Wednesday's Child is...

"Our hearts are restless, until they rest in You." ~St. Augustine
"Whatever you are, be a good one." ~Abraham Lincoln

My blog posts have been few and far between here. As much as I wish I could've done better, time did not permit. Here I am.
For the last 2 1/2 months I've been living out a quite beautiful summer, and now, my work here is finished. My internship has come to an end, and I've exchanged my snazzy suit for my plaid pjs bearing the name of my school. My room here is littered with articles of my clothing, piled not so neatly waiting to be packed in the proper place, and then loaded into the car.

Yesterday morning I had a bit of an epiphany and it's all I have to sum up what I have in me for the last two and a half months of my all together blessed life. In 2nd grade, the teacher taught us a little poem about children born on each day of the week. In my opinion it's silly, nevertheless, I never forgot it. It went like this:
Monday's child is fair of face.
Tuesday's child is full of grace.
Wednesday's child is full of woe.
Thursday's child has far to go.
Friday's child is loving and giving.
Saturday's child works hard for a living.
The child who is born on the sabbath day is bonny, blithe, bright, and gay.

Before I explain what happened to me yesterday, you should know only two things: 1) My second grade teacher *I will not say her name* made a point to publicly humiliate me in front of my class many times, and I remember them. 2) I was born on a Wednesday.

Wednesday...I was born nearly three months too early, a mere eight minutes before the expiration of Wednesday...at 11:52 PM. When she taught us this poem I asked my teacher if woe was a good thing, and she told me no, woe was incredibly bad, laughed heartily, and spoke a few unnecessary comments.
I figured out the definition later, and decided I would most like to be born on Tuesday or Friday if the day we were born had anything to do with one's character.
I wasn't though, I was born eight minutes before Wednesday expired.
Yesterday was Wednesday, and I woke up in the middle of a drought, after a heart breaking weekend, with an atrocious cold/allergy thing, and I spoke the words "Wednesday's child is free from woe" before I even had time to think about it, I changed the words.

Now, here I am, and woe is not mine. I have an incredibly strong faith in God, but no matter what you believe, or how you understand what happens in your life, it's often natural to become a woeful heart when things don't make sense, or make us happy. People often tell me that I am a very genuine person, and that I love people well. Often, it's beyond people to understand why I wouldn't be bitter or unkind, and I am speechless. The answer is simply this: The world, no matter what we do or don't do, will always contain people who are mean, bitter, harsh, and careless. However, unless some of us choose to be the opposite, the kind, forgiving, gentle, and caring people will be few and far between. Why not be one of them?

It occurred to me yesterday how desperately it hurt me as a seven year old that my teacher called me out as woeful child, knowing that my life had not been the easiest, she capitalized on some of the things which had happened to me, and she aired them to my classmates. It occurred to me, too, that it doesn't hurt me anymore. Here I am about to embark on my second year of law school, I have wonderful people in my life who have stuck their necks out to cultivate my dreams and gifts, and I know nothing of the teacher who spoke those hateful words to me. Still, I remembered them yesterday, and it brought me a breath of fresh air to realize that any child, any person, Wednesday's or otherwise, can be full of grace, or empty, loving and giving, or cold and stingy, full of woe or free from it, the importance is not which one people say you are, it's about which one you choose to be, and knowing the difference between the two. So, here I go, back to school, back to the passion and dream of my heart, fighting for the orphans of the world, and living the difference.

Living, and hopefully making, a difference between the two,
Courtney
Romans 8:28