By Name · Week 2 · Saturday · BULLIES

Every person this week paid something. The woman in the meeting became the one who reported. The seventh grader ate lunch in the library. The man in the family text is dreading Thanksgiving. The junior lost his seat on the bus. The woman at the pantry lost two volunteers and never found out who started it.

None of them got it back by Friday. I did not want to write a week where they did.

What my boys have done

My boys have had friends who were bullied, and they stood up for them. I am proud of that, and I want to tell it straight, without making it bigger than it is.

Standing up for someone is not fighting for them. It is standing next to them, and when it is time, saying something.

Open your mouth for those with no voice, for the cause of all the dispossessed.Proverbs 31:8 (BSB)

The smaller thing I keep teaching

The thing I try hardest to teach them is smaller than standing up. Look for the new kid. Look for the one sitting by himself. Go out of your way to sit with them, so they feel included.

I think it is one of the most basic needs a kid has in elementary and middle school, and one of the most overlooked. Nobody makes a speech about it. Nobody gets an award. A kid just has somebody to sit with at lunch, and that day goes differently.

On Sunday we read how Nehemiah walked the wall and found the low places.

So I stationed men behind the lowest sections of the wall, at the vulnerable areas. I stationed them by families with their swords, spears, and bows.Nehemiah 4:13 (BSB)

He put people there in families, so nobody stood at a weak spot alone. I think the empty seat next to a kid eating by himself is a low place in the wall. You do not need to be anybody’s hero to fill it. You just need to sit down.

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor.Ecclesiastes 4:9 (BSB)

For if one falls down, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to help him up!Ecclesiastes 4:10 (BSB)

What it costs

Here is the part I do not want to skip. When you sit at that table, you are not sitting at your own.

Your friends are over there. The jokes are over there. Sometimes the people at your usual table notice where you went and have something to say about it. Being kind to the kid alone can make you a little bit of a target too.

I cannot make that cost less for my boys. I am not in the lunchroom. What I can do is tell them it is worth it, keep telling them, and make sure they know that when something is more than a kid can carry, they come get a grown-up.

Wherever you hear the sound of the horn, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us!”Nehemiah 4:20 (BSB)

That is what the horn is for.

Next week

For two weeks the voice has been getting closer. First a crowd. Then someone aimed right at you. Next week it moves inside, to the voice in your own head.

We will spend the week on depression, with Elijah, the day after the biggest win of his life.

By Name · Week 2 Complete · The series continues