Guts

At our spring retreat this week I had an amazing experience that left me speechless. It's a good thing to share these moments and so I will do so now.

We had a chapel session at the retreat to end things off and a student came up to me and asked if she could speak with me. At the beginning of the year I had some definite trouble with this student, showing up late, not handing assignments in, talking in class, attitude etc. And they definitely caused me some frustration in class. Anyway, the student comes up to me and tries to begin their sentence but before they can start they begins to cry. And just said, "Ms.Bennett...I just wanted to apologize for this year. I feel like i have been very disrespectful and said disrespectful things and treated you poorly and I feel like God is really weighing it on my heart to tell you this right now. So I'm sorry." And they're crying and I'm sitting here thinking...."weird, I didn't realize I would ever get an apology for something like that." and i didn't know what to do. it's not very often that we confess things to each other.

it took a lot of courage to do it. i don't know if i would have had enough courage and humility to do that when I was 17. it made me want to do it more, to be big enough and humble enough to tell people that I have messed up and to seek their forgiveness.

so i don't have a funny story but to me this was an amazing thing. a little apology that i think is worth posting. taught me a good lesson. and also taught me that I don't know how to let people ask me for forgiveness, even that was humbling. i worry that it is something that is so foreign to me and to my experience, confession and forgiveness to another human being. especially when it is so fundamental to our beliefs. i have had a few times where i have confessed things to a friend. sometimes it has gone really rough and took years to fix, and sometimes it has been an amazingly freeing thing. either way i think being honest was the right thing to do. it heals both the sinner and the one sinned against.
so on wednedsay through tears and broken pride i experienced grace from a student. it left me with nothing to say. it was a strangely beautiful thing.