The moment I left the gym, I heard shouting. The parking lot was packed with cars, typical for a Thursday night basketball game.

The quiet of the cold night was a sharp contrast to the cheering fans inside, and all that quiet exposed the words echoing through the cars. The gym doors closed behind me, and I replayed the moments my students “balled out” on the court. I wanted to celebrate them in class the next day.

More shouting.

Who is that? I wondered. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I scanned the parking lot. Whoever was making all the noise sounded angry.

“You need to pull your $#@ing head out of your %$#!” The voice didn’t belong to a teenage boy. This was a grown man.

The shouting continued as I walked. More f-bombs fell hard, filling the parking lot with dark tension. Passing the first row of cars, I could see a stout, barrel-chested man. He was scowling at a teenage boy.

“You need to wake the @#$% up!” Words exploded off the man’s lips like cannon blasts. His head was shaved, and his thick beard made him look mean.

The boy—probably his son—just stood there right behind my car accepting the barrage. His short, skinny frame was only covered by a basketball uniform. There was no coat or hat to protect him from the icy wind, so he took it, just like he took the icy words from the man standing in front of him.

The man was seething with anger, waving his hands, pointing at the kid and cussing like a sailor. The closer I got, the more my heart broke for the kid.

Do I confront this guy? I wondered. I had no idea why he was angry.

I pictured his fist breaking my nose. My heart beat faster as I approached my car and made eye contact. The monster of a man stopped shouting and stared back.

His stare told me without words, this isn’t your #@$% problem.

I recognized the boy from the JV game that ended 45 minutes earlier.

Had this guy been shouting for 45 minutes?

My mind raced to find the perfect words to say, calming words to deescalate. Nothing came. I reached to open my door, still looking at the man and the boy standing there. They looked back, and then I blurted out words that felt ridiculous.

“Have a good night,” I said, forcing a smile.

I got in my car and sat there a moment.

How stupid can I be?

I could hear the muffled voice of the man still talking to the boy, and then I turned on the car, backed out and drove away.

The image of that boy, helpless against the cold and the horrible words still lingers in my mind. I can’t shake it. Some of the potency of that moment probably just comes from being a teacher. I’m supposed to protect kids, and I didn’t know what to do.

But I think another reason it moved me is because I realized so many of my students probably deal with the same ugly voices. Like the icy wind that night, the voices they hear hit them with biting cruelty. Voices full of poisonous words. And if the words don’t come from angry parents, they hear them in their heads.

“You suck!”

“You’ll never be good enough!”

“Nobody even cares about you!”

It turns out the human mind, like my school parking lot, can be dark. But sometimes those same mundane places can also surprise us with light.

One early morning in that same school parking lot, I saw my friend Chris. He goes to my church, and his daughter, Cara, is a freshman at my school. They do their drop-off in the parking lot a little different than most. Chris likes to give Cara a hug before she heads into school, but he doesn’t want to lean across the seats awkwardly. And he doesn’t want to hold up traffic by stopping in the drop-off lane. So what does he do? He parks. He finds a good spot, gets out of his car and hugs her.

One morning after I parked my car, I was walking into school and caught Chris and Cara going through their drop-off routine. Chris came over to Cara’s side of the car. He waited until she threw her backpack over her shoulder, and then he wrapped his arms around her. Only Chris wasn’t going to settle for an ordinary hug. Oh no! He picked Cara up off her feet, swinging her whole body from left to right.

I watched Cara’s face, knowing most teenagers would rather drink toilet water than have their dad hug them publicly. But she loved it! Her eyes lit up, and a huge smile spread across her face.

The morning was crisp with snow clinging to the cars, but the warmth of that moment cut through all that cold.

“That’s awesome!” I shouted as I came up to them. They said “Hi” and smiled, and then both Cara and I walked into school together. We waved at her dad as he drove away.

“I think your dad loves you,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said with a bright smile.

This is my first week back at school, and I’m dreaming about what my school would be like if every kid got a drop-off like Cara’s. Okay, maybe not being swung around. Some students, I’m sure, would respectfully decline the swinging hug. But what if they walked into school believing they were loved?

The messages we believe—whether they’re shouted with anger in a parking lot or whispered with love through a hug—determine the trajectory of our lives. And we can impact which messages speak the loudest. We may not always find ways to shield people from angry dads or condemning thoughts, but we can offer a steady, present love, the kind God gives us to share. One simple hug accomplishes more than words ever could. And if not a hug, maybe a meal, a listening ear, or even a smile. If students walked into my school believing they were loved, there’d be a revolution. And like Chris, I want to be part of making that happen.

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