The other day I was dropping my son off at his middle school and became aggravated because the vehicle in front of me remained stationary long after my son got out and walked into the building. I, however, remained blocked-in. As my aggravation mounted, and I slowly edged around the offending driver, I moved carefully into the flow of traffic. While approaching the driver-side window, fully intending to express a nonverbal message, my heart suddenly softened.

I saw, sitting in the driver-seat, a clearly overweight mother painfully speaking with an obese teenager. The young man, her son, was obviously emotionally distraught … So too was his mother. She knew from experience his dread. She knew he was suffering. She was aware that as he walked from her car, across the campus, and into the school, his peers would look at him and measure him up based not upon his personality, his intelligence, or upon his beautiful soul, but upon his physical appearance.

Some of the teens would point and laugh. Others would plan the next bullying opportunity. Still others would do what is far more common, though profoundly painful in yet another way: they would ignore him. He would walk, socially invisible, among them. They would turn a blind eye to the bullying, to the jokes, and to his pain … And they would turn a blind eye to his potential to contribute to their group of friends, to their class discussions, etc.

This young man, speaking with his mother, begging to go home for the day, suffered invisibility on one hand, and physical and emotional trauma on the other.

I drove by. What else could I do? Stop?

And although I discussed this scene with my children, and I write about it now, hoping that this young man might be socially accepted, and not harmed, I cannot deny that much of the solution rests with this mother. She needs to help her son physically and emotionally. She needs to help him lose weight in a healthy way. It is not enough for her to turn a blind eye to the health problem he faces, and simply help him to cope with the emotions he is experiencing.

She needs to intervene. If, for whatever reason, she cannot help herself, she must nonetheless help him to become physically healthy. Her son needs her. And he needs to learn that the solutions to his pain begin with himself.

I will do my part. The mother and her son are not blind to me. But they too need to do their part. They need to be the first to seriously and relentlessly confront the problem and the pain they face.