To show how God helps us with scary problems, the Fifth Graders did chapel about David and Goliath and fear. Then each of them told about a Goliath in their lives.
Catie’s Goliath was that she doesn’t understand math.
No surprise. Struggling with Fifth Grade math is as genetic as her blonde hair, big feet, and long legs. I haven’t understood math ever since it progressed past multiplication and division. Even though I desperately wanted good grades, I failed all the math tests, all the time.
God never slayed this Goliath for me; I still don’t understand Fifth Grade math.
You know the problem with not understanding math beyond elementary school? For the next two decades, math class equaled one long, painful tutoring session.
While I listened to Catie tell the school how she wanted to overcome her struggles with Math, I worried she would also never understand prime numbers or exponents.
What would this mean?
Would she give up on math?
Would she give up on college?
On high school?
But thinking about it a little more, I see how not mastering math has taught me much more than if Pi and factorization had come easily for me. Some of these same lessons may be in Catie’s future.
For example, the countless nights I spent hunched over a Geometry worksheet with my dad. He would try to teach me how to find the area of a circle or the circumference of whatever, and I could NOT get it. For hours, we would work. The paper between us would end up stained with my tears and his erasures.
We both groaned through these sessions, but I see the love in them now. I got to witness my dad as the wonderful teacher that so many other people knew him to be. When Mike and Catie work together now, she witnesses her dad’s patience. Except when he asks her what 5 to the 5th power is, and she answers, “25” for the zillionth time.
Then she witnesses him opening a beer.
My math struggles also sent me to daily tutoring with some of Ball High’s best teachers. I have more memories of Mr. Kimble’s Algebra classroom than any other room else on campus. During those long afternoons, he taught me how to find X, but he also taught me about faith. Over and over, he told me to ask God to help me focus and understand math.
To remind me to pray during the test, he would rap his fist on my desk as he passed. His quiet witness made an incredible impact on how I understood God and faith. If I hadn’t been his worst student, I never would’ve learned these important lessons from him.
To get into grad school, I had to take the GRE—with included math more advanced than Fifth Grade. Mike tried to cram a decade of lessons into the two weeks before the test. Even as I realized more and more how much I didn’t GET math, I saw how good he was at it. As he demonstrated the Pythagorean Therom, I understood how smart he was. He did get this stuff. I couldn’t have been more amazed if he had pulled rabbits out of his hat.
Perhaps the best part of going through life with only a Fifth Grade understanding of math is that now I understand how Catie is struggling. I can look her in the eye and honestly tell her this will turn out okay. She may have trouble grasping the advanced concepts of pi, and Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally, but she will learn lots of lessons. She’ll also learn some humility—and a lot of patience. She will also master ways to sneak looks at her calculator during a pop quiz.
Most importantly, I can tell her that she can lead a happy and full life without mastering all the math. She might struggle with numbers and concepts throughout her life, but this doesn’t have to define her. Her identity is grounded so much deeper than whether or not she can ace pap quizzes.
And, actually, learning that will be the best way for her to slay her math-Goliath.
