Out of frustration, I broke my pencil in half and threw it across the table. My mom walked over and asked me what was wrong. I told her with tears welling up in my eyes that I couldn’t write pretty. She asked me why I was writing with that hand anyway. ” My teacher is making me do it”, I replied with a pouty voice. I was in the first grade.”But you’re left handed,” she said, “what do you mean your teacher is making you write with your right hand?”

I explained that my teacher was strapping my left hand to the back of my chair with a belt whenever we would do a writing lesson. It wasn’t just me but some other kids in the class who were writing with the same hand as me.I don’t remember her reaction to my response, I just remember that she called Dad and in a matter of minutes it seemed he walked in the house in his police uniform from working his beat that night. Our school principal was a friend of theirs and went to our church so they called her at home that evening. The next morning my parents and the parents of the other left handed kids were in the principal’s office with my teacher. The other parents were glad the teacher was trying to change their children’s writing hand because they did not want them to grow up left handed but my parents said that if God made me left handed they were not going to change it.

The teacher was fired and the school brought in a counselor to spend time with us left handed kids to assure us that there was nothing wrong with us for writing with our left hand. That’s what I remembered the most, the tender look on that counselor’s face when she said to us “don’t ever let anyone tell you  that you are writing with the wrong hand, you are just writing with the opposite hand!” I have always remembered that and have been proud of being left handed.

I was reading my devotion the other day and it lead me to Judges 3:15. “Again the Israelites cried out to the Lord, and He gave them a deliverer-Ehud, a left-handed man, the son of Gera the Benjamite.”

A left handed man! He delivered Israel from their enemies, this left handed man. How about that!!

It seems that I am in good company!

Thank You, Father, for yet another one of  Your little “moments”.