadequately disappointing.
I immaturely handled my feelings of unworthiness by evading those who deemed me as one worthy to gift with their time, kindness, generosity, and, most of all, belief in me.
There is that saying that the best time to leave is when you are at your highest. I did just that- that moment amongst the eyes of the cafeteria ladies and Bolten, I had privately been elevated by those so precious to me to this day.
I couldn’t dare disappoint them- take a chance where I would leave that senior year with regret from any of them that they ever saw anything good in me.
I was that child who only knew how to keep moving forward and never look back.
Perhaps I am that child still.
They perhaps would or did hear that I spoke at my academy during our private sector graduation or perhaps were present or heard my senior graduation speech, maybe even saw me walking down the aisle with Tiara, our valedictorian.
Maybe I indeed redeemed myself. Maybe I have surpassed the hopes of those long ago who only got to see a glimpse of goodness in me and believed I was only just beginning, sowing and bearing abundant fruit beyond belief.
I’ve got earrings to remind me that when life tries to cast doubt, belief of angels must not be forsaken.
