This is a somewhat difficult post to write. For all you Young Women leaders, or Primary Teachers, or Sunday School teachers, or even parents of teens, you will totally know what I am talking about. But, I just have to get it off my chest.
Yesterday in church, I went out during Sacrament Meeting to get a drink because this dang cold won't leave me alone. My stomach sank the minute I stepped out into the hallway, though. Several..well, MOST... of the youth in our ward were sitting around chatting. Were they getting anything from the speakers? No. Granted, they were high council speakers, but I felt their messages were really good. In fact, especially good. In fact, I was thinking that the youth of the ward would probably really be benefitting from these talks about the time I had my coughing fit. That is when I discovered they weren't benefitting from the talks at all. They weren't even hearing them.
Now, some of those youth may possibly even read this post. To you, I say, I love you!!!! You have no idea how much prayer and thought I put into my lessons when I taught you. You can't know how often I thought how I could best help you be the best person you could be, how I could help you avoid some of the obstacles I encountered through some not so great choices when I was younger. How I cried when I found out I wasn't going to be teaching you anymore. And how I hoped you would have heard something I taught you and kept it, and learned from it.
Maybe you did.
But I wonder, did you perhaps miss something that could have really helped you in your life? Was the Lord waiting to answer one of your prayers and you weren't there to hear it? I'm not trying to judge, believe me! I am purely speaking with love because I HAVE missed those whisperings of the Spirit. I HAVE missed hearing things I needed to hear. It only made my path harder.
Well. I know this is probably pointless. It is just a frustrated attempt to understand why I, and many other teachers, spend so much time trying to teach the right things when it seems it falls on dead ears. I was just disappointed in the future leaders of our church yesterday.
And perhaps in myself, because I maybe could have done a better job of teaching you in the first place.
Top Heavy
1 week ago
2 comments:
I saw the same thing and felt the same way! In fact, I feel that way more often than I like to admit. I could go off on a soapbox about how we try and try and is it getting us anywhere? Is it making a difference? Does our effort matter? Sometimes no. At least that's how I feel a lot of the time. However, I have to think that maybe if it's not today, then SOMEDAY the thought and prayer we put into our lessons WILL matter. Now, more than ever, I think back on those lessons I had in Young Womens about being an adult...a wife...a mother...a women in the church...and I remember and am grateful for what I was taught. Even if at the time, I could not POSSIBLY understand how any of that related to me. I hope it's the same for the youth that we teach today.
You can only do what you can do, and then you have to have faith that they got it and love them regardless. I think it is always hard to see people (youth and adults) making mistakes that they could completely avoid if they would just listen, but I think that it is something most of us just have to learn for ourselves (and some of us have to relearn it over and over because we think we always know best)! We all turned out alright despite our mistakes, though...they will too. Did you tell them to get back in the chapel? ...that is what I do...they LOVE it when you tell them what to do! ;) hehe!
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