What If I Said...: Activate 2013, Day 1: Making It Stick

I'm still feeling overwhelmed. Still wondering what in the world I'm doing. Lesa asked me in the car, "What do you want from this trip? What do you expect God to do?" This, by the way, is a question I've been getting a lot, and the answer is always the same: I don't really know how to answer. So I just told the truth: I don't know. I know I want to write. I guess what I want most of all is to hear God and know it. Not question. Not doubt. Know.

We met Wanda Friday night at Cracker Barrel; she was our server. She's a middle aged black woman, with a wrist brace, a large swoop bang, and a calm voice. She spoke slowly, deeply, kindly. Made eye contact. Smiled. Lesa knew immediately that Wanda was our first "one". She called Wanda to the table and laid a crumpled $20 bill in front of her. She asked her,
"What is the first thing you notice about that bill?"
"Well, it's wrinkled," Wanda replied.
"That's true," Lesa said. "But just because it's wrinkled doesn't mean it holds less value." Laying a crisp $20 bill on the table, Lesa continued, "That damaged, wrinkled bill is worth the same amount as the new, clean one. And I feel like God is saying to you that no matter your past, no matter your present, you have value to Him."
Wanda said that she didn't really "know" God. But when Lesa told her to keep both twenties, her face lit up and she asked incredulously, "Are you for real??", over and over, and hugged us all around.
I don't know what will happen with Wanda. I don't know what her story is, if she'll remember our faces. But I think she'll remember those twenties. Maybe from now on, every time she sees a crumpled bill, God will remind her of that example at the table in Cracker Barrel.

We made it to our hotel in Cary, North Carolina later that night, and took communion together. We didn't have grape juice so we bought some sort of Naked Juice Smoothie drink from the hotel shop, that went down thick and sat in the back of your throat for a long time after. Lesa gave me an abnormally large piece of matzo cracker which stuck in my throat along with the Naked Juice. Maybe she thought I needed an extra helping of Christ. Maybe she's right. Maybe I need them both to stick. In my throat, in my head, in my heart.

Maybe that's what I really want, when it all boils down to the everythings and the nothings. For it to stick. Whatever I hear, whatever I see, whatever sinks root deep into my soul- I want it to stay rooted. I think that's been one of my secret (and now not so secret) fears about this trip. That whatever I learned here will wash away in the mud of my everyday life. But I want it to stay. To stay and build a home in me, changing my architecture and bearing walls. To reconstruct the slippery me, the lessons I've let slide off my back when they got too hard to hold. Yes. Maybe that's what I want after all. To make it stick.

-M

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