Another bit of non-fiction for those of you who've been liking my memoir work. This one is a bit more spiritually focused than the last one--would love to know what you think. --Tesi
I believe the first truly independent, adult thing I ever did was offer hitch hikers a ride. I was maybe 23 and still living with my parents. It was a Sunday in the summer—church picnic day. In true Pentecostal style, we converged on the city park, crock pots in hand, all set for Wiffle Ball, sticky desserts and indistinguishable casseroles.
An hour later, our appetites satiated, arguing politics and childrearing, I glanced up at the road in time to spot two travelers walking past. I knew they weren’t locals; Tiff and I had spotted them after church. It was impossible we wouldn’t have noticed them; the bright tie-dye shirt, the long dirty-blonde hair, the backpacks. They were walking through town, carefully not hitching but being hassled by the cops anyway. In our rural mid-west town, they were foreign.
“They’ve been walking all day,” someone remarked, gesturing.
“Saw them before church. Drove them across town. The one in tie dye has blisters on his feet.”
“Wonder where they’re going?”
“Cops told them not to hang around. They’re supposed to go right through town.”
“Yeah.”
Glancing across the picnic table, I caught Tiffany’s eye. Hands flashing a few quick signs, she nodded in response to my silent message. Wish we could invite them to eat.
I wondered if anyone else had thought of it. Here were two strangers, hungry, ragged, tired. They were walking past our picnic; tables of food left and all of us replete with our meal, cold drinks on a hot day, and a mass of Christians laughing and playing together. What better opportunity to follow Christ?
Should we ask them? Signing again. Taking advantage of being surrounded by hearing people, unable to sign.
I don’t know—
Would the pastor mind?
It’s not really our picnic… Tiffany grimaced.
But they’re probably hungry…we have plenty…
I know…
I wish…
Me too…
We sat and watched them walk by, wishing someone else would speak. Someone in charge. Someone less on the outskirts than us. Someone older, who was supposed to be modeling Christ-following to us.
No one did.
They talked about them.
They pointed at them.
They wondered about them.
But no one asked them to eat.
They didn’t belong. Who knew where they were from? And there were kids here, at the picnic…what kind of example would it be…?
And so they walked by.
Half an hour later, Tiff and I gathered up our contribution to the feast and headed for home, our minds buzzing with the scolding of opportunity missed. We should have been bold. We could have set an example. The parents might have been angry. They might have felt their safety violated. It’s a picnic—we’re on vacation. This is our time.
Right?
We should have at least asked someone.
We hadn’t made it two miles before we saw the bright tie dye ahead, trudging wearily along the shoulder.
Now, let me digress for just a moment, and tell you something about my parents.
My mom and dad were very, very careful parents. They heard stories, when we were young, about children being kidnapped. Terrible stories, about terrible things being done to innocent people. Rape. Murder. Injury. Theft. And they set about making sure that none of those things ever happened to us.
Growing up, we lived on the end of eight miles of black top road. Our nearest neighbor was a quarter of a mile away. We knew everyone who lived within five miles of us, and they knew us. We all watched out for each other. As children, we were allowed to walk to the end of the driveway to check the mail. We were allowed to play in the woods. But never, ever, under any circumstances were we allowed to go onto the black top without a parent.
When I was seventeen, I asked permission to go on a camping trip alone with my best friend, another seventeen year old girl. We knew my parents would be hard to convince, so we made as reasonable of a plan as we could. We’d go in the evening, to the campground on the river. Three-quarters of a mile from my house, it was owned by good friends of my parents. They’d watch out for us. We were even willing to offer to stay in one of the camp sites nearest the campground office, where our friends lived, if my parents required it. I felt sure we had a fail-proof plan for Naomi’s birthday.
My dad said no.
“You’re only seventeen! And there won’t be any adults!!”
I had never, ever, ever considered picking up a hitchhiker before.
Never.
Hitchhikers kill people. I read it in Reader’s Digest.
But there was that tie dye t-shirt. The one that was on the body of that man with blisters on his feet. The one I hadn’t offered a ride to, after Church. The one I hadn’t offered food or a cold drink to, at the picnic. The one I was being given a third chance to help.
My heart started hammering. I could feel the blood rushing to my face. Beside me, I could feel Tiffany tense, and knew she’d seen them. I had only a moment to decide.
I waited too long.
We flew past them.
