You are very TALL

There is an intriguing cautious line that has been taunting me at work. I try not to be overly reflective, but it's been difficult for me to ignore where I was this time last year. This time last year I was in Rwanda, a country that taught me so many things, challenged and stretched me. I suppose this is the value of a true experience - a gift that keeps giving, keeps teaching.

Working for IJM, I learned to be bold. I learned how skilled I actually am. I learned to appreciate that I am a valued asset to an office. I learned that I did not need to be told what to do; I needed to seek out things to do. I observed a group of people that worked tirelessly toward improving anything and everything around them despite the odds and challenges fighting against all their efforts.

Our clients at Christian Legal Aid have no other resource or other option.

On one hand, I am a stupid law student with mediocre grades at a run-of-the-mill law school. I have little experience, and I have absolutely no clue what I am doing. I am not bar certified, I have not taken several key required courses. I have little experience with the California court system. I have never been in poverty or in the awful situations my clients are in. I am impatient and get frustrated when speaking with a mentally ill client who cannot express herself very well. I am not an attorney! I have a long ways to go.

On the other hand, I am an American law student with a lot of experience. I survived Rwanda for Pete's sake! I know how to Google. I have a computer and a working printer with ink and paper. I can read a court document and begin to fill it out. I can encourage a client. I have a smile to offer. I can ask questions that lead me to answers as I continue to research for a solution. I can learn. I am more of an attorney than I am not an attorney. I have no straightjacket on.

Our clients have no other resource or other option. If I can't do it, nobody can. And so I am a can-do almost- attorney. There is no other choice. Thus, you also are a can-do person. You are a person of great assets, of great resources, who can be of great assistance. Get out there and give someone whatever you have to offer. Don't say 'oh well.'  Further, we believe in someone who is the great I AM. And so, when you are feeling crippled by all the things you are not, hold fast to your believe in the I AM. And through Him, you can do ANYTHING. This is how law school teaches you- by throwing you into the deep end and watching you struggle to doggy paddle until you wake up to realize you're actually swimming just fine in an olympic race.

So this is a plea for you to fight the line between feeling like you "can't" and just standing up and getting it done. A few travel friends and mine always say, "Figure it out!" when we are traveling. Whatever challenge, obstacle or bridge you have to cross, you CAN DO IT.

And for those out there who you think you cannot help, the smallest thing you have to give could be the greatest thing they've ever received.
It is a powerfully humbling thing to be a part of.
Join in.

Yeah, but how long is the tunnel?

There is a phrase in legal jargon, "when justice so requires." Well, I say, that justice requires, despite its impractical nature, despite its challenges and its room for discretion, a new measuring stick.

I write tonight  at 1 am, still reeling on caffeine, from a place of confusion, of anger, of being "fed up" with the institution, of rare and raw vulnerability and of brokenness. Not brokenness in the sense of true brokenness, like heart ache or real suffering, but actual inability-to-function correctly broke-ness. I write to put into cyberspace thoughts and musings that have been brewing under my skin for a long time.

It is May, which for me, means finals. In law school, as so many of you know, finals are 100% of my grade in each class. I have one exam, one shot, one three hour period to show what I have learned. To demonstrate that I deserve an A. To prove myself.

My entire life I grew up with the notion that the first six letters of the alphabet carried a weight. An importance was given to these letters. Even from the smallest of ages when "Excellent" or "Satisfactory" became equated with an A or a B or a C, I learned that these letters were something to work for, to earn, to deserve, to need, to crave. I was imprinted I assume at the first "A" I brought home. I imagine, because I do not remember, that I came home with my own sense of pride because I knew what I had accomplished, and I showed my Mom that "A" and she praised me with a glowing smile. I do not know the percentage of children that never shared this childhood experience, although I would guess it is quite high. And, admittedly, I do not remember my own, because, the first one was not important to me. Literally thousands of these moments were to follow. The point is, those six letters, for the first 22 years of my life, were the most important measuring stick.

I'm not a fool. I know that life is bigger than grades, I lived in Africa for six months for crying out loud. This rambling post is not about ignorance to God's significance in my life or about life's true values. This is about a false sense of measurement that I'm battling to shake off. This is about you telling me that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that I just have to jump through this hoop first. This is my way of saying, "How many hoops are there? Just how many hamster wheels do I have to run backwards on?!!"

Nothing about that measuring stick from elementary education really changes when you go to law school. Except for the fact that  now the measuring stick is no longer a stick; it is now a whip. It's literally a curve. There are a certain pre-determined number of As, Bs, Cs, Ds, and Fs. The curve must be met, it must be maintained and there is no deviation. And now, the 200 battling for those five A's are all people who have never seen Bs in their entire life. Now, miraculously, learning is no longer about walking out of the classroom inspired, or empowered, or challenged. It is a concept to be memorized, analyzed and spit out in some formula requiring a heap of luck, a bit of mind-reading, a dash more luck and some extra oomph of magical who-knows-just-what.

It's not that I am unappreciative of the practical considerations for a numerical method of separating the wheat from the chaff, or purely that high on my soap box I think law school as an institution is arcane (which I do think, by the way). It is that I think it's inherently unfair, to send people, who lived their entire life being measured and measuring their own sense of accomplishment on only 1 of the 6 letters, into an environment where it's more of a gambling casino than an institution about demonstrating what you've learned. I think it's inherently unfair to leave HEART and caring, time, effort, blood, sweat and tears out of the equation. These qualities, necessary for true learning, should not be inputted into numbers, but certainly can be valued in the calculation of a grade. I find it nearly impossible for my rational brain to tell my heart that so deeply cares and always has cared that "its only a letter grade; it doesn't matter." It does matter. That's the entire point! It matters to me. Everything, for twenty. two. years. taught me that it matters.

What have I learned this semester? What have I accomplished? What has changed me? What has pushed me toward being a better lawyer? Was it learning the rule of some case scathingly written by Justice Scalia? Was it the 200 notecards I had memorized the day of my Criminal Procedure exam? Was it all the rules I learned that contradict any legal or police television show? No. This semester, I really learned two big things. One, from Donald Miller at the Justice Conference in February when he challenged us that "just because you aren't winning doesn't make you unlovable." I learned I suck at believing that and that it's something I should work on. I've been desperately trying since then, and I've made little progress (refer to the entire blog post above).

The second big thing I learned, is that advocating for someone requires believing them. I represented two clients this semester who were applying for political asylum based on terrible persecution they received in their home countries. I firmly believe that our work on their cases saved their lives. You read that correctly: had we not done what we did for them in their case, I believe with my whole heart, they would have been sent back to their country and been killed. When I first met one of these clients and read her file, I thought she had a big uphill legal battle. I read her life story, I knew the law, and I thought her case would be nearly impossible to win. After two months of working with her, of arguing for her, and listening to her, I couldn't see how we could possibly lose. Being an advocate is being a believer.

Neither of these two things did I learn in a classroom.
And neither of these things will be on my final exam in Evidence.
It doesn't mean they aren't real. But it sure does feel like that when it's not translated, or appreciated, or affirmed by the only measuring stick I am being measured on.

How do you parent your child on the pride of an A, without destroying them when they graduate to a field where they cannot make one? How do you re-program yourself to measure yourself on what you want to actually be measured on- your honesty, humanity, spirituality, light, connectivity, responsiveness to needs, hunger for knowledge, perseverance, integrity and strength? How do you make that new program seep so deeply into your veins that you actually believe it and cancel out the other?

Thank you, with great sincerity, for reading. Please post a comment, thought, or response.