“Easy out!”
School and Shame
I am grateful for the schools that gave me the foundational educational tools for life. My husband was a public school teacher for many years of his career. I taught preschool for nine years. I am for schools, for teachers, and for the education of all children. But school can be a place where we experience shame in profound and life shaping ways.
Some experience shame because of academic challenges. Others can struggle in fine or industrial art classes. Still others, like me, have a hard time in physical education. I never participated in Little League, swim team, or the like, thus I had no developed abilities for sports.
Weaknesses Known by Me
I could run fast, but that was where my proficiency ended. I was physically weak, lacked eye-hand coordination, and didn’t have strong large motor skills. I couldn’t hit a volleyball over a net, couldn’t do even one chin-up for the yearly physical fitness test, and couldn’t hit a softball with a bat.
Every classmate I had in grade school witnessed my shortcomings. I made it through every PE class, dealing with it the best I could. But when it was a day when we’d play an actual game of softball, it was a challenge.
The PE teacher picked two skilled athletes as team captains. If you’ve experienced this, you know how it rolls out. These honored students then choose the members of their team. All students line up, and the team captains start their selections, calling out the names of those they think might help them win the game.
Before the process began, I knew how it would end. I would be one of the last ones chosen.
Weaknesses Known by Others
No matter that I was one of the strongest students academically. This was literally a different ball game. As the captains chose others ahead of me for their team, I noticed the looks on the faces of other students. Some looked away so as to avoid the embarrassment they felt for me. Others determined that this was just a fact and it was a right decision that I should be chosen last.
The game would begin and when it was my turn at bat, I prepared to hear, “Easy out!” When the ball was hit to me in the outfield and I inevitably missed the catch, someone might yell, “You knew she'd miss it.” Reminded of my ineptness, I wondered if they wished I wasn’t on their team.
Little did they know that I wished I wasn’t on their team, either. I would have preferred to stay in the classroom where my strengths were seen, rather than being on the ball field with my weaknesses on full display. The feeling of exposure, the nakedness resulting from the public revelation of inadequacy, the ache of being found wanting, is the feeling of shame.
The declarations of, “Easy out,” and “You knew she’d miss it,” were true but shaming words because of how they were spoken. My elementary school classmates knew I was not athletic, just as we all knew who excelled in math, music, art, handwriting, spelling and those who didn’t. We all have differing strengths and weaknesses.
Weaknesses Acknowledged with Dignity
The trouble is that most often these differences are not acknowledged with dignity. We are not schooled in how to navigate the effects of our weaknesses on others, or of the effects of others’ weaknesses on us. We are left to fend for this vulnerability on our own. Few adults have this skill and even fewer children. No wonder school can seem like an unsafe place.
When we experience exposure of our shortcomings without compassion and empathy from others, we can despise those weaknesses. Instead of them being simply reminders of our human limitations and our need for God and others, they can feel like a stain on our shirt that we want to hide. We experience shame when something in our person is exposed as being what we or others deem deficient and we are not protected in it.
It doesn’t need to be this way. We can learn to offer a gracious covering to the frailties we encounter in others and even in ourselves. My failed attempts to hit a softball while standing at home plate grew me in compassion and sensitivity to others. When corrected tests were handed out and I found a high score on my paper, I ached for those who quickly turned over their tests so their results could not be seen by neighboring students. It can be a shameful experience to feel less than we would like to be.
In kindheartedness, we cover each other’s imperfections with tenderness and care. We don’t deny those weaknesses exist, but we offer grace and understanding, remembering our own limitations. It is the way of love.
Just as Jesus saw us in our weakness and gave His life for us, so we are to sacrificially love others in the midst of their shortcomings. When we fail to offer grace and empathy to those we love in their human limitations, it is because we have forgotten the grace given to us in our own failings.
It is at the foot of the cross where I find my bearings again. “Oh, Jesus, you saw me in my weaknesses and gave your life so that I might be defined by You and not by my shortcomings. In fact, it is in my weakness that your strength can be made manifest. Thank you for your grace. By your Spirit, be strong in my weakness so that I can offer your grace and love to others in their weakness. It is you in me that is able to accept instead of judge. Help me to love like you love. In Your name, Amen.”
2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
Questions to Ponder:
How would you feel if someone covered your limitations with grace and understanding? What might change in your relationships if you did the same for others?