I saw her as I left the sandwich shop and got in my car.
I don’t mean I saw her, I mean I saw her.
She was attempting to cross one of the busiest streets in town with two overflowing shopping carts full of old suitcases, clothes and a small mountain of worn odds and ends. Her small frame fought the pull of the carts for a moment as she watched the cars fly by, then with an exhale, she looked around and reluctantly abandoned one on the side of the road as she took the other towering cart across the intersection.
As she came back my way for her second cart, I saw her face from the safety of my parked car just as it began to rain.
Her sunglasses shielded her eyes from an imaginary sun, her dark jagged pixie cut giving her an edge her quivering lip didn’t quite believe in.
Where on earth was she going?
I bit my lip and raised my eyes, seeking Jesus and finding an outrageous explosion of pins stuck to the ceiling of my car.
I closed my eyes instead.
What do I do?
I can’t just approach a total stranger!
But who knows what her story could be…
What if she just wants to be left alone?
I took a deep breath and watched her struggle in the cold. A stillness settled over my heart.
My heart.
This young woman had a beating heart just like mine.
I started my car and drove through the intersection, pulling into a nearby parking lot just as she began to move past it, pulling one cart a few feet, then going back for the second one, a slow, grueling process.
I approached her slowly on foot in the rain, offered my name and asked where she was heading.
“Anywhere out of sight, just for a little while” her broken voice responded. She motioned towards her worn and well loved load. I could see now it was all held together precariously with fishing line.
“I’ve had a really bad day.”
As soon as she removed her glasses and I saw her eyes, I thanked Jesus for opening mine.
For the next hour, she sat beside me in that parking lot, filling her empty stomach and telling me about how losing her children several months ago had caused her to lose her hope. Her joy.
“It’s like a toothache. It’s been 6 months, but the ache never goes away, it’s always there and you can never stop thinking about it, about them – even for a second.”
We spoke about where we had come from. I learned about her life, about where she had grown up and where she wanted to go. All of her possessions and passions were in that cart, and she had a dream to start over. She dreamed of having her own store where she could create something beautiful from something old. To give new life to something broken. To spread happiness in a world that she believed had already gone dark, a world that she had lost faith in the goodness of long ago.
“I haven’t had hope in longer than I can remember.” She paused for a moment and looked out the streaked window.
“Maybe today.”
She wiped her eyes on her hands and her hands on her black jacket in my front seat as the rain came down and shot me a crooked smile. She took another sandwich bite.
In 60 minutes, we were friends.
In the end, her independent heart wouldn’t take more than my phone number.
I hope she calls.
What holds us back from being real? Why is it so hard to take a step, to reach out to our brothers and sisters in this world? Why is it so hard to offer help, to extend hope, and even to ask for it? It’s so difficult for me to do all of these things.
I wonder where she is now.
I think about her when it rains.
I’d almost just kept driving, tugging my blinders so comfortably back into place. And honestly, usually I do.
I almost always do.
Lovers, open your eyes. God, let me see.
Maybe today.
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