DENVER IMMERSION DAY 2 PART 2

While I am a returner to the Tennyson Center, I felt as unprepared as anybody going into a different classroom with the elementary school kids. As a sister of two younger brothers, being in a classroom with all young boys made me feel like I was in my comfort zone. However, I also felt all the more distraught to see how the young kids struggled to communicate all the feelings I could see them expressing through violence and hateful language. They would be the sweetest little kids at one moment, playing with magnet toys and asking to hold my hand. By the next, they’d be throwing chairs and yelling slurs at classmates. The Tennyson Center hasn’t been the only thing affecting me throughout even the early stages of this immersion. It’s seeing the homeless on the streets on our ride there, and hearing yelling and sirens trying to sleep at night. There is a church by my room with homeless people at its steps and I can’t help but think of how big, warm, and comforting my single room is, of how many people it could fit. There are people who deserve more than cold church steps, and I’ve enjoyed being humbled by the prospect that the little kids at the Tennyson Center deserve holding hands in the halls even when they behave poorly. For us, I think its only a matter of widening our perception of who we think we are allowed to love rather than finding ways to mold them into our ideas of how people should behave, what they should say, and how they should act. Either way, God calls us to love them, not change them.