I’m reading Cheryl Strayed’s novel, Wild, about her trek over parts of the Pacific Crest Trail. She had many mishaps on her journey, beginning with her overweight pack that only a well-trained giant could have carried comfortably. At one point on the challenging and exhausting hike, she sat down on the edge of a cliff to put on her boots and lost one over the edge. It was gone, never to be retrieved. She disgustedly threw the other one over the edge too. I’m not sure how she proceeded from that point of disaster, I haven’t read that far yet, but I’m sure she had no choice but to move on down the trail. Maybe she went on in her wool-stockinged feet, maybe she took the next logging road off the trail and found a town in which to buy another pair of boots, I don’t know. What I do know is she didn’t have the option to quit.

I thought today, once again, as the news spewed out horrible stories of violence worldwide, how important it is for us to just keep on walking. On Mondays I’ve begun to volunteer at a local shelter. They run an afterschool program for the children enrolled in the shelter program and part of the families’ obligation is to send their children to get help with homework. So, in spite of the fact that at least half of them come with, miraculously, NO HOMEWORK to do, we cheerfully provide them some math or reading to practice. These are needy kids and they come in all ages and sizes at the same time. It’s not the best system, but it’s the one we have to deal with, so away we go trying to read good stories, instill good work habits and attitudes and trying to help them finish some of the elusive homework that will be due in school the next day.

It would be easy to act like the turtle and pull our heads into our shells. This is hard. This isn’t working very well. These kids are impossible, and so on. But I’m reminded of the verse that encourages us with simple words: Don’t be weary in doing good. I probably won’t see great results in the academic skills of these shelter children. I won’t even know how they do in school–I’ll just see them once a week for a few hours. But I plan on showing up to do the best job I can. I’ll just keep showing up even when I can’t see much beyond controlled chaos. You never know how a kind word or a simple explanation of a math problem might help a child to do just a bit better. You never know when your smile and your acceptance might encourage a child frustrated and discouraged by the life he or she has at the moment.

I’d better get back to my reading and see what happened to poor Cheryl, but I’m pretty sure she just kept going.