While living & working in Indy, I regularly came in contact with “them”. There was the guy next to the train station parking garage.  We saw him primarily when it was cold and windy because the overpass and walls offered some shelter. He huddle next to the brick wall, on the concrete sidewalk with only a few newspapers tucked around him. He never begged, he never looked up at us.  Then there was “i*pod man”. We only saw him on really nice days – or for Colts home games. He leaned against the same wall, shaking his cup and listening to his I*pod. He knew those of us who walked past regularly. We got the smile & wave. But as soon as he saw a new face his entire demeanor changed. He’d slouch, draw his face together into a pained and/or pathetic expression. He’s offer a feeble greeting and a wavering “Could you please….”   There was also the guy who stood at the busy intersection near our apartment complex with his dirty clothes and cardboard sign. And at the end of the day, he went home to one of the more expensive townhouses in the complex, to his wife who worked full time, to their two brand new cars.

Panhandeling was legal in Indy so for every genuinely suffering soul we passed, there were two scammers. We knew the regulars, we knew who to share lunch with and who to ignore. TheKid and I volunteered at a shelter so I could teach him there were resources for those who were really in need. He’d seen our neighbor on the street corner and knew the truth. It was a difficult lesson for a (then) 9 year old but he learned it well. What I didn’t tell him was that those resources? There’s not enough. That some people truly need them and can’t get access. That some get access and use them long after they should.  That the system isn’t perfect or even close to perfect but for some, it’s the only hope they have.

In Indy it was easy to know who genuinely needed help and who was probably making more than I did. And it was easy to reach out a helping hand…half my lunch here, a cup of hot chocolate there…but I always felt I should be doing MORE. More than a token gesture offered as a salve on my pampered spoiled conscience.

It still bugs me. I KNOW there are people in our community suffering but now? Now I don’t see them every day. Now I don’t trip over the keychain seller and his dog when I walk out of my office. Now I leave my warm comfortable house to get in my warm comfortable car to drive to my warm comfortable office…and I never once encounter anything or anyone that might jolt me from my warm comfortable existence.

Until today.

I was out at lunch when I saw an older man sitting on the street corner with the token cardboard sign. This one simply read “Disabled. Could use a little help.”  He sat there in a patch of sunlight, a nice jacket protecting him from the breeze. But as I pointed out to TheKid one day, a nice coat can last for years. He could’ve had that long before misfortune entered his life. It could be the one nice thing he has left, the last bit of protection. But I don’t KNOW. I DO know how impossible it is to distinguish between those truly in despair and those…who aren’t.

I do know my family is my top priority. As much as this issue haunts me, I can’t get involved with it to the exclusion of Jon and our boys. My primary responsibility is to help raise those three into men. It very well could be that the only influence I have on this world is through them, what values and ideal and convictions they approach the world with. IDEALLY we could all be involved…a food bank or something the kids could work with too. I’ll have to do some research.

In the meantime I’m at a complete loss. The image from today will stay with me. Should I have stopped? What could I have said or done? Bought him lunch? I just. don’t. know.

There’s something about the new year that inspires excitement and grand plans as well as reflection and quiet introspection. Jon even followed suit yesterday with a year end post that made me tear up a bit, smile a lot and motivated me to go back and re-read other writings from the past eight months.

Wow.

Eight months.

It is a lifetime wrapped into a mind blowing brief amount of time that leaves me simultaneously thinking “Wow has it only been eight months?” while feeling as if this stage of our life has been forever. Some days everything that came before is hazy and insubstantial, a dream of a dream that magically transported me into this fairy tale that is my life. Other days it’s easy to remember the people and situations that shaped me into the woman who now has the privilege of being Jon’s fiancée and soon to be wife. It’s amazing to look back with the 20/20 vision of hindsight and see how everything, even the most difficult of times, were woven together to bring me to this point. It’s incredible the intricacy of details that went into bringing us together. It’s amazing how carefully we were guided even in the most seemingly minor of decisions and I am beyond relieved that God had it all so firmly in hand.

Our life together so far has been straight out of a movie with the improbabilities and coincidences and craziness. Boy and girl live 1800 miles apart but end up playing with the same group of people (out of MILLIONS) in an online game. Through chats NOT with each other, they end up working together to pull off a common goal one evening (in game) that no one really expected to be done. They develop a comfort zone with each other and start talking a bit. They bond further over funny and sometimes eerie coincidences. Life twists and turns and they develop an out of game friendship. They cram as much communication time as humanly possible into a couple of months and fall in love. Boy flies out to meet girl for the first time face to face. They find that neither is a troll and they actually get along better in real life. A month later, essentially three months from when they met, he returns to pack her car and drive her (and her kid) across country to live with him (and his kids). The trip goes smoothly. Said kids get along just fine and merge fluidly into a family unit. They start building a life together, he proposes and a year from the genesis of this improbable relationship they are married. Cue sappy music, fade to black.

Seriously, who actually experiences something like that? Oh, wait, us. I look back over it all and still shake my head in awe. We’re sitting on a movie script here. But while I’m sure there will be at least some sappy music, there is no ending in sight, happy or otherwise. I get to watch our boys bond and help guide them as they grow into young men and form relationships. I actually get to spend the rest of my life with this amazing man who goes above and beyond to take care of us and sacrifices for our comfort. I looked around this morning and was once again overwhelmed that this is actually my life. Overwhelmed and grateful.

I have had one major challenge in my life recently. Unforunatly I can’t go into details in a public forum but it’s a situation not particularly of my making and not entirely under my control. I’ve been trying to approach it from an “adjust one’s own attitude” perspective but have admittedly not done so well on that front. This week I sat down to study the Sunday School lesson I was going to help teach. About halfway through the first page all I could do was say “Really God? You’re going to convict me through a lesson for 4th & 5th graders? On THIS situation? Seriously?”

Yeah He thinks he’s real funny sometimes. So I got to study a lesson and then help present it, the whole while being beat over the head with WHY exactly my attitude change was failing and how the situation should be approached. Am I really so hard headed that such a challenging method had to be used? Umm…on second thought, let’s not answer that question.

Moving on.

You may have noticed a new list over there on the sidebar – “2009 Book List”.  No? Well ya do now. It’s not part of any challenge or resolution. I love to read but I’ve never really kept track of what I’m reading or how much or even planned ahead. So though despite the temptation to challenge myself to read some insane number of books this year, I’m just going to be more mindful of what I read. You’ll see I’m starting with “Purpose Driven Life”. I’ve wrestled off and on lately with what my gifts are/purpose is. I feel like I should be doing MORE in the world but I’m not sure where/how to realistically start. If left to my own devices I would take on several major projects or volunteer opportunites, have every free moment of every night booked…and probably crash within a few months.  I have a family that is my top priority. And a wedding to plan. And there’s still that tiny problem of not really being good at anything. So when Paul started talking in service Sunday about using our gifts for God, I was really frustrated. I WANT to but…yeah…floundering.  Hence my first book choice. Feel free to suggest any others, along any lines/subjects/genres (no romance).