I Can't Do It!

One day as I entered one of the classrooms I serve, the teacher was presenting a mini-lesson. I sat down to the side and watched. One student, who is not doing
well in class, was not struggling to keep from bothering other students (read it carefully). He clearly wasn’t paying attention to the lesson. At the end of the short session, the teacher started explaining an assignment, to be done in teams of four. Immediately the student I’d been watching blurted out, fairly loudly, “I can’t do it!” The teacher overlooked his statement, and continued with her group instructions.

As the students dispersed toward their assigned work areas, I signaled for the young boy to come over and join me at the side table where I was sitting.

“I heard you say you can’t do this assignment,” I said softly. “Can you tell me why not?”
“I can’t do it,” he repeated.
“Why not?” I asked again.
“I just can’t,” he replied with down-turned corners of the mouth.
“Do you know what it is she asked you to do?” I probed.
“No.” he admitted
“Then how do you know you can’t do it? Sit down here with me and let’s see if we can do it.” I offered.

“The first thing she asked you to do was to number from two through twelve on the edge of the (large) sheet of paper she gave you. Can you do that?”
“OK.” Which he did.

“Next she asked you to think of some things that come in sets of 2’s, 3’s, 4’s and so on. Can you think of anything like that? I know she gave you some examples during the lesson.” (Blank look).

“Do you remember her talking about your face? ‘Things that come in two’s.’ Does anything come to mind?”

And thus we started the list. As we went down the page, he was able to come up with a few things on his own. In many places I had to give some (occasionally, obvious) hints. Three times I had to come right out and tell him. But after about ten minutes, he had something written after each number. Then I asked him to look at his paper.

“Did you finish your assignment?”
“Yes!” The look on his face suggested it may have been the first one in some time to be completed. I admit he didn’t do it all on his own. But he did get a surge of self confidence and encouragement. (The next day as I came in he came running to tell me he’d thought of one for the number thirteen – stripes on the US flag.)

There are times when I review all of what God expects of me, and I think of my abilities and former failures. Know what I sometimes do? I cry out, “I can’t do it.” Or, maybe, I say “I won’t do it.” Or, even, “I don’t want to do it.”

When such times come, I can act like my young friend had done so many times before. I can just throw up my hands, shout “I can’t/won’t/don’t want to do it”, give up, and focus on keeping others from doing their God-given tasks. Or, I can look over at the Teacher, and ask Him for help.

In some cases, just His encouragement will be sufficient. At other times, He may need to prod or probe to bring things back to my memory that have worked before; or He may lead me to new clues as to how to do it. Finally, there may be some things in my life that I’ll end up having to let Him do for me all by Himself. Come to think of it, He has done it all for me (and you) already! If I put my name on the page beside His, I’ll get full credit.

Now for the next one: How many legs do spiders and octopuses (octopi?) have?

(OK… So octopi/puses have tentacles, not legs. It got the point across)

Dr. G