whining

This last month has been a challenging one in the early morning world of seminary.  We are more than half-way through the year, and we are entering the dark days of winter.  Just as we start to see a little early morning light, we will be plunged back into darkness when we switch to daylight savings time.  The students are used to me and are probably becoming bored with my teaching style.  They are there to be entertained and there is only so much entertaining a person can do.  We have done games, quizzes, role playing, memorization of scriptures for candy, video segments, puzzles, more games (they are a little too competitive).  They have become too chatty, disruptive, do their homework, play with their cell phones.... I've had to rein them in and be more stern with them and I'm not sure they like it.  Or me.  Or I them.

So I started feeling sorry for myself.  Why do I have to do this?  Why can't they just sleep through seminary or listen politely?  This is hard and I don't like it.  And then I read "The Seamstress" by Sara Tuvel Bernstein and it brought me up short.  There's nothing like a book about the suffering of people put in concentration camps to make you realize you have nothing to whine about.

This young woman was one of 10,000 young Jewish women who were rounded up in Bucharest and marched around the surrounding countryside, digging trenches and cleaning up rubble from bombs for four months and then sent to Ravensbruck.  By the time they got to Ravensbruck, only half of the women had survived.  Two months later, only 1,000 women were left.  Five months later the 100 surviving women were put into a railway car for several weeks.  In the end, only about 30 women survived.  Sara weighed 46 pounds when they were liberated.  She and her sister survived on sheer will alone.  They didn't whine.

I am now halfway through "Left to Tell" which is about a Rwandan woman who, along with 7 other women, hid in a secret bathroom 3 feet by 4 feet for three months while all around them their families were being slaughtered.  She had such faith in God that she would be preserved.  It is an amazing story.  She didn't whine, but rather looked for her life's purpose as a result of her preservation.

I guess I've learned my lesson.  For now.  (She said in a whiny voice.)