Day 99: Hidden Treasure

“I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.” John 16:33

At the end of my freshman year in high school, my stepfather gave me a choice. He said if I chose to stay at Lake Brantley High School, I would no longer be allowed to participate in extra-curricular activities like student government, social clubs, or sports because he was the principal at the middle school next door, and he wanted me to drive home with him as soon as he got off work. He was not willing to wait around for me to be finished with track practice or an FCA meeting, and he flatly refused to drive twenty-five miles round trip to pick me up from anything sports or social-related after hours.

However, he bargained, if I agreed to transfer to Seminole High School, the secondary school in our town, I could participate in whatever clubs or sports I wanted to because it was close enough for me to ride my bike to and from activities. Mom tried to change his mind because after we met with a much-less-than hospitable staff member at Seminole (whose grammar was even more atrocious than his lack of civility), she became concerned about their lackluster academic standards, not to mention the rampant drug use, racial tension, and campus violence that was often reported in the local news. Despite the fact that mom graduated from Seminole High School and had met Dad Angel there thirty years earlier, she was more concerned about my safety and college preparation than she was nostalgic about me attending her Alma Mater.

But Dad Angel wouldn’t budge. So I left all my friends and a sparkling clean, recently built school with a bevy of amenities to attend a very old school with ramshackle buildings, zero modern amenities, and a constant police presence in August of 1978. The first few days were definitely dicey—I got chased more than once by a gang leader who wanted to rough me up to bolster his reputation as the number one bully; a girl hurled an expletive at me and threatened to beat me up because her boyfriend gave me directions to the Driver’s Ed class when he noticed I was lost, and my preppy clothes made me a laughingstock at the lockers between classes.

But soon enough, I befriended the bully after his sister told him we were friends in elementary school, learned to avoid boys who were attached to mean, possessive girls prone to wearing tube tops in public, and exchanged khakis and top-siders for Levi’s and flip-flops.

More important, I learned to love people who didn’t look like me or live in my neighborhood. I learned that skin color and zip codes and bank accounts and test scores were petty details and absolutely useless qualifiers for real relationships. I learned to make do with hand-me-down uniforms, generously cracked tennis courts, sagging nets, and a gym without air-conditioning in the intense heat and sticky humidity of Central Florida. I learned how to ask better questions in class and check out more books from the library. I learned how to engage in dialogue instead of distancing through diatribe. I learned how to gladly share microscopes and dissecting equipment in an antiquated laboratory under the guidance of an awesome anatomy teacher. I learned how to be a team player and cheer even louder from the bench than I did on the court.

Seminole High School is where I learned that entitlement is the archenemy of creativity, passion, and joy. It’s where I learned that building something by the sweat of your brow is a lot more rewarding than having it handed to you. It’s where I learned to lead Bible studies with my best friend Cindy. It’s where we first studied the theme of adoption in the Bible. It’s where we made a solemn promise before an FCA meeting that we’d adopt hard-to-place kids when we grew up. Which means it’s also where I unwittingly began the journey of becoming Missy’s mama, thirty years before her first mama died in a small village in Haiti.

I couldn’t have known at the time, but my Dad Angel’s ultimatum was a tool in the hands of God to teach me some things that are hard to learn in a perfectly pristine classroom. What I thought was a trial ended up being a treasure.

• How has a trial recently resulted in unexpected treasure in your life?
• If you are in a situation you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself, what are some things you are learning along the way?
• What might God be using this trial to prepare you for?