Moments that make it worth it.

Last night I went for a walk around my neighborhood. Actually the ritzy neighborhood just a few blocks away, but if I can walk there in less than 10 minutes, can I call it my neighborhood...kind of?

I was walking up a street just a few blocks northeast of the community playhouse...maybe you know it: the street where the lanes are divided by a large green grassy strip with trees, so it's one way on either side of the grassy strip. A black car passes me, stops a little ways up (looking at the house numbers was my guess), then goes up to the end of the block, turns down the other side, and up my side again, so they are now behind me again, which is where they just came from.

Now, I'm usually not one to get freaked out about my surroundings (blissful ignorance, I think, but some may call it sheer stupidity) but this made me start to wonder. "Grip your keys, look at your surroundings," I told myself. I hear the car coming up behind me and suddenly someone yells, "Mrs. Mac!" As the car drives by, coming to a stop, I see Michelle (one of the seniors in my sleepy first block class at Bryan) stick her head out the window.
She jumps out of the car. "I wanted to say goodbye," as she gives me a hug. I ask her how class was today. "Lame," as she rolls her eyes. She quickly introduces me to her boyfriend, whom I've peusdo-met via her class journal, and says, "We have to go, we're late to family dinner." She hops back into the car and waves as they drive off.

A one-minute moment that made my day. Michelle is a good student. She could easily be an "A" honors type if she put her mind to it. Somedays she would sleep in class, somedays she would be alert and piping in quite often. At first I thought she disliked me, but as the semester passed, I realized that life has handed her a lot of crap, and she uses wit and sarcasm to make-up for it (at least that's my guess). I was suprised how encouraged I was by that small encounter. She could have easily just kept driving. I would've never known it was her.

Thank you, God, for giving me that small moment to realize that this will be worth it.