Today’s passage is Matthew 15:21-28.
A Canaanite woman pestered Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter. When he insulted her, saying it wasn’t right to throw to the dogs the bread meant for the lost children of Israel, she accepted her role and said that dogs could eat the crumbs. Jesus was so impressed with her faith that he healed her daughter.
Today I met with the abnormal mother of an abnormal boy in my school.
Her home and husband are in Busan.
But four years ago she came to Seoul to enroll her son in my school under the misguided belief that education is better in Seoul.
Her son has no friends in my school because he is strange and has no social skills. The other kids avoid him or tease him.
He has only his emotionally unbalanced, overprotective mother to talk to.
The mother hopes the school will do for her son what she cannot do.
But when she sees that the school, its teachers or administrators, do not do what she so desperately wants for her son, she gets upset, frustrated and angry.
She doesn’t trust the school to discipline any child who teases or hits her son.
So she takes matters into her own hands and scolds the children who tease, pinch or hit her son.
She refuses to accept that her son is most often the instigator of his own hurt and creates the situation that makes him a victim.
Last year I banished her from the school grounds because of the upset she was creating in the other parents and the teachers.
I hoped she would take her son and her trouble to another school. She didn’t go, however.
At the end of last year she finally agreed to send her son to our school counselor, who helped the boy a bit, and then persuaded the mother to come for counseling.
Her meeting with me was part of her counseling.
The counselor was the translator at our meeting.
The woman didn’t leave my school because I was the problem and God wanted me to face an unpleasant part of myself.
Like the Canaanite woman, she wasn’t leaving until I did something for her.
What I really needed to do was something for myself#8212;repent.
Because I learned last week that I would be meeting this woman today, I had time to pray.
I gave up trying to plan what to say because I didn‘t believe I could reach her with my words.
In desperation I turned it over to the Lord, trusting he would give me what I needed to say.
This meant I would have to wait to hear what I would say and learn from it at the moment of my speaking.
In the office this morning, I showed everyone the QT reading for the day.
They were astonished at the coincidence.
I asked them to pray for me as I went to the meeting.
Everyone was worried about what might happen because they knew how unstable the woman was and how fierce and frightening I could be.
When I saw the woman, my heart went out to her.
She looked so utterly helpless. She looked like she half expected a beating.
So I began by saying I was sorry for my attitude and actions last year.
I said I had not stopped to listen to her.
I said I was the problem not her or her son.
I said she was welcome in the school at any time and that she didn’t have to stand outside the gate anymore.
I said I could understand the pressure she was under because of her son having no friends.
I told her my heart went out to the poor child.
I asked her to please let me and the teachers handle the situations her son would find himself in.
I promised that I would invite her into every necessary conference involving her son. That was my repentance.
Then I told her that our reverend repeatedly reminded us on how important the family was and how harmful it was to break the family by sending children away for education.
She thought I meant sending kids abroad.
I hope she’ll think more about it even though her son has lost the usual time for making friends in a home town.
When I returned to the office, everyone was surprised that the meeting had been so short and that the woman had not raged and wept for over an hour as had been her habit in the past. God’s grace.
I praise God for the application of his word through me this day.
I pray he will continue to heal the woman, her son, and me.
