Tough Love

Many of you have followed our journey from  the start, and will recall some of our stories from pretty early on. One of those stories has been our friendship with Lucky who was one of Elijah's favorite friends when we first moved here. He has come and gone within our journey now that he is no longer living in Maseru, but he has been doing his best to keep us up to date with a random phone call every few months.


This week he stopped by the office to talk about his schooling needs, we have been sponsoring him in school for several years. After a long discussion, with help from our HR manager who called his school, I was able to determine that he actually failed all of his classes last year. It was so sad to see that we had paid for everything he needed for school, and he did not put forth enough effort to pass even one class. I was stuck in a really hard place as I needed to determine what the next step should be.


I began to image if one of my children went off to college and failed all of their classes. There is no way I would pay for them to have another class. What a waste of money when there are so many people who would sacrifice so many things just to have a good education. I knew in my heart that I had to hold him to the same standard I would hold my own child to. I needed to teach him that you don't receive a gift and then throw it away and expect another gift. It was time for him to learn how to make his dreams a reality, this time by himself. Maybe this would be the push he needs to help Him learn to trust and rely on God because God is the only one who can help him bring about change.


Those things may be true in my head, but my heart was absolutely shattered when I had to share it with him. With tears rolling down my cheeks, I told him that I loved him too much to bail him out, he needed to find his own way into school. I told him that I have always thought of him like a son, and I was going to treat him the same way I would treat my own son. But tough love hurts deeply. He wouldn't look at me, he was so devastated. I could barely hold myself together as I hugged him and sent him back to his uncle's house. Then I came into the office and sobbed. I have been praying for him ever since and I will continue to pray for him. This was so hard for me, but I know that I did the right thing in teaching him to value the gifts he will be given in the future, and to help him take his education seriously. May this lesson in tough love make a lasting impression on him that will change his life for the better.