Letting Go

"Yes! I did it all by myself! Show my friends... I can do it!"

This past year in my positively glamorous life, I have been blessed to have the opportunity to teach a physically handicapped student. Weldin is not only the light of my classroom, as a teacher, I sometimes wonder if I have learned more from him than he has from me. Weldin is diagnosed with spino bifitia, which is basically a hole in his spine that has left him paralyzed from the waist down.

Because of this disability, everyone in my classroom, including myself, go to extra measures to help him. One day, I looked over at his writing work and his sentence read, "I like Karla because she it cute," and a picture of Karla pushing his wheelchair. Needless to say, Karla wrote the sentence and drew his picture!

I did not realize until today that I was handicapping Weldin even more by doing what I thought was helping him. Weldin struggles with his fine motor skills, so any time he has a worksheet where something needs to be cut out, I do it for him.

Until today.

I handed Weldin his worksheet, and his big, helpless brown eyes looked up at me asking, "what should I do?" Instead of cutting out the pictures, I handed him the scissors and walked away. I could feel his stare on my back as I assissted the other students, but he had to learn at some point.

A half hour later, I looked at Weldin and he held up the stack of perfectly cut pictures and with the brightest smile on his face said, "Yes, I did it all by myself. Show my friends... I can do it!"

At that moment I realized the success and fulfillment that can come from letting go. Letting go of perfection, control, and worries. Weldin would not have experienced a feeling of success if I continued to cut out his papers for the year. What are you holding on to that is holding you back from feeling success and fulfillment. In the words of the greatest little man I know, "Yes, you can do it all by yourself!"