Worth Seeing (eBook)

“I tried to sell my soul to the devil . . . and he didn’t even want it. I’m so damaged.”

Luis has pen and paper in his hand, moving to a beat inside his head, writing rap lyrics from inside a small, cold prison cell in Illinois. Writing has become how he spends his days as he serves time awaiting the moment he returns to society and to his nine-year-old son.

“Most of my life, I felt like I was born cursed, unloved. I felt like an outcast from my family and friends.”

Born in Puerto Rico in 1993, Luis grew up in Chicago, the baby boy among four brothers and a sister. He loved playing softball and skateboarding, but mostly he loved being with his dad. They were glued at the hip. You never saw one without the other.

Luis didn’t know as a child that his father was a functioning heroin addict and a member of a ruthless gang in the neighborhood. All Luis saw was Superman, his best friend, his dad. Then at the young age of ten, he lost his father, and Luis’s whole world as he knew it was gone.

“When I lost my pops I lost all hope, and at ten years old, I became my own role model. I wanted to prove to everybody that I can do it all on my own.”

Luis was determined to not depend on anyone. They all leave eventually, right? If he didn’t get close to anyone again, he couldn’t get hurt. He decided he was going to do life on his own.

“I joined the gang when I was nine, a couple months before my dad passed. . . . He didn’t know but I wanted to be like him. When he left me, I was alone and felt like I didn’t need anybody.”

Soon after his father’s death, all Luis’s brothers joined the same gang, looking for love, protection, a father figure.

“I’m one of the many who grew up in the street and had it all—cars, clothes, money, females, jewelry, all the finer things,” said Luis. “But the one thing I didn’t have was love or someone who wanted what was best for me. I was looking for that.”

And then we met.

Every single time.

I sob huge, extra-wet tears every single time I see that scene in the movie Freedom Writers. Erin Gruwell is a first-time history teacher in Long Beach, California, with a class of challenging ninth and tenth graders she is clearly unprepared for. Many of the youth are in rival gangs and fight often in her classroom. As the movie progresses, she finds a way to connect with them relationally and the classroom becomes like a family. The youth publish their stories in a book called Freedom Writers, creatively named after the Freedom Riders, the civil rights activists who rode buses across the South protesting the segregation of public transit.

One particular student, Andre Bryant, faces the challenge of being recruited for street life. When his brother loses a court case and faces a lengthy prison sentence, Andre chooses to go back to street life and begins skipping classes. In an assignment, Gruwell’s students evaluate themselves on how they feel they’re doing in the class. Andre gives himself an F. Gruwell pulls him outside the classroom to ask him why.

He responds, “It’s what I feel I deserve, is all.”

She looks him square in the eyes with love and fierceness. “I know what you’re up against. We’re all of us up against something . . . I see who you are. I see you. [A tear falls down Andre’s face as he fights many more.] Do you understand me? I can see you and you are not failing.”

We all want to be seen.

We have a need to be seen.

Not for glory or fame but because of the simple innate human need within us. Being seen makes us feel whole, complete, validated. To live in a world unseen is torture, traumatic. And yet many go unseen daily, especially those on the margins.

To be seen doesn’t take much. It can be as simple as an acknowledgment or as huge as an award of recognition. But the seeing I’m talking about goes deeper than surface recognition. It’s about seeing and accepting the humanity in everyone. It’s about discovering our own worth, which allows us to see the worth in others. Seeing others through the lens of God brings healing and opens our worldview. This requires being (and staying) in the posture of a learner, listening intentionally to understand and validating the story we hear. This formula helps us to develop compassion, and, in turn, compassion requires action.