15th
Stories about God’s Providencial Care in my life…part 1: Skippin’ School
So, the year is 1999, my sophmore year of high school. It’s February, President’s day, and due to the amount of snow days we had already had in Franklin, we had to go to school on that particular federal holiday. As a result, me and the 2 other friends that I rode to school with decided we didn’t particularly want to go. Instead, we went to Frisch’s and ate at their breakfast buffet. After that, seeing as it was only about 9:30 in the morning, and we hadn’t eaten up nearly enough time, we drove out to where we (my family) were building our new house, so I could show them the site. From there, still early in the day, we went to the car wash to wash my friend’s car, to further kill time. It was at this point that we ran out of things to do, and bored as we were, decided to go back to school.
We had it planned perfectly, we all forged parental notes and, being students who were generally trusted, we would be believed. We set it up so we all entered roughly 10-15 minutes after each other. I went first, got to school, faked my best “I’m still kinda sick, but here anyway” act, and signed in and went to the end of my 4th period math class. Leaving there, I was on my way to 5th period choir. A path whcih led me past the office. As I walked down the hallway, shortly after I passed the office, I felt an iron grip on my shoulder. I can still feel the fear I felt when that hand clamped down and i heard Mr. Gregory say “Elijah, come to my office for a minute.” in eerily friendly tones. As I walked in, I saw my two accomplaces sitting there, and my stomach leaped into my throat in an effort to escape the impending doom that I knew was coming. So, I sat down, with the other two, and awaited the executioner’s axe that I knew was imminent. Mr. Gregory then sat down and said this: “You three skipped together, the mandatory punishment from the school is saturday school. Elijah, I had a very interesting talk with your father. He told me that you were flat out lying and that I had the right to do whatever I wanted to you. I’m only giving you a Saturday school, but you’re gonna probably be in big trouble when you get home.”
From there, I went to choir, sang worriedly, and then went to lunch. The entire time I was in the lunchline I was muttering over and over to myself, “Oh man, i’m dead, I’m dead, why did I do that, oh crap I’m dead…” At this point allow me to interject that I had some amazing friends back then(and still most definitely do!). They tried to say everything they could think of to comfort me, but I was entirely inconsolable. One particular acquaintance, who was one of the most annoying guys in the world, but hung out with us for some reason, tried to comfort me, and I finally told him, quite rudely, what we all thought of him(which he didn’t take seriously and just assumed it was my bad mood that made me yell at him). I told him “WHY DON’T YOU JUST SHUT UP?! I DON’T LIKE YOU, NO ONE HERE LIKES YOU, WE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHY YOU HANG OUT WITH US!!!” That was not my proudest moment, but when stressed, filters tend to be shut off. The rest of the day was largely similar to this, but that was my only explosion.
When I arrived home, I walked very slowly to my house from the corner of the street where my bus dropped me off. I walked into a darkened house, and hoped no one was home. I set my backpack down, walked upstairs, looked into the kitchen, and there at the dining room table sat my mom with the saddest, most disappointed look on her face that I have ever seen in my entire life. She proceeded to hand me a stack of sever 3x5 notecards and told me that my dad had written out my punishment on them, and that i was to read them and then comply.
Here is what the cards said.
- Pray. Ask God for forgiveness for lying to your Principal.
- Read all of II Samuel
- Write a 20 page report on how your sin of lying hurt your reputation at your school and hurt your witness with your classmates and teachers. In this, compare and contrast how King David’s sin and subsequent coverup and lies hurt the nation of Israel; how Bill Clinton’s lies about his relationship with Monica Lewinsy hurt the office of the presidency, and cost our country valuable time and money that could have been better allocated; compare and contrast these sins with your own; and finally, apologize to your Principal for lying to him.
- You are to do nothing other than homework and work on this until it is finished
So, I wrote my paper, which I no longer have a copy of, and badly wish that I did. To my knowledge, It still hangs in Mr. Gregory’s office, or at the very least, it still did a year after I graduated.
Now, you’re probably wondering how God’s providence factors into this tale, right? Well, basically it works like this, as a result of what I did, I built up a pretty good rapport with Mr. Gregory, and probably garnered more respect from that than I had in the first place. So, I went from being a virtual unknown in his book to being someone that he genuinely liked, this wound up working quite well when he and his wife took over as advisors for the Academic quiz team, because I got to know them even better then. So, I had a rough row to hoe for a few weeks while enduring my punishment, but in the long run, it turned out to be beneficial, and hey, I have a good story to boot.
The next post I write will continue on this theme of God’s Providence, and will be considerably more obvious as to how it pertains to that.
