Pat

My high school years were rough. I mean, most of my school years were rough, and high school was no different. I didn't have a lot of friends. I had a few kids who tolerated me, but not a lot of friends. I was a bit of a nerd, intellectually advanced, socially stunted, over-involved in school activities (band, newspaper, science club, academic bowl, etc.), and dealing with the trauma of my life in a heavy way. My dad died early my sophomore year, after an 18-month fight with an aggressive cancer, and that just sent me spiraling even further. 

So...it was rough. 

I would go to the lunch room and try to get there first, speed through the line and grab my chicken sandwich, scarf it down while the rest of my small social group was trickling in, make as much small talk as I could stand, start to feel insecure about myself (I have never been good at small talk), and go out into the hallway and down toward the guidance office, where no one else ever sat. I would slink down against the wall right outside the guidance door and...just sit. I can't remember actually doing anything. Maybe reading a book every now and then. 

We had three guidance counselors. Mine was a big ol' flake. I didn't like her. She didn't understand complex things and kept actively discouraging me from liking things or trying to pursue them because "that's not what girls do." She had a very antiquated idea of gender roles, and she had a very firm belief that anyone earning straight A's could not have any actual problems in their life, and we just didn't gel. 

But Pat...

I was scared of Pat, honestly. Intimidated may be a better word. I just had a sense that she was someone who was capable of figuring me out and blowing my whole cover - and that possibility both thrilled and terrified me. It's probably why I sat outside of her office every day and pretended not to be looking for her, while also kind of looking for her and hoping to be noticed, but not too noticed, but then also completely non-chalantly pretending I hadn't even noticed her when she started to speak to me. 

Honestly, sometimes, I didn't notice her. I was firmly stuck in my own little trauma world during those years and was trying desperately to just make it through high school without crumbling from the inside out. 

She made it a point, though, to speak to me. To say hi. She started to ask how I was doing, just in passing, and would just acknowledge whatever answer I gave her, which was something usually so very high school-ish. "I'm good." (I was never good in high school.) Until one day, I just lost it. She spoke to me, and I just lost it. 

And Pat...was ready for it. 

I pass a lot of persons in my life. Persons for whom it seems strange that they would be in that place at that time, just as I happened to be there. Persons who are either positioning themselves to be noticed or being positioned by God that I might notice them. And...I notice them. I notice them, and I notice myself in them - that person who was feeling so insecure about herself that she couldn't tolerate something so seemingly simple as a lunch room full of peers, that person so hoping to be noticed that she was both trying to be noticed and also not to be noticed too much, that person who needed more than anything to be seen. 

And I try to see them. I try to let myself get involved. I try to engage even in small ways. And...I try to be ready. I try to be ready for whatever they're building toward, whether they are conscious of what's coming or not. 

Pat taught me what it is like to be on the receiving end of such grace, and I have never forgotten it.