It was an ordinary evening at our house—the kind that doesn’t feel “important” until later, when you realize God was quietly teaching you something.
We were playing Monopoly Jr. with our youngest kids. If you’ve ever played it, you know the whole game is basically bright colors and quick choices. Properties are grouped by color, and the money and cards are easy enough for little hands to manage without too much arguing… most of the time.
That night, my 9-year-old daughter kept placing her cards on the wrong color spaces. Not once or twice—consistently. At first, we thought she was rushing or being silly. Then we assumed she wasn’t paying attention. Finally, my husband and I looked at each other: Something’s off.
We started asking questions. “Which one is the purple?” “Show me the green.” Her answers didn’t match what was right in front of her. The room got quiet in a way it hadn’t been a moment before. And there it was—our realization forming in real time: our daughter might be color blind.
I’ll be honest: our first reaction was sadness.
Not because she was “less than,” but because it hit us hard to think she had been living her whole life seeing the world differently than we do—and not even knowing it. As a mom, you want your child to experience everything in the fullest, brightest way. You want their world to feel wide open.
And then the second wave of sadness came for an even more specific reason: she loves art.
She talks about being an artist when she grows up. She draws constantly. She notices patterns, shades, and details the rest of us miss. Her favorite thing to paint is a rainbow—rainbows on paper, rainbows on crafts, rainbow color schemes everywhere. In our minds, color blindness felt like a door closing on a dream she cherished.
But the Lord has a gentle way of challenging what we assume is “loss.”
After the initial emotions settled, we started learning. We started paying closer attention to how she describes what she sees, how she chooses colors, how she arranges them. And slowly, a new thought began to grow: her world isn’t empty of beauty—it’s simply different.
Different does not mean broken.
Different does not mean without purpose.
Different does not cancel calling.
That lesson has stayed with me, not just as a parent, but as an educator and superintendent.
Because in our schools, we see this truth every day: children learn differently. They come from different backgrounds. They carry different strengths, challenges, histories, needs, and hopes. Some are confident and outspoken. Some are quiet observers. Some are quick with words but struggle with numbers. Others can build, fix, draw, sing, or lead in ways that don’t always show up on a test or a worksheet.
And our teachers—our incredible Iowa–Missouri teachers—are doing holy work when they refuse to treat “different” like a deficit.
In Adventist education, we don’t believe students are accidents. We believe they are created with intention. We believe God places gifts inside children long before the world has language to name them. And we believe education should be more than delivering information—it should be discipleship, nurture, and formation.
One verse that has come back to me again and again is 1 Samuel 16:7:
“The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
As humans, we’re quick to judge by what we can easily see—performance, behavior, labels, differences, test scores, who “gets it” first. But God looks deeper. God sees the heart. God sees the whole story. God sees what a child can become.
That is what our teachers are aiming for, even on the hard days.
They meet students where they are, and then they patiently help them take the next step. They adjust, reteach, encourage, reframe, and try again. They create classrooms where a child doesn’t have to pretend to fit a mold to belong. They help students recognize their own value—not because they match someone else’s strengths, but because they are God’s workmanship, made for a purpose (Ephesians 2:10).
I think about my daughter now when I walk through our schools. I think about how quickly I assumed her “difference” might limit her future. And then I think about how God is teaching me to see what He sees: possibility, calling, beauty, and promise.
Maybe that’s part of the real mission of education—helping children see themselves clearly through a biblical lens.
Not as “less than.”
Not as “behind.”
Not as “too different.”
But as fully known, fully loved, and still called.
And for that, I’m grateful—for the lesson at our kitchen table, and for the teachers across Iowa–Missouri who live it out every day.
Jovannah Poor Bear-Adams is education superintendent for the Iowa-Missouri Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.
