Now to focus on other folks

One piece of information that I left out of yesterday's news was that one of the kids--a kid whom I LOVE and who works with me in the library--was found sitting in a bathroom stall crying her eyes out. This is nothing really unusual; she has days like this. Yesterday, though, she wouldn't tell me directly what was wrong. That's not like her.

"You'll yell at me," she said.

I asked her when I'd ever yelled at her.

"Oh, you will," she insisted.

She did tell me that our over-worked counselor had had to put her on hold. She didn't know why, so she felt like she was being brushed aside. I explained to her that that wasn't the case and that our counselor was just having to do too much for any one person to handle.

Then out of the blue, she says, "I'm fat and ugly and...My dad finally admitted to me last night that he has problems with fat people. I've been trying to throw up. The only thing that has turned me against it is that I hate the taste of puke."

Now this young lady isn't exactly thin. She's not HORRIDLY overweight, but she has a weight problem and she knows it. But she is beautiful inside and out. I wanted my son to take her to the prom last year, and I guess I made the mistake of trying to talk him into doing that. I couldn't think of a better person for him.

And the irony in her dad's comments come with apparently no CLUE that she loves him unconditionally, irrationally. Her dad is gay. She doesn't care. She's a Christian who knows it's wrong and will tell you it's wrong, but she doesn't look at the sin; she sees the man who is infected by the sin and she loves him.

And he can't really love her because she is overweight and because she has emotional problems that require medication and because she isn't perfect.

His loss. Some day I hope she realizes that.