Just Write {103}

After all of this drought, we were caught in a deluge. Running out into it was like standing under a bucket, dumping it over yourself, drenching.

We took shelter every time we could, bus stops, full trees, building awnings, but it was so much. So much water.

Our feet would slap slap slap the ground, counting out a rhythm out of tune with the rain drops whoosh, all at once. Over and over.

We ran from the sidewalk to a path through the Texas state capitol’s grounds. Our clothes and hair were soaked all the way through, puddles in my shoes. I had been hanging with a bunch of do-gooding out of towners and they were all like, Drought. Yeah, right.

I know, it doesn’t seem like it right now, but it’s true.

We ducked back inside to hear more speakers and we stood at the back, because, soaked. I thought about the ways people can know each other and there’s not only a few. Troy and Tara Livesay. From the Internet. Five years and more, we’ve known each other now, even when we go months without a peep from each other.

Over lunch, I talked with Tara about all the things, mostly the hard things, and I know there’s nothing I can say to her to shock her or confuse her or have her think less of me. This friendship is a gift to my bumpy life.

Drops of water dripped to the floor at our feet and I wiped mascara from under my eyes. Tara’s hair looked ready for a towel and we shivered in the air conditioning inside the church, at Idea Camp. We were listening to our friend Seth Haines up front and suddenly it hit me extra hard even though no claps of thunder woke me up.

I’m so grateful. There are people in my life that teach me so much, so many kindred people, all across my life and all its years and from all kinds of places and in all those ways. I am grateful.

I just had two days of listening to people who truly want to meet the needs of people in poverty, the homeless, the orphan, the trafficked… And I heard them admit that they don’t know what to do, with problems so complex and ginormous. Like Troy and Tara in Haiti, the way they just keep going and going for the love of the Haitian people, no matter if they understand it all or see a dent in progress. That isn’t the point, it seems. The point is just to love, to keep believing that it matters. It does. It’s a deluge that drenches and makes you laugh with its ridiculousness after so much time in the dry. Love is to just show up and sit in it, to wait and work and stay.

I stood there dripping and grateful and I thought, To want people to have their dignity, we must only do that–love–without our own agenda (Mark Horvath) and sometimes showing every person this kind of respect is all they really want. Respect that triggers a start to overcoming. Overcoming doesn’t always look like overcoming on paper. 

Overcoming is feeling less alone.

When I got home, after all of the being together, I sat down by Ryan on the couch and put my head on his shoulder. I started to cry. For the love. I was just sad, I guess. But mostly grateful. What is it, he asked.

I don’t know. I guess I just really love these people and the stuff we talked about was big and I’m just overwhelmed…processing…but I’m so grateful. I know, it doesn’t seem like it right now, but it’s true.

and just like that the drought was over.

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This is the 103rd installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {Please see the details here.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page, and please don’t link to posts that are not freely written in the spirit of capturing moments–you know, don’t link to how-to posts, lists or sponsored posts. Also, please link back to this post in yours so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.

Please take a moment to visit someone else who has linked up! It’s a really good way to meet new writers and get inspired by the meaning behind their moments. Word? Thank you!