Every year, our 8th graders select an adult speaker. This year, our students chose Becky Lloyd, their Middle School Science teacher.
So, I struggled a bit with what to say to y’all. You two, who can be sooo different, yet are such soulmates. What should I tell you about your future, where I see you going, who I see you becoming?
I took me a long leisurely stroll down memory lane. It struck me that in my time with y’all I’ve been asked the same question at least a hundred times. But it hasn’t always come out the same. It’s come out as “what will the quiz look like tomorrow”, or “what will the judges think of my science fair board”, or “are you mad at me for not finishing this question on the homework”, or “what will high school be like”. But really, I think, they are always the same question. “Am I going to be OK?”
So I try my best to answer you. “Get the work done and show me tomorrow, and it’ll be fine” or “You’ve already proven to me that you got this stuff down, the quiz is just another way to show me.”
But I know I wasn’t always the best at answering your deeper question. So, let me try now.
You’re going to be OK.
And I’m not speaking with bravado when I say that I KNOW that you’re going to be OK. I’m speaking from years of delightful experience with two extraordinary young ladies. Two ladies who have the BEST ability to see the joyful in the world around them.
However, let me be clear about “OK”. OK can look like a failed test with the assurance that you have still mastered most of the concepts, OK can look like tripping over your own tongue while talking to Mr. John, but in the end earning a chance to go to the JMU regional science fair. It can look like my stern face when you haven’t done what I asked, or my grateful face the very next day when you are the only one who completed the task correctly. And it can look like standing beside my car in the rain, pulled off of Route 66, with a flat tire, after having walked in that same rain five blocks in the WRONG DIRECTION before making it to the cathedral where we never DID get to climb the bell tower… then being able to laugh as we talk about the angel who saved our lives and helped us get home so that we could share our heartbreaking story.
It’s all OK.
Because OK can be hard, and OK can be scary, but OK means that you’ve survived, and you’ve learned and perhaps you’ve even laughed about it. The truth is…we all have a chicken-duck-woman thing waiting for us. Even if every day you worry all day about what’s waiting in the bushes of love…
You both are gifted with an arms wide open, running full-throttle, probably singing or laughing approach to this life. You embrace the absurd, you embrace the people around you (sometimes aggressively so) and, most crucial to your success, you embrace the chance to learn and grow.
When George Lucas was making the original Star Wars trilogy, he said, “You simply have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Put blinders on and plough right ahead.” And really, I don’t think that applies to you. I threw it in there because it’s George Lucas, and you know, Star Wars. My perception of y’all, though, is that you keep your eyes wide open. Taking in so many potential roadblocks and terrifying possibilities. In a lot of ways you refuse to put on blinders. But, you do put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Probably laughing or singing or being dragged along by someone who you are snuggling or hugging. And maybe not as gracefully as you always hope, you keep plowing right ahead. That, my loves, is why I know that you’re going to be OK.
I would go so far as to say that odds are you’ll be fabulous, but I never tell anyone the odds. I am giddy with excitement for you in this next leg of your epic adventure. OK or not, know that at least you have this one old princess rooting for you. Love you guys.
–Becky Lloyd
