service learning hour 2

We all long for a good love story.

Beauty and the Beast.  The Great Gatsby.  Jane Eyre and Rochester.  It almost seems to be ever so clear in our everyday fairy tale.   We love, it seems, the ‘forbidden fruit’.  That we’ll fall madly in love.  In literature, we call a good ending a comedy and a bad ending a tragedy.

Recently there was an opportunity for me to get to know a student while walking her home at night.  It was here on campus.  As we walked I learned just how complicated an Ipad 2 can be, what kinds of music this girl liked to listen to [it was Michael Jackson one moment and something like Fallout Boy the next moment.], where and how this girl came to be.  Then I asked her how she thought she was adjusting to her very first semester in college.  As it turns out, the storyline was similar as most American Indian students; she came she felt, by pure accident and it surprised her to walk and admit that.  She had grown up in a foster home with her grandmother until the age of 14 until her grandmother had passed and since then had been couch surfing to different friends and relatives’ home living on her own ever since then.  Then she mentioned having to graduate high school a year later than most and commented that “I don’t what other’s think or say.  It may have taken me an extra year, but I got it done.”

Interestingly enough and somewhat semi- surprising she then told me something that I had become accustomed to hearing and as sad as it is, it gave me hope.  “I was raped as a little girl by some of my relatives.”  I walked about a good ten steps before I could even say anything and when I did I said “I’m really sorry about that.”

What does this have to do with service?

  As the weeks have gone on, this student has become very affectionate in our interactions.  She longs to show me her pardon my language but- “bitchin” Captain America t- shirt and ridiculous sweater that has a hood that comes over her face looking just like Capt.  She loves to show off her Ipad [and take sneaky pics that’ll catch you completely off guard as it turns out] and she sits there week in and week out at our Nations meeting meddling between her phone and Ipad.  She doesn’t say much but it’s been reported to me that she really likes our group and enjoys the people.

I decided to take a risk one week and asked her if she’d be willing to read the scripture from the bible that I was planning to use for the group discussion that day for the weekly meeting.  All but too excited she jumped at the opportunity.  As I was trying to recommend a website to her, keeping in mind that she would opt for the Ipad, she stopped me and pulled out a paper back bible, proud to show it off.  Taken aback I said ok and flipped through to the passage and with her instructions highlighted the parts I wanted her to read.

She likes to talk about boys, but I like to think that this little tidbit that is ours, will help her to realize a overwhelming and transformative love story that she’s already apart of and how it’s affecting her story.