What an 18 Year Old Asked Me

I didn't expect her question last Saturday afternoon. I was tired and overbooked. I had had a busy week taking an addiction workshop for my recertification to teach DUI classes.  Saturday morning I was up at 5:15 AM to get to a 7 AM Weight Watcher meeting. Then I taught one DUI session from 9 AM to 1 PM and this was my second four hour class from 2 PM to 6 PM--a state mandated class for first-time drivers. As a senior citizen, I don't relish being so busy.

In the Saturday afternoon class I talked about our crash with a DUI driver that I wrote about earlier in this blog (December of 2010).  I feel telling about our crash helps instill safety and seriousness behind the wheel for first-time drivers. I mentioned that since one of our two cars had been totaled, we now have only one car. There is not a second car home when I am gone. My Alzheimer's husband can't drive off and get lost as often happens with those silver allerts. I talk about that crash and the students listen carefully. Apparently a husband who will die one day also interests one young lady.

The young 18 year old woman who is raising one child and expecting another one asked a perceptive question. Her sincere question deserved an answer I realized.

Are you upset that
your husband will die?

Usually a teacher doesn't talk about her personal life. There must have been something about me that made her comfortable to ask such a personal question.  I hadn't mentioned being upset and she wanted to know. A personal answer is not part of the curriculum, but this is where connection, so important in education and in really being a role model, needs to happen.  Connection was stressed in that addiction workshop I attended the previous week. I answered from my heart.

I take one day at a time and am not sad each day. I believe that my LORD will be there for me each step of the way. My job now is to keep my marriage vows "in sickness and in health . . . until death us do part." 

We had made a brief heart connection.

After class she said she wanted to see me again. I said that I wasn't allowed to keep up with students outside of class. She said she would call the office that schedules my classes and visit me when I taught again. Young people are watching how we deal with issues that life brings our way, or at least some of them are wanting our answers.