Cucumbers and Marmite

Today has been a tough day. Last week, the chaplain was in on a meeting with a girl who's been self-harming and not eating. A decision was reached that since she doesn't like the school psychologist, she has to talk to someone about the struggles she's having, and she surprised people by saying she wants the chaplain to be the person she talks to. Because of when I've been out of the office, I didn't meet her until today. In the past day or so, she said she's only eaten a few slices of cucumber and marmite on less than a full slice of toast. There are some questions if she's exaggerating her situation to get attention, even so, I don't think I'd even be able to stand up if I ate that little in a day. It was a hard thing for me to deal with. At one point the chaplain said to imagine being happy in her life, but she just shook her head no. It didn't seem so much like she couldn't imagine being happy, but that she wouldn't imagine being happy. He wasn't asking for her to believe there will be a time in her life when she'll be happy, just to imagine what being happy would feel like. I think that was the hardest thing for me. Not that she thinks her life is so bad she simply cannot imagine it getting better, but that she doesn't even want to try to imagine a better life. We'd go from these moments where we were trying to get her to agree to eat something, anything, for supper to laughing about stories of ridiculous taxi drivers. I've never knowingly had so much interaction with someone who's self harming and starving themselves, but I found it so hard to justify why someone who could seem so happy one minute was so convinced that her life is permanently stuck at rock bottom the next. It's been hard to figure out what to say to her. I can't imagine what's going on in her head, and trying to reason with her or offering encouragements that life will get better are getting nowhere. It seems like an impossible task, but at the same time, I feel like this is exactly where I'm supposed to be.

Wonderful Snow

Yesterday I went with the chaplain to do a junior school (essentially an elementary school) assembly. The assembly was about snow at first, which was surprisingly appropriate because he planned the assembly about a week ago, and we had a few hours of snow in the afternoon. But he got on to the real point of the assembly when he told about when he was a student sitting in a rather boring lesson at school about wonder. In the class were some international African students. During the lesson, it started to snow. The teacher stopped the lesson to point out their expressions. The African students had never seen snow before, and the teacher said that right there, all their faces was what he was trying to tell them about wonder. It's funny how I so often find the messages in children's stories more poignant than if the same story were told with an adult audience in mind. I suddenly started thinking about how often I actually appreciate the wonder in my own life. Most days I wake up and groan because I don't want to get up and go to work. It's not because I don't like my job, it's just that I inevitably went to bed later than I would have liked the night before, and my bed is so warm and cozy. But then I took a minute to think about all the wonder I don't pay attention to in my life. It's in the beautiful sunrise I never would have seen if I had stayed in bed. It's the little girl who takes my hand and looks up at me with the most precious smile I would never have gotten to know if I didn't help with music classes in the junior school. It's the girl whose mental health I've been worried about all year suddenly deciding she wants to be baptized and confirmed I would never have met if I didn't take this leap of faith to come here. Normally, I think of wonder as those things that do make you stop and appreciate how amazing life is, but I also think there are lots of little wonders that we miss everyday because we're too busy, or tired, or stressed, or upset, or a list of countless other things to actually pay attention to what's around us. I think our lives could be richer if we looked for wonder in the big things and the little things. So my challenge for myself is to look for wonder, and not let it just slide by me unnoticed.