The first time Ezri surprised me was in the library.

“Mr. Ahnfeldt,” she whispered.  She sounded stressed, like a leaf being whipped around in the winter wind.

“What’s up Ezri?”

Students were lining up at the circulation desk, making side conversations while the librarian beeped the bar codes on their copies of A Raisin in the Sun.

She looked at me carefully, her brown eyes peering through wire-rimmed glasses.

“Could you please pray for my sister?”  she asked.  She waited for a moment.  Then, with tears in her eyes, she said, “She’s not doing very well.”

Her prayer request struck me.  That’s not common in public schools, even among kids who say they’re Christians.  And she’s quiet.  If something inside her ached bad enough for her to ask a teacher for prayer, it had to be really bad.

“Of course, Ezri,” I said.  And then she told me about her sister’s battle with mental health.  The darkness was creeping in on their family, trying to choke out any hope they had left.

That was 8th period, the last class of the day, so as I walked to my car, Ezri’s prayer request played like a sad song on repeat in my head.

A month later, she surprised me again.

The class was sharing Instant Replays, a tradition we have on Fridays.  For extra credit, students can type words that mean something to them, print them out, and then share them in front of their classmates.

The stage was set.  I had Toby Mac’s song Till the Day I Die ready on YouTube.

“Who has an Instant Replay?” I shouted.

Salem raised her hand.

“Come on up, Salem!”  As soon as I said that, I hit play on YouTube.  Then Salem bounded up to the podium with the music, and everyone clapped.

She shared some lyrics from a song that helped her during a dark time, and then she talked about the self-condemning thoughts she fights against.  Her vulnerability was beautiful.

“Who’s next?”

Veronica raised her hand.

I played the walk-up music again, and a shy smile formed on her face as she walked to the front.  She gripped the sides of the podium with confidence, and again the class clapped.  After I faded the music, she shared a poem from the movie 10 Things I Hate About You, reading each line slowly, like she meant it.  She talked about why the poem meant so much to her, and again, the vulnerability moved me.

“Anyone else?”  I asked, scanning the room.  That’s when I saw Ezri.

She sat in the back raising her hand, the blue highlights in her hair shining in the luminescent lights.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing!  She never says a word, let alone volunteers to speak in front of the class!

“Awesome, Ezri!” I shouted. “Come on up.”  I pressed play for the music to start, but Ezri’s face didn’t match my excitement or Toby Mac’s hype.  There was a sadness in her eyes.

When she got to the podium, I faded the music.  The classroom was so quiet, we could hear the crackle of her paper as she unfolded it, and after adjusting her glasses, she read a quote from her sister:

“Ezri, I just want to be normal.”

The words were from a recent conversation she had when her sister was “venting” about being bullied.

She explained that her sister struggled with her mental health, and when the bullying got bad, the whole family moved to Colorado to give her a fresh start.

“I don’t get it,” Ezri said. “She is one of the sweetest and funniest people I know. Yet she’s still picked on because she’s not ‘normal.’”  When she said the word “normal”, she made air quotes with her fingers.

My mind went back to Ezri’s request for prayer in the library.

“My normal,” Ezri continued, “is different from your normal.”

Then she said her sister’s name.

“My sister, Jael. . .”   Her voice broke, and she had to stop.  Slowly, she reached under her glasses to wipe away the tears forming in her eyes.

“. . . her normal is different from my normal.”  She paused again, looking down at the paper.  “We all have different routines,” she said, wiping her eyes again.  “We all eat different foods, we have different working habits. So what is normal?”

That last question hung in the air.

Students leaned forward in their desks, and when I looked at Caroline, sitting in front of the podium, I saw tears running down her cheeks too.  Like Ezri, she slid her fingers under her glasses to wipe her eyes.  I could tell the class wanted to respond.  They wanted her to know they understood.

Then, Ezri gave us the answer to the question she asked.

“No one is normal,” she explained, almost angry.  “We’re all different, but that,” she said, “is beautiful.”

When she was done, at first everyone was quiet.  A young woman crying alone at a podium can leave people a little stunned.  But then, finally, someone clapped, and what followed was an explosion of applause.

I pointed to Avariella and Grace.

“Could you guys give Ezri a hug?” I asked.

They sprang out of their seats and rushed down the aisle.  Other students, like Caroline and Aliya, were already out of their seats moving toward Ezri.  More tears came, the Kleenex box was passed around, and then I couldn’t see Ezri anymore.  She was lost in a massive huddle of people wiping their eyes, smiling and offering hugs.

I got out of my chair a few feet from the podium and watched in wonder.

The quiet students stood safely on the side while the loud ones ran to the middle.  There were theatre students passing out Kleenex and athletes clapping.  Like vibrant colors in a sunset, the differences were all over the room—Spanish speakers, readers, ranchers and dancers.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Unity has never meant uniformity,” and he was right.  All of us in room 212 that day felt unified despite being different. Nobody wanted to be normal or “uniform.”  We had been created with beautiful differences.  Because of Ezri’s courage, we could finally see that.  We could finally step out of our caves and let those differences shine.

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