I was working with one of my students today and had one of the saddest and at times most thought-provoking conversations I’ve ever had with a 7th grader.

“Mrs. Alvarado, I have a question,” he stated. “What is it?” I asked.

“Why do the cool kids say they like me but they don’t want to hang around me?”

“I don’t know, hon. I wish I had a better answer, but I just don’t know.”

“Ummmm … Coach said that I’m too smart for the cool girls. Do you think that’s true?”

My heart was starting to break at this point.

“Yes, she’s right. You’re too smart for the cool girls.”

“Mrs. Alvarado, I have another question.”

“Okayyyy …” I was starting to get a little apprehensive about what he might be about to ask me.

“Why did God make me?”

Wow! Didn’t even see that one coming. And my heart was truly breaking for the kid right then. You see, this kid was born broken. He wears his disabilities on the outside for everyone to see. And he knows that other people can see them.

“Darlin’,” I answered without missing a beat, “God loved you so much that He wanted you to be born so that He could spend lots of time hanging out with you.”

“Oh.”

“Mrs. Alvarado?”

“Yes?”

“Am I evil?”

“What makes you ask that?”

I knew where he was going with this but I wanted him to tell me.

“I just don’t think that God made me good.”

While I really wanted to share the plan of salvation with this child, I knew that the one thing he really needed to hear was that his disabilities didn’t make him a bad kid. And that’s what I told him:

That God loves him just the way he is and in God’s eyes, he was perfect.

I cried for this young child after he left my classroom.

Because it’s true: in God’s eyes … he is perfect.