We started out in downtown Birmingham, which turned out to be pretty slow compared to what we were expecting. But I loved it. Lots of beautiful architecture, forgotten and dilapidated. The buildings stood there silent and broken, gaping windows like hollow eyes, remembering former glories and histories. What kind of lives were made and broken there? Whose dreams were realized, whose crushed? What sort of people walked Birmingham's streets and brick alleyways, loving, hating? My heart yearned over them, past and present. If I closed my eyes I could see them bustling around me. For whatever reason, Birmingham sank into my soul and shot out some roots, wrapped some tendrils around my heart. I love it now. I think I always will. There's always something in me that loves brokenness, and downtown Birmingham felt broken to me.
We were meeting a couple for dinner that night, but had time to kill before then. We decided to go to a mall just to window shop, and wound up encountering our first "one".
We were meeting a couple for dinner that night, but had time to kill before then. We decided to go to a mall just to window shop, and wound up encountering our first "one".
We met Bo in the parking garage, sitting in his Chevy Cobalt, hood up, door wide open, sweating through his collared shirt in the Alabama heat. Lesa asked him if he needed a jump? Yes ma'am, he did. Did he have jumper cables? No, ma'am, he didn't.
Well, what do you know? We're right outside of Sears! We took Bo to the auto center and bought jumper cables (it turned out he was a Sears employee and insisted on at least giving us his employee discount) walked back to the parking garage, and helped him jump his car. It took a little while; apparently his battery was way dead. All this time, Bo couldn't stop bursting out intermittently, "I can't believe this! My mind is just blown! I can't thank you enough! I just can't believe it!" We told him over and over that he was the very reason we were there, and that we were more blessed than he was. We filled him in on what we were doing, what our mission on this trip was.
The connections we forged just in those few minutes were profound. We found out that Bo was a student at Auburn, that he had only been in Birmingham for a few weeks and working at Sears for even less time. His father was a pastor, and his mother had told him his whole life that he has the favor of God on him. He was in school for civil engineering, and working on getting his Real Estate license. He told us the reason he wanted to go into real estate was because he saw the value of ownership. He came from a poor town, run down, where a poverty mindset was the norm. He wanted to go back to his hometown and show the people that they are worth it. Worth investing in themselves, valuable to their community.
What an incredible vision for a 23 year old man. What a calling. We prayed with him right there in the parking garage. Prayed for God inspired visions and choices, for abundant blessings on his business, and thanked God for the incredible opportunity to even be there, in a Sears parking garage in Birmingham, Alabama, praying for a total stranger with a dead battery.
I just looked up from my screen and shook my head in disbelief. You hear so much the hackneyed lines about better to give than to receive. You know it's true in theory. But yesterday... Something in me clicked. Cracks in my heart sealed up. A simple act of kindness shifted my paradigms to an unrecognizable landscape. Where was I? What was happening? This huge horizon just opened up before my very eyes.
We ended up spending a few hours with Bo. It turned out he needed a brand new battery, and we were overjoyed to take him back to Sears auto and buy one for him. We sat in the waiting room and talked, talked about our families, our dreams and plans for the future, shared some stories from our past. And before we left, we gave Bo our information to keep in touch.
We left Sears in a sort of dumbfounded awe. This was it, then. What we had desired to do all along, we were going to do it.
We stopped by Lifeway Christian Store to get a few things, and ended up helping an elegant woman in a striped dress and heels there as well. Lifeway's computers were down, meaning they couldn't take credit card payments. We were happy to tell the woman we would like to purchase her items for her. Her first reaction was, "Oh no, you won't!" But as we kept insisting that we would love to, that this is exactly what we were here for, she accepted, saying "I can't wait to get to my Bible study and tell them about this! I have goosebumps."
What we did yesterday wasn't that profound, in the "traditional" sense of the word. We didn't change the world. We didn't save someone's life. We just loved. Loved with no expectation of return. We loved for the sake of loving, for the sake of making someone's day a little better, a little more special. And while it may not have been "big world" changing, it was exactly what we were supposed to do. Why else would something so simple as buying a battery, paying cash for a woman whose credit card couldn't be used, bring goosebumps to a stranger's arms, tears to a stranger's eyes? What we did is "small world" changing. We touched someone's small world. Someone whose small world will touch another's small world. And another small world, and another, until these small worlds bleed into each other, like paint running and blending into a mural. What an awing concept.
Let's do this. Let's have this small world, big kingdom mindset.
We're in the car on the way to Gulfport, Mississippi (wow I spelled that right first try! Thanks, random episode of Alvin and the Chipmunks where David taught Simon how to make a song out of it!) right now. I've been typing this on my phone off and on all day. I feel like the back of Lesa's red Monte Carlo is slowly shrinking with each day. I hope it's not because Missy and I are getting bigger. I have a muscle in my right knee that has been twitching off and on for 3 days now, I'm assuming from sitting in the same position for so many hours. I promised my kids I would send them a postcard from each city I stay in, but I've already dropped the ball regarding Birmingham, and postcards are a dying commodity. I have had a hard time finding them. I guess I could take pictures and add "WISH YOU WERE HERE!" typography and text it to Jeremy to show them. They are 21st century kids, after all. Possibly they wouldn't even know what to do with a real postcard. I can see Atleigh now, swiping her finger across the night sky of Atlanta card I sent them, wondering how to get to the next picture.
More to come later from the Biloxi/Gulfport area!
-M
{{Day 4 Photo Dump}}
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