TAKING LIBERTIES

It wasn’t that I was nosey. It was that I was eager to find a way in. ___________________ 

One of my first memories is of this pig-tailed child standing in the center of aisle three with a perfect stranger’s deformed hand in mine.

This is how I made sense of an overwhelming world. By coming in close. By apportioning my relentless curiosity a heaping measure of liberty, in my otherwise restricted and boundried little life.

 “What happened to your fingers?” I remember asking the man reaching for the box of rice. His was not a response of indignation, but one he subtly tucked into the corners of a slow and easy grin.

This breathtaking willingness. To take in a rare moment of humanity rather than take offense. A stranger’s spark of a life’s purpose that has followed me since I was five.

Taking Liberties. The words flood into my quieted mind as I guide Brenn down the winding, tree-lined path.

We are greeted head on by a slow retriever, head down and steadied for the incoming obligatory sniff. His is a life lived eager and ready for this familiar ritual of coming in close.

Intimacy is this old boy’s standard, his creed. He lives for it. You can tell.

Behind him follows his companion, speaking in curious tones—a little too slurred, a little too loud.

“I’m deaf.” His owner offers. Though the question, as you can imagine, is already on my tongue. “All your life?” My inquiry absent of awkwardness: He reads the kindness of my intent.

While our boys continue their needful sniffing, my new friend begins to weave the tale of how his hearing was suddenly ripped from him twenty-two years before. But there are more remarkable things to learn about him in this chance early morning exchange:

Taking mental notes, I log: Adventurous. Unusually strong. Self-assured.

His gratefulness for having lived through the unexpected losses deeply resonates.

We are kindred in more ways than I have time or cause to mention, my legs now double-wrapped in Brenn’s black nylon leash.

Life without pretense. The longing for more moments like this one joins us as we continue our walk.

Every friend I claim has come to me as ‘character’ in a compelling story, the kind of book you can’t put down—

Beyond one simple question…and then the next,

is a great adventure shared.

Filled with hope and often sorrow,

but nearly always beautiful…here…and there…and there.

What we go through is most often invisible, hidden, unknown.

But if we linger, ask, then wait, all the haunting recollections find their way out.

When the question is asked of me in earnest, my own answers often catch me off guard.

What we learn from and about ourselves [and others] is the outpouring of a willingness to go just a bit further then is proper or apropos.

Most of the time we hesitate not out of propriety, but out of protecting ourselves.

When we take liberties, the floodgates open. Truth is revealed.

No small accomplishment in this deceptive, duplicitous world.

I look up from the screen, past the shoreline to where the tallest branches meet endless sky. And I imagine you—

In the market, in your office, out on a walk.

And I wonder how fast you are moving. Too quickly for that “hello” or second glance?

What would happen if we redefine the mundane minute as a crucible in our finite lives?

How will we live it? Slowing on aisle three to smile, to speak a kindness, to reach out to another’s exhausted and burdened hand?

This is what humanity is. At least what it is to me.
Being unafraid to ask the question that is brought to mind.

 Perhaps it is placed there. Intended—

“Is there something I can help with?”

“Are you lost, overwhelmed, lonely?”

“Are you having a difficult day?”

Our stories. They’re not really ours at all. They are shared with those who are in our spaces—our jobs, our communities, our homes.

What is on the heart needs telling. Be the one it’s safe to tell.

Take a liberty. Then another. Real connection…so intensely needed. So rare.

NOTES:

Did you know that my degree is not in design but Journalism?Asking questions is in my bones.
I’ve been informed, on occasion, that I ask too many.
I think the opposite is true. I believe I don’t ask enough.

Why are we so afraid to follow up a comment with an inquiry?Have we lost the simple art of conversation, defined by a connection that goes two ways?

 I wonder how much you know about the people you see every day—

The barista that crafts your perfect matcha

The dry cleaner who knows all your favorite pieces, is familiar with all your stains.

The UPS man who walks all the way to your front door, without being invited in.

The checker at the market who knows you by the protein bars you purchase nearly every day.

These are anything but strangers. They are people who would miss you if the pattern changed.

What would be the harm of knowing just a little more about them…blessing them with a question, a story, a smile, even a silent prayer along the way?

Praying for Strangers:

Sometimes the greatest act of taking liberty is praying for someone we hardly know or maybe never even met.

There sincerely isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t pass someone on the path or road and think,

“Lord, I don’t know their need, but you do. Would you bless them with a heaping dose of your grace today?”

It’s really that simple. In fact, there are days that ‘something comes over me’ and I have no idea why, but something shifts for good.

Could it be that in these moments, someone is praying for me?

There have been many times when taking liberties meant asking if I could pray for someone who crossed my path along the way—

Like the man with a spine bent so badly his eyes were unable to meet my gaze. “Can I pray for you?” I heard my voice before giving the question a second thought.

And, just like that, in the middle of the convenience store my words were flowing as my hands rested on his back.

Haven’t you been prompted, to slow, to turn, to wonder, even to ask? These are not the merely “mundane moments,” but Divine connections that are happening in our midst.

I LIVE for these messages from Heavenly places. Crave them, even. And, it seems the more I respond, am obedient to them, the more they show up in my life.