Thank You for Being a Part of My Story

I recently bought a t-shirt that reads, “I am a writer.  Anything you say or do may be used in a story.”

Feel free to take that as a warning, though I wish it said, “Anything you say or do will be used in a story.”

Two weeks ago, I told you about all the things that had to happen, all the pieces that had to fall into place, all of the seeming random events and coincidences that needed to happen in order for Reverend Joy and I to discover we were distant cousins, her seventh great-grandfather being my eighth great-grandfather.

It is amazing, when you think about all the interactions we have with people, all day long, both big and small, from honking your horn at a stranger about to back into you at the post office, to having lunch with old friends you haven’t seen in quite some time.

Your path, my path, our paths are always intersecting with someone.

Sometimes, something momentous happens, and a person comes along, our paths intersect, and our lives are never the same.

Sometimes, we have no idea how we have impacted someone’s life, how one small nudge may have changed a person’s life forever.

This past Monday, I had lunch with a woman whose path intersected mine twenty-one years ago.  Twenty-one years ago, our paths crossed and though we knew of each other, we had never met until this week.

Twenty-one years ago, she was teaching at Jefferson Middle School.  An illness forced her to take some time off from work and later retire.

At approximately the same time, I quit my second teaching post after three weeks and I figured I would probably never teach again.  I was living on $500 in my bank account and ramen noodles and pop-tarts.  I was supposed to start a temp job, secretarial work, soon.

But the week before I was to start, I ran into one of my former students who was now at Jefferson.  “My teacher’s sick,” she told me, “and the subs are awful.  Please come and teach my class.”

I made no promises.  Again, I figured teaching wasn’t for me.

But as my start day at the temp agency loomed, I realized I still wanted to teach.  I wanted to be a teacher even though I hadn’t had much luck at it.  I still felt a calling to it.

So mere days before that first day as a temp, I drove over to Jefferson and dropped off my resume.  Fifteen minutes later, when I got home, the school secretary called me and asked me to come back.  The principal wanted to interview me.

I wound up teaching there for the next thirteen years.

And all this time I had never met the teacher whose place I had taken … until this week.

I could relate to her.  I, too, would wind up having to leave teaching—actually her exact job—because of my health and I know what a heartbreaking thing it is, to leave a job, to leave a season of life, before you’re ready.

But when I met her this week, I wanted to tell her my story.  I wanted her to know that her sacrifice, her loss, everything she had to give up for her health, for her body, that all of that … had meaning, that her life-changing event had nudged me into my own life-changing event.

After all, it wasn’t like I had applied to a dozen schools and Jefferson wound up being the only one who interviewed me—it wasn’t like that at all.  I had given up on teaching.  I was finished.  I was never going to teach again.

And then her path crossed mine and the path of one of my former students crossed mine and my life was never the same.

I hadn’t even mentioned God, when I told her my story but when I finished, she looked at me and smiled and said, “Well, that was a God-thing.”

Each one of us has a path.

None of us is on the same path.

And often, we are so narrow-mindedly focused on our path that we’re only faintly aware of other people and their paths.  Or even if we are aware, we tend to think of our paths and straight and running parallel to everyone else’s.

But we know that’s not how it works, don’t we?

We know that our paths are winding and frequently dizzying and vertigo-inducing.  All our paths are that way and that means we are constantly intersecting each other’s lives. 

Constantly.

And while some of us rather narcissistically overestimate our impact on someone’s life, most of the time we underestimate.  Most of the time, we don’t realize that the smallest thing can help or hurt someone, can change their lives—the smallest thing.

In today’s three readings, Psalm 119, Proverbs 6:6-23, and John 8:12-30, we see the same imagery used.

In Psalm 119:10, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

In Proverbs 6:23, “For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light ….”

And in John 8:12, where Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

We see this imagery of light throughout the Bible with my own favorite verse being from 1 John 1:5, “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”

But again, looking back to today’s psalm, this is a verse that makes its way into my prayers a lot whether I am praying for myself or praying for others, I am praying that God will be that lamp at our feet, that He will show us the path.

And when I pray for patients in the hospital, I am frequently thinking of that verse from 1 John when I ask God to drive out all pain and suffering from them and replace that with the light of His love, replace it in such a way that whenever someone sees them, whenever someone walks into that hospital room they will see that light within you.

I have said that every patient I visit, every stranger I pray for, has a story.  I may get to hear a tiny part of it.  Or I may get to hear none of it.  But everyone has a story.  And I am privileged and honored and blessed to be even one second of the story of their life.

I usually begin every prayer this way, “Thank you Lord for putting this person in my path today.  For we know that whenever two or three are gathered together in Your name, You are there.”

Recently, I stepped into a man’s room in the ICU.  He was alone, no family.  He wasn’t hooked up to any machines.  I couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or not.  His right eye was rolled back in his head and his face was sunken because he wasn’t wearing his dentures.  He was very old.  I didn’t want to disturb him, so I prayed silently at the foot of his bed and just as I was leaving a prayer card, his eyelids fluttered and he opened his eyes for just a second before closing them again.

I took a step toward him.  I said his name in a whisper.  I introduced myself.  I said, “I’m Kendra, I’m with Spiritual Care.  I’m here to pray for you.  I want you to know that God is here.  You are not alone.  He has you in His arms right now.  He is holding you.  You are not alone.”

And then I left.

I was a ghost. 

I don’t know what happened to the man.  I don’t know if he recovered or he passed.  I don’t know if he heard me at all, though I like to think some part of us is always aware when the spirit is present, because I wasn’t lying when I said that God was there.

I was part of his story for mere seconds the same way the social worker who visited my mom in the hospital and kissed her forehead remains an anonymous figure, but part of my mom’s story and mine.

The same goes for the old man in the wheelchair who wheeled himself into my mom’s hospital room and gave her communion.

When it comes to compassion—when it comes to kindness, there are no small acts.  Anything and everything you do is meaningful.

This past Sunday as I said goodbye to Deacon Pam on this, her last Sunday as deacon at Hope, I told her how much she has meant to me over the last ten years and I said, “Thank you for being a part of my story.”

And I say that to all of you today.  “Thank you for being a part of my story.  Thank you for all the ways your path has crossed mine.”

Amen.