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When is a time you’ve been thunderstruck?

The best time I can remember being thunderstruck came at the end of my senior year of high school. I’d always worked hard and done well in school. I appreciated all my teachers and enjoyed most of the subjects we studied. I loved choir and drama.

My favorite memories of school include helping in the office for two semesters (where they let me type up all the announcements and pass them out to the classes) and spending one as a teacher’s aide. The staff at my rural school were kind, intelligent, and thoughtful. I enjoyed the other students in my school, though I truly knew only a few.

All in all, I had a very good high school experience no matter how awkward a teen girl I was. If it helps, my class voted my future prediction to be this: “Sister Mary Rachael teaching 2nd grade.” Yeah, I think the consensus was “goodie two shoes,” which proves my awkwardness but is not the end of the world. I am not perfect, but I do appreciate truth, honor, hard work, kindness, generosity, fairness, compassion, and so forth. Lovely qualities we should all aspire to have.

Well, as I was saying, at the end of my senior year there was a school-wide assembly that parents were invited to. I wasn’t popular, though I got along with most everyone I came in contact with, so I figured I’d get a shout out for graduating in the top 10 of my class and being involved in clubs like Leos, Booster, Pep, I to i, drama and so forth but not much else.

My parents were sitting there with me when the principal came to the announcement of a special award voted on by the teachers. I’ll stop here and say there were two people who were by far–a landslide maybe–shoe-ins for this award. It was Outstanding Senior Boy and Outstanding Senior Girl. I think everyone there knew who would get that award, so when they called my name for Senior Girl a hush fell over the crowd. It was probably only a second or two, but it felt like a minute while I wrapped my mind around what I’d just heard. I didn’t even stand right away. One of my parents had to give me a nudge. The memory of that exact moment is lost in a kind of haze, I was so astounded . . . but in a good way. I never-in-a-million-years thought I’d receive an award like that.

Here’s the plaque I received. It’s usually in my cedar chest, but my kids were looking at it not too long ago, and I haven’t got it put away yet…

It meant a lot to me then and it still does. Even today. Sometimes I’m still a little thunderstruck . . . in a good way. 🙂