“Um…” It wasn’t a word from Tiff; just a sound. But I knew what it meant. Because I knew she was right.
“Should we offer them a ride?”
“Um…” only a momentary pause. “Yes?”
“I thought so.”
A mile past them by now, I pulled off and executed an illegal U-turn in on the highway. My first ever.
As I U-turned again and pulled up behind them, I looked at Tiff and she looked at me, the fear in our faces diluted by the certainty that we were doing the right thing. Beyond that, we were doing the thing God had told us to do. And HE was going to take care of us.
“Um…” I paused. The words came hard. I was unused to saying them. “Don’t tell mom, okay?”
An enthusiastic nod from Tiffany. “I won’t!”
As it turned out, they did want a ride. We offered them fruit salad. It was all we had left of the picnic. They liked it.
And they didn’t kill us.
* * *
I never told my mom we picked up hitchhikers on a hot summer afternoon and drove them for ten miles before dropping them on the side of the road. If she’s reading this now, it might be the first time she’s heard of it. I never told her of making our way home, hearts hammering with the fear of what we’d done and the dizzy ecstasy of having risked our own safety, even our lives, to follow what we both knew Christ had told us to do. I didn’t think she’d understand how important that moment was for us. I’m not completely sure we understood it, at the time. We just knew it was big.
Choosing to offer an air-conditioned ride to two tired travelers may not seem like a life-changing event. For us, it was.
That day was the first time, ever, I chose to do something those around me considered dangerous—unsafe—foolish—because I believed God had told me to do so. Because someone needed me to risk myself to show love to them.
We didn’t tell those men about God. We didn’t explain the salvation message to them before we’d let them out of the car. But we did love them, more than we loved ourselves. And that was the beginning.
Be fore-warned. When you let God know you’re willing to risk your own comfort, your own safety, your own stuff to follow him, He takes advantage. When Tiffany and I moved into our own place the summer after the hitchhikers, God started really working on us. We set up housekeeping in a little three bedroom house on the end of a street, happily arranging the third room as a sewing room/office, and looking forward to enjoying our new space.
Then we asked God to use our home in whatever way He chose.
Never do that if you aren’t ready for the answer.
There was the seventeen year old girl running away from drug dealers and trying to get clean. She’d done things in her short life that I’d only heard of, and could never imagine doing. After all, I’d gotten in trouble for bicycling two miles from my parents house, when I was seventeen. I certainly never imagined being an exotic dancer.
And then there was the friend with Borderline Personality Disorder who had lost her apartment after the police had to break a window to get in during her last suicide attempt.
And the friend who didn’t have anywhere to go but the bed in our basement, and couldn’t really ever manage to tell us she wasn’t okay until her bleeding arms made the fact very clear.
The teenage boy who had an issue with stealing.
The teenage girl who asked me to sit with her until she wouldn’t need to cut herself any more, after she got the call that her cousin had killed herself.
The “wild child” whose overworked mother had trouble keeping track of him, and who needed somewhere to land. Who knew that he would become our brother and we would, eventually, be blessed to offer his mother somewhere to stay when she needed it?
One by one they came. They’re still coming.
Have we been hurt? Not really. Our house was broken into once. They stole Tiff’s Swiss Army knife, my purity ring, and some tithe money. (We figure that, between the purity ring and the tithe money, it’sreally God’s to avenge, not ours.)
We’ve lost $20 here or there. We’ve paid car insurance for roommates that have never paid it back. We’ve had our cars wrecked. We’ve lost sleep. We had to move the sewing machine into a corner of the living room. We’ve cried. We’ve had to learn how to love softly and how to love tough. We’ve had hard confrontations. We’ve learned a lot. And God has been with us.
That seventeen year old? She’s clean, sober and in a stable relationship with a good man, while showing the world just what a great mom she can be.
The teenage boy with the stealing problem? He popped in yesterday, all glowing and enthusiastic, to tell us how much he’s changing and how the “new me” is starting to emerge. He’s crediting the amount of time he’s been spending in prayer.
The wild child? He’s taking the first step toward realizing his dream of becoming a counselor.
And us? We’re just waiting for God to tell us where He wants us…and who He wants us with…next.
Oh—and the last time I was at a church picnic in the park, and there was food leftover? We invited the skater kids over to share in it.
And we didn’t even ask anyone for permission first.
--Copyright 2010, Tesi
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