Help! Love, MOM

I overheard my colleague and fellow counselor teasing her student, a senior. Let’s call him Bob.

“Bob,”

“Yeah,”

“You smell a little, ah, how can I say this…”

It was a good natured allusion to body odor.

We are guidance counselors in a CTE high school. CTE means career and technical education.

Umm, so what does that mean?

What is a TRADE?

At CTE high schools around the country students learn trades. In case you’re unfamiliar with this type of work –

A trade job is a skilled profession requiring specialized technical training, hands-on expertise, and often, licensure, rather than a four-year academic degree. These careers, found in industries like construction, manufacturing, and healthcare, typically involve apprenticeships or vocational school. They offer high demand, stability, and good pay.

Indeed.com

CTE means that students at our school and at others like ours must pass academic classes – and therefore, earn credit toward graduation. While students have the potential to earn state endorsement in a building trade at our school, trades exist in many in-demand areas including

• construction,
• automotive/diesel technology,
• HVACR (heating, ventilation, AC, refrigeration),
• manufacturing including machining and robotics),
• healthcare, and
• IT/software support.

This endorsement certifies that students have, at minimum, often more than an introductory knowledge of, in our school’s case, 1 of 4 construction trades: plumbing, electrical, carpentry or heating, ventilation and air conditioning or (HVAC)

What is the benefit of knowing a trade?

This technical skills training allows our students to apply for jobs at, for example, our local transportation provider or our local energy supplier, both of which are billion-dollar companies.

Entry-level positions at these giant companies are often a step toward joining well-compensated union labor, which itself signals access to or the ability to remain in the middle-class.

Ideally, our students also apply to college where they pursue career other than the trade we taught them or gain deeper knowledge in their chosen trade; e.g., potential engineers need college-level education.

Bob, an HVAC student, had recently left the shop in our school where he likely worked on boilers, air conditioning or heat pumps, sometimes also known as split duct units prior to gathering with other students in the college office.

And, so, a brother smelled a little.

The Difference of a Positive Perspective

With a grin and no defensiveness, instantly, Bob shared his perspective on his current state:

“Miss, that’s the smell of hard work and success!”

Simultaneously hilarious and highly informative, Bob met a light jab with dazzling insight.

Perspective Defined

In literature and in life, perspective may be considered a way of thinking about or understanding something. Some believe that this is shaped by, among other factors, a person’s culture, physical traits, and personal experiences.

In Bob’s case his perspective is shaped by his and his family’s deep love of HVAC. He sees beyond the, sometimes, pungent present to a rosy future.

Perpective shaped the life of Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law in the Bible.

Naomi, her husband and 2 sons left Israel to escape the worst of a famine. Some years later after the sons had grown up and married, Naomi learns that the famine is over in Israel.

But the famine devoured Naomi’s family and the nation’s food supplies: all of the men died, first the dad (Ruth 1:3) then each of the sons.

Finally, Naomi, in mourning, accompanied by a Moabite daughter-in-law moved back home to Israel.

Upon arriving, Naomi tells her faithful friends,

“The Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full and the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi when the LORD has testified against me? Ruth 1:21

Clearly, after the demise of her husband and 2 sons, Naomi’s perspective on life was one of bitter delusionment.

In Naomi’s grief soaked perspective she missed that:

• She made it back home as she desired;
• She made it back to home to Israel with a loving daughter-in-law, Ruth; and lastly,
• She made it back home during the harvest season.

All these – gifted providentially by her good God.

However, Naomi only begins to perceive the hand of the LORD when Ruth, having come back from picking up left-over grain, reports that she worked in the field of Boaz, a wealthy distant relative of her late husband:

Then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “Blessed be he of the Lord, who has not forsaken His kindness to the living and the dead!” And Naomi said to her, “This man[Boaz] is a relation of ours, one of our close relatives.” Ruth 2:20

It appears that, often, a positive perspective comes from being able to look at the present and to believe that what is coming is better.

The Gift of Perspective

Bob’s unbothered, even proud response to a little friendly ribbing reveals something profound: perspective is not merely how we see the world, but how we choose to see it.

A young man, smelling of honest labor, could have been embarrassed. Instead, he saw a future — a career, perhaps a calling — and that vision transformed what could have been a moment of shame into one of self-assured confidence.

Naomi’s story in the book of Ruth offers us the same lesson, written with much higher stakes.

Grief, loss, and displacement had collapsed Naomi’s view of reality down to what she had lost.

Naomi could not see what was being given.

Yet God was working in the background of her bitterness — in the timing of a harvest, in the loyalty of a daughter-in-law, in the field of a kinsman-redeemer with whom the LORD planned a connection.

The great irony of Naomi’s lament is that she declared herself empty while standing in the middle of God’s provision.

The truth is that sometimes we are blind and fail to recognize good when we see it. O that God would give us a wise and understanding heart .

This is what unhealed pain can do to perspective. It can narrow our field of vision until all we can see is what has been taken, and we may become blind to what remains — and to what is being prepared.

Bob, religious but not Christian, stumbled onto this truth. He simply chose to look forward.

The LORD gently wooed Naomi back to Himself and to spiritual and emotional joy, through the faithfulness of Ruth and the grace of Boaz. Naomi’s perspective became covenant (or scripture) based, forward-looking, and grateful.

One of the hallmarks of a biblical perspective, is that it is faith in the revealed word of God — the conviction that the God who has been good and faithful will continue to be both.

It is the ability to say, even in the middle of difficulty, challenges and indescribable losses that God is faithful and that He will work and is working on my behalf.

For since the beginning of the world
Men have not heard nor perceived by the ear,
Nor has the eye seen any God besides You,
Who acts for the one who waits for Him. Isaiah 64:4

What strongly smells like struggle today may yet be, as one wise young HVAC student put it, the smell of hard work and success. That is to say that the Lord delights to work on the behalf of those who wait for Him.

What does waiting on God look like? I’m glad you asked. More on that in the next post.

Blessings!

Kimberly