...On the Line

A friend of mine once said, “If everyone were blunt, this world would be a whole lot nicer.”

 Not rude, but frank, honest.

This world is full of people that remind me of tortoises: People that say, “How are you?” just to get it over with; People that ignore other people because they’re afraid of being hurt, that don’t look each other in the eye and say, “Hello.”; People that will stare each other in the face for ten minutes, without so much as offering a smile; Neighbors that talk about the weather when they could be talking about the One who made it; And nobody digs deeper, because it feels safer. 

I’m guilty of this.

I proudly think to myself, “I’m a homeschooler. Homeschoolers are friendly.” And often I am friendly, because I like people and I’m too curious for my own good. But sometimes I wonder what happened to that curly-haired two-year-old that waved from her car seat at every person driving past. Two-year-olds have a naive confidence that seems to fade along with sticky fingers and chubby cheeks. I wonder if it shouldn’t.   

Yesterday I went to Great America. I loved all the people, but I found myself avoiding their eyes more than normal. I didn’t smile at  the lady I bought a ticket from. I did strike up a conversation with two girls next to me in line, but only after fifteen minutes of dodging their eyes and smiling nicely past them at the ground. We ended up getting along spiffingly after I decided I couldn’t stand it any longer and said, “Hi.”  

Later, on the high-ropes course, God reminded me of something.

I stood on a platform sixty feet above the ground. A single rope stretched out before me to another platform. A little boy with blond hair, in an orange shirt made his way along it, pulling the cord attached to his harness through its track. When he reached the other end, I stepped out onto the rope and he said, “Imagine doing this in the dark.” It was such a normal thing to say. I think it was the most normal thing I’d heard all day. I don’t remember what I said in reply, because my feet slipped off the rope then, and I dangled for two seconds before I found them again. “Imagine doing this without a harness,” I said. The boy laughed a normal laugh. He was a couple of steps along another obstacle and he leaned towards me a said, “By the way, my name’s—“ but the air was too loud to catch it. I yelled my name too and he said,”How far away do you live?” and I told him forty minutes and he said, “Our hotel’s about thirty minutes from here. We’re on vacation.” I wondered for a second why on earth he was telling me this. After all, people had been ignoring me all day. This was like a glass of cool water. “Where do you live?” I asked. “We’re from Montana.” I said that it must be beautiful there. He said, “I guess—“ as if he’d never really thought about it before. “It is beautiful, but you don’t get anything like this there. We wanted go to Six Flags for vacation.” I laughed. “I’d want to go to Montana for a vacation.”

Our conversation went on in this pleasant way and the main thought that kept moving around in my head was how quickly a simple question can make someone feel like a friend. The boy had no agenda. He might have made the exact same comment to someone else and it wouldn’t have made any difference to him.

We played tag up there with my brother and I pointed out my sister. He pointed out his Dad down below. “You see the man in the white shirt on the cell phone? That’s my Dad. Are your parents here?”

When we got down, I don’t think I said good-bye to him. That’s also a very normal thing to do. I don’t always remember to say bye to my friends.

That kid taught me a lesson and I don’t ever want to forget it.
I want to learn to be the first person to step onto the line, or peek out of their shell and become vulnerable to get to know another tortoise-at-heart, because that's what Jesus did over and over. He sought after wise men. He sought after other people, lost people, to find out who they were as individuals, because He could share with them something that they'd never heard of before. I can too. 

I’m also thinking that Montana must be a very nice state.