It’s funny how we will go to ridiculous lengths to defend or betray a stranger. For example, an 85-year-old woman cuts you off in the grocery line. She’s holding a small basket of items and you immediately tell yourself, “She’s elderly. She’s only buying a few things. Maybe she’s in a hurry. Don’t be a jerk about it.” Then, you see the four wine bottles and pack of cigarettes on the counter and you realize she’s just having a party. Now it’s, “She’s probably drunk already. Did she drive here? How rude is this?”
I also have these really loud neighbors who sound like they’re running a furniture business out of their unit. Otherwise, I can’t determine what all the noise is about. I heard what sounded like a table rolling down the stairs at 10:00pm last night, only today to find a cooler turned over. Were they letting ice drain? Was there a Rodent of Unusual Size (ROUS) inside (I’m convinced they exist beyond the realm of Princess Bride)? I can’t explain it, but it all seems bizarre to me. I had a neighbor once who never spoke to me and after three years leave a dead plant on my patio the day I moved out. Why? I still don’t know. Maybe she was being kind and, like me, can’t keep anything green alive. Or maybe it was some kind of voodoo and I missed the magic of it. Either way, it was weird and unforgettable.
Drivers are the worst. Road rage is such a real thing that I don’t trust people who say it doesn’t exist. Last week, I had to drive an hour to have some tests done. I drank two full bottles of water before I left (like I’m five years old again and didn’t know that was a going to be a huge mistake) and not even fifteen minutes into my drive, I met road construction where concrete was poured and one lane of traffic moved at a time. I was, unfortunately, in the lane that was not going anywhere. When my lane finally moved again, we were directed through a few different detours to other roads, so I chose one. That moment of relief was soon obliterated when I saw only one lane was moving again. Again, due to road construction, and my lane was the one sitting, smoking a cigarette, and laughing some pre-cancerous, taunting laugh at my finding another road to sit on for a while. My body, holding the seemingly 15 gallons of water, was not laughing. It was mentally rocking in a fetal position somewhere in a corner of my mind in agony.
I eventually turned onto the road I needed and was again sitting in another lane. Then, the gas light on my car lit up and I think I saw red for about two minutes. This is real? This sounds like a poorly-written sitcom. When I got to my tests, the nurse told me that my blood pressure was high, and it’s never high. So. . . that’s how I know road rage is a real thing.
The part of this story that actually matters is that later I found out that there had been a car accident involving four vehicles, and an 11-year-old boy died, while five others went to the hospital. I immediately felt ridiculous. I was so busy getting worked up about sitting in traffic. We have this fast-food mentality that we impose on every aspect of our lives sometimes. We want everything to happen exactly when we think it should happen. We hate commercials, we hate lines, we hate slow internet service, we hate waiting on phones to charge, we hate waiting on wives to get ready, we hate waiting on 5:00pm to roll through, we hate waiting on someone to call back, we hate waiting for a table or on food to come.
We hate being patient for anything. I was humbled that afternoon. The sad part was that I saw two more car accidents that same day. One of them left the car looking unrecognizable. I was mad about sitting in traffic and other people had a black hole blow through their families that day. They lost someone.
The bottom line of any of this is that everyone has a reality unlike mine. And my reality is unlike theirs. I can’t stop thinking about it. The parents of that accident lost a child. Their reality is certainly unlike mine. Every time I turn on the news, there’s more death and defiance and obliteration of lives. Parents who can’t protect their children from war. Realities unlike mine.
I met a woman in a CVS line two days after I moved here, and she talked to me for 20 minutes about her daughter and how she absolutely loved her pacifier as a baby. I found out later in our conversation that her daughter had died young from health problems. She went on to tell me about her small dog and how attached she was to it. She showed me a picture of the dog on her phone. The first thing I noticed was that the dog had a pacifier in its mouth.
Sometimes you can’t explain anything you see or hear. You can’t resolve its placement or relevance in your day or life. You can’t situate solid rationale between heartache or shock. You aren’t supposed to. Isaiah 41:10 says, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
Be brave, love hard, and have some compassion for people without making them earn it from you.
M
Blue Withens 