WET PANTS
Come with me to a third grade classroom..... There is a nine-year-old kid sitting at his desk and all of a sudden, there is a puddle between his feet and the front of his pants are wet.
He thinks his heart is going to stop because he cannot possibly imagine how this has happened. It's never happened before, and he knows that when the boys find out he will never hear the end of it. When the girls find out, they'll never speak to him again as long as he lives.
The boy believes his heart is going to stop; he puts his head down and prays this prayer, 'Dear God, this is an emergency! I need help now! Five minutes from now I'm dead meat.'
He looks up from his prayer and here comes the teacher with a look in her eyes that says he has been discovered As the teacher is walking toward him, a classmate named Susie is carrying a goldfish bowl that is filled with water. Susie trips in front of the teacher and inexplicably dumps the bowl of water in the boy's lap. The boy pretends to be angry, but all the while is saying to himself, 'Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!'
Now all of a sudden, instead of being the object of ridicule, the boy is the object of sympathy. The teacher rushes him downstairs and gives him gym shorts to put on while his pants dry out. All the other children are on their hands and knees cleaning up around his desk. The sympathy is wonderful.
But as life would have it, the ridicule that should have been his has been transferred to someone else - Susie. She tries to help, but they tell her to get out. You've done enough, you klutz!'
Finally, at the end of the day, as they are waiting for the bus, the boy walks over to Susie and whispers, 'You did that on purpose, didn't you?' Susie whispers back, 'I wet my pants once too.'
May God help us see the opportunities that are always around us to do good..
Lessons Susie teaches:
- She was observant
- She was empathetic
- She didn't blame anyone, not even the little boy, for the situation
- She didn't organize a committee to help
- She thought in terms of how she personally could help...and it didn't matter that he was a boy and that she was a girl or that she was only 9 years old
- She didn't wait for the authority person, the person with the "power," --the teacher--to address the issue
- She didn't ask to be recognized for the good she had done. In fact.....
- She allowed herself to be ridiculed and misunderstood--without whining or murmuring
The boy taught some lessons, too:
- Pray for help
- Recognize the help when it comes
- Give thanks for the help both to the Lord and to the person who helped
Most of the time Heavenly Father answers prayers through someone else. A spiritual leader will strive to live in such a way that he or she can be the answer to the unspoken, as well as the spoken, prayers of his/her diverse learners and their families.
