May 21, 2019
“Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”
– 1 John 3:18
She could have thought, “I’ll be nice to him the day he starts being nice to me.”
Who would have blamed her? This kid was hurling profanities and insults at her every time she saw him at the juvenile detention center.
“Every other word was foul,” Priscilla Pineiro-Jenkins said. “Every other word was negative. There was nothing positive coming out of him.” Yes, Priscilla was his caseworker, but she didn’t have to take that kind of verbal abuse.
This 12-year-old, Ryan Speedo Green, grew up in a Virginia neighborhood full of drug addicts and violence. Threatening the lives of his mother and brother got him locked up. His temper got him in solitary confinement for the better part of two months.
“I remember just banging on the door and screaming,” Ryan said. “It gets so unbearable; you just fall on your knees and start crying.”
Priscilla saw his pain through the storm – and didn’t walk away.
“He’s a child. (The insults were) not at me,” she said. “And you just can’t say ‘no’ to someone and shut them out when you know they’re desperate to figure out, ‘What is love? Who will love me? Who will care for me? Will you stand by me even if I’m cussing you out?’ Well, yes.”
Her decision changed Ryan’s perspective.
“I remember that she, despite all of my anger… was still nice to me,” he said of Priscilla. “I still remember that there was a person who was nice to me. A person who showed me kindness. And that’s an amazing feeling, to see that in darkness.”
Fast forward 20 years. Ryan Speedo Green is now a critically-acclaimed opera star.
Wait… what? An opera star?
After being released from juvenile detention, Ryan decided he’d never end up there again. His family moved to a new town; he got involved in a school music program, discovered a talent for singing, and after a visit to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, he told his voice teacher, “I know what I want to do with my life. I want to sing at the Metropolitan Opera.”
He didn’t wait. He pursued that dream. At the age of 24, he beat more than a thousand other contestants in a competition at that same opera house. What once was a voice filled with rage, now stirs the souls of audiences around the world.
Like Ryan, we can pursue our dreams right now, no matter what happened in our past. Like Priscilla, we can choose to be kind to someone today, no matter how it’s being received. Imagine if either had waited until “someday.”
Ed Doney – Staff Writer
