staci_stallings@hotmail.com

http://www.stacistallings.com

If you live with your eyes open for the opportunities God plants in
your path, you just might get lucky enough to realize they are there before
they aren’t.  By “opportunities” I don’t mean “circumstances” or “fortuitous
occurrences for you to get ahead.”  No, I mean people.

See, in this life, you don’t have to learn only from your own
experiences.  In fact, if you’re smart, you won’t.  If you’re smart, you’ll recognize
the opportunities God gives you to learn from the experiences of others
while they’re still with you.

Wendell was one of my opportunities.

On the surface we were nothing alike.  He was a 60-plus-year-old money
manager who had done quite well for himself and his family.  I once
heard him tell the story of paying $80,000 cash for a house when he moved
from Chicago to the Texas Panhandle.  That wasn’t a boast.  It was Wendell,
a straight shooter, who had learned enough about life to have it working
for him instead of the other way around.

That’s why I’m sure plenty of people thought he was crazy to take a
nearly-no-paying job in a little private school that was deathly close
to closing its doors.  In fact, I later learned that during one
particularly bad month, Wendell used his own money to pay the teachers’ salaries
until a grant came in to keep us floating for the next month

At the time I was a young, idealistic, first-year teacher who was doing
everything I could to make a difference in my students’ lives.  It was
an uphill battle.  Not because of the kids but because of the jaded
resignation around me.

On one side was the camp that vowed we would save them all – whether
they wanted to be saved or not.  On the other was the camp that said they
were all hopeless so why bother?

I suppose that’s why I first started going into Wendell’s office –
well, that and the fact that without a classroom of my own, I needed the
table in his office to get anything done.

To this day I don’t remember how our talks started.  I don’t even
remember our first formal meeting.  However, by the third month of school, we
were fast friends and partners on the same team.  For hours and hours some
nights after school we would sit and talk.  Him behind a desk stacked with
work; me with my briefcase full of work at my side.  Both talking as if we had
absolutely nothing else in the world to do.

More than once I remember knocking the back of my head against the door
behind my chair, mostly in frustration over how complicated everyone
else was making things.  We talked about everything, Wendell and I.  The
state of the school.  Finances.  The way things were out-of-control and getting
worse.  What we could do about it and what we couldn’t.  We talked
about life, and how it was best lived.  We discussed faculty members and how
some didn’t seem to hold anyone accountable for anything and how others
would jump at a student with no provocation whatsoever.  And we talked about
the hierarchy above us.

Now one thing about Wendell, he didn’t look like he had a lot of money. 
He didn’t look like he had much of anything at all.  In fact, he looked a
lot like an older version of Mr. Rogers.  He wore the sweaters and
everything.  However, despite appearances, Wendell was no one’s doormat.  That was
obvious to anyone who really knew him, but somehow the bishop of our
diocese missed that little detail.

One night, during a heated debate at a school board meeting, Wendell
stood up to the bishop (to the absolute horror of the principal) when
everyone else was cow-towing to a very bad decision he had made for the school. 
In no uncertain terms Wendell told the bishop that he was wrong and that
the decision he had made was the dumbest one Wendell had ever been witness
to. The next day back in the office, the mortified principal stormed into
the office and demanded, “How could you say something like that to the
bishop?”

Wendell’s response?  “Because he was wrong.  Just because you put
‘Bishop’ or ‘President’ or ‘Senator’ or ‘Principal’ in front of someone’s name,
doesn’t give them the right to run over everybody else, and if they’re
wrong, I’m going to say they’re wrong.  Bishop or no bishop.”

He wasn’t advocating muting against authority.  He was simply pointing
out that with authority comes the responsibility to do what’s right, and if
you don’t, you deserve to be called on it—no matter who you are or what
your title happens to be.

Two years later, when I was expecting my first child, I made the
decision to resign at the school year’s end so I could stay home and raise my

family.  One night during one of our talks I confessed that I had begun to waver
in my decision. I told Wendell that I felt like I was letting the school
down by leaving.  “Ah, Staci,” Wendell said like a patient, omniscient
grandfather, “you’re destined for much bigger things than this place.”

Sadly, Wendell’s no longer with us.  He died before I ever even started
writing my books, and yet I often wonder if he could see now even back
then.   Now my books and words have touched myriads of souls that I will most
likely never even meet this side of heaven. In short, I have been
granted some authority, some influence in other people's lives—an opportunity
that I never could have imagined having back then. And I've got to tell you, I
take that responsibility very, very seriously. Why? Because once a very wise
man took the time to teach me the importance of shouldering the authority
you are given, of doing the right thing no matter what your station in life
happens to be, and of using the “title” you are given for the good of
all—not just to show your own power and place in the world.

For that lesson alone I say, "God bless Wendell."

Copyright Staci Stallings, 2003