behold

Isaiah 49:16 "Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands..."

forty-five years prior

Yesterday, on Easter, I was with lots of friends and family when I decided that I simply must leave immediately and purchase a pair of rollerblades, so I ventured toward Wal Mart in hopes of finding some for an affordable price. They unfortunately didn't have any in stock at that particular store, but the rollerblades aren't really the point. I'd turned off the main road and was turning to pull into the parking lot, and I noticed a couple of scruffy looking people sitting on the grassy area between the side-road I was on and the parking lot. They had big backpacks, the kind people take on big camping hiking climbing adventures, and one of them held a cardboard sign that I didn't read because I thought I knew what it said. I ignored them because, like most people I think, I've been trained by my culture to believe that they're fakes and probably alcoholics and of I stop they're going to laugh later while they're buying booze and cigarettes about how they suckered some little girl into giving them her spare change with their strategically worded cardboard sign meant to draw out the sympathies of the weak minded. They were probably dangerous or insane or stupid.

I went inside and learned that there were no rollerblades, but that I could find some at a sporting goods store across town. I purchased some rolls my mom had requested and left, again driving past the pair of hobos.

I gave them a better look this second time. It was a man and a woman, maybe late forties. He was holding the sign, which said something about how they'd lost their jobs and foreclosed on their house and they were living on the streets and they'd appreciate any kindness. She was eating what looked like ice cream or yogurt or something out if a white tub, and they were talking to each other. I don't think I saw anything indicating it but I was sure they were married. They seemed far less threatening than most homeless people I'd avoided. I pulled around past them and stopped at a red light that seemed to keep me trapped with my thoughts for far longer than I was comfortable with.

I fidgeted with my cellphone and looked at the bag of rolls and thought about turning around and giving it to them. But then I'd have to go back and by more, and if I was going to do that I may as well buy them more groceries than just a bag of kaiser rolls. I thought it would be so interesting to just talk to them, figure out how they got here with their backpacks full of another life, holding a piece of cardboard while hundreds of people just like me ignored the words one of them had written in sharpie. I figured that, even if they were homeless because they had lost their jobs, they were obviously not tried hard enough to find new ones. Panera is always hiring, I thought, or McDonalds, or this very Wal Mart. I wondered where they'd come from, if they'd walked some great distance, and if they were going anywhere. I wondered if they had families that hated them and refused to take them in, or if they hated their families and would rather beg in the Wal Mart parking lot than lay down their pride and go to them. I wondered if they even had families. I wondered where they'd been born some forty-five years prior, if they'd grown up with two parents who loved them or if they'd had brothers and sisters. I wondered how they met and fell in love, and how their life together was while they had a home. I wondered if their marriage was healthy, if they yelled at each other and nitpicked and got angry when the lid wasn't on the toothpaste or if they worked together and were a good team and if they loved each other. I wondered if he still told her he loved her and if she still treated him with respect. I wondered if they had kids. I wondered if the woman liked what she was eating or if she was just eating it because it was something to fill her up. I wondered if they really were alcoholics, but more than that I wondered how they got to that point. I wondered how these two humans with souls and lives and feelings and dreams ended up deciding to sit on the curb with a sign asking people to be kind to them.

The light turned green and I drove away. I haven't yet shaken the feeling of desperation I felt in my heart to know the answers to those questions. Like a need in my soul that had not been met, a deep starvation. Who were they? Twenty-four hours later and I cannot stop asking.

I knew God wanted me to stop, and I didn't do it. It was God. I know it was because I thought/prayed "God, this is not funny. Leave me alone so I can buy rollerblades. Those people are just some hobos and I am a little girl in a beat up SUV with a bag of kaiser rolls. I'm not going to give them anything because that would be stupid. Just stop." and he very obviously ignored me. If you'd been in my head you'd have known that it was obvious. "I love them, Mara, go talk to them and learn who they are. Give them food or don't give them food, but go talk to them for even just five minutes. Go be interested in them, know them, be their friend. Go!" he told me, and I said no thanks, and I drove to the sporting goods store where I didn't even buy any rollerblades because they were way too expensive.

I'll never know how that conversation might have changed my life, or their lives, and I regret that.

Don't be like that.