A Change of Hart

Freddie Hart walks into the living room one evening while his father is paying the monthly bills, and he starts asking a lot of strange questions. How is work? Does Dad like his boss? Is the job boring? Maybe it is time for the family to move somewhere else? His father sees straight through it and asks what is really going on.

The truth comes out slowly. Freddie has no friends at school. He has been taking the long way home down Duval Street every afternoon instead of the shortcut behind the building, because a group of kids waits back there to call him names, throw things at him, and knock the books out of his hands. It has been happening all year, and not just after school. Freddie has decided that the only fix is to go somewhere nobody knows him. His dad tells him that running away from a problem is never the answer, that the same thing happened to him at that age, and that if Freddie just keeps out of the way, the teasing will stop.

It does not stop. Freddie comes home with a torn shirt, ruined new pants, and a bloody nose, insisting he simply fell down. His father meets with Principal Seabury, who has already checked with the teachers and heard nothing but good things about Freddie. The principal promises to discipline the boys who pushed him and to keep an eye out, but with nearly three hundred students he cannot watch everyone, and hovering over Freddie all day would only make things worse. That night Freddie's parents talk it over. His father has stopped by the Odyssey Academy, a private school that would take Freddie right away, though his mother would have to drive him there and back. He worries about what a transfer would teach his son. His mother would rather risk the wrong school than watch her boy keep suffering. They decide to pray about it over the weekend.

Freddie starts at the Academy and meets a boy named Gordie, who dreads math. Freddie, who finds math easy, offers to help. Then the teacher asks Freddie to tell the class about himself, and he mentions collecting butterflies and wanting to learn the harp. At lunch, Gordie explains what Freddie did wrong - the harp, the butterflies, the hair, the clothes, the pens in his shirt pocket, and especially the mother who drops him off out front and blows kisses goodbye. Then Gordie decides he will study math by himself after all.

So Freddie invents a new Freddie Hart. He restyles his hair and picks different clothes, certain he knows what it takes to be popular. His mother tells him he is fine exactly as he is. A few days later she picks him up and finds him hurt and silent again.

At home, Freddie repeats his questions about Dad's job, and this time his father pulls him close and lets him admit that he tried and it did not work. He wanted to be somebody else, somebody the other kids would like. His dad tells him you can dress a dog up in fancy clothes and it is still a dog underneath - what matters is not the outside but the heart, and the real Freddie will show through no matter how the hair is combed.

Then his father asks the harder question: how much is Freddie willing to change? Would he give up the harp? Give up his mother's rides? Tear down the birdhouse he built? Skip the goodnight kiss? Repaint the house, or ask his mother to leave if the kids did not like how she looked? Freddie says that is silly, and his dad agrees, because it shows there is a limit. The question that really counts, he says, is who we want to be acceptable to. He wants to be a good worker, a good husband, and a good father - but most of all he wants to be acceptable to God. And Freddie, his teachers and parents agree, is a kind, well-mannered, good student. He is already acceptable to the people who love him.

Freddie points out that his dad left someone off the list. Does God like him? More than that, his father says: God loves him. Better still, Freddie does not have to change himself for God, because God does the changing from the inside. His father warns him plainly that this will not magically make him popular at school. Freddie is not popular now anyway. So they open the Bible together, and Freddie asks forgiveness and invites Jesus into his heart.

The next morning his mother, who nearly smothered him in kisses the night before, reminds him gently that the teasing may not stop just because he has changed inside. Freddie has already thought about that. Plenty of people picked on Jesus, he says, so Jesus probably knows exactly how he feels. Then he asks whether he might start harp lessons soon. His mother tells him he can start just as soon as he wants.