“…if a four door sedan full of trust-i-farians who look like they haven’t slept in three days pulls up… just keep walkin’, son!”—Friend and former hitchhiker
Perhaps being on the race has unleashed my “inner-nomad”, but lately I’ve been strangely attracted to hitchhiking. Even as I type this, my “inner-mom” warms me about getting abducted and sold to Mexico. Even my friends who are avid hitchers have told me crazy stories. It’s not the safest decision I could make.
But another part of me desperately longs to keep connected to the brokenness that I discovered on the Race. Even though I feel like I haven’t unpacked “everything” from being out of the field, there is a part of me that never wants to forget how broken and connected I am to the people in this world. I remember visiting families in Central American trash bag dwellings. As much as I wished I could have given them gobs of money, I remember how much joy we had dancing with them in worship.
Visions of gypsy poverty pierced me so deeply that I tell everyone the strange beauty I found in Romania. There was a moment when I realized that five Americans, one Englishman, and a bunch of should-be-hostile Romanian children were acting like hooligans as we strummed worship songs. By some miracle, we forgot our broken prejudices and saw the God in each other. It was indescribable, and revealed to me that heart change is possible with the joy of God.
In light of that stunning beauty, I decided to try a human experiment. Around mid afternoon, I decided to amble to the local coffee joint for internet. Totally walkable, but a hearty walk nonetheless. While I was on my jaunt, I stuck my thumb out, half expecting a ride, half expecting to be beaned with a chocolate milkshake.
Twenty minutes in, my heart leaped into my esophagus as a car blared its horn. As it passed, the sound of laughter oozed out of the car’s window. My thumb turned to an angry fist. “Who do you think you are? You think that was FUNNY?” and other rhetorical threats flooded my mind as my ears stopped ringing. My shoulders tried to shrug it off the best I could as I continued down the road, thumb out. This time though, I walked a little further from the road.
Three quarters to my destination, I was about ready to give up the thumb. It was awkward. My shoes were getting muddy. I imagined I looked pretty weird, wearing my black dress shirt and dirty overalls. Right before I called it quits, a big white pick-up zoomed in front of me and put on red hazard lights, emitting beacons of refuge. I jogged as fast as my stocky body could take me and hurled myself into the front seat. We exchanged names, but for the life of me, I can’t remember his. I was too busy looking him over. His hair was gray with worry. To be fair, what I could see was gray. He had a golfer’s hat on, and what looked like a nearly empty pack of smokes in his cup holder. I could see wrinkles on his face and the trusting tension in his eyes. Other than that, his vehicle looked super clean. “Mass murderers don’t have clean cars,” I reassured myself, as we drove off.
He was shocked I only wanted to go up the road, “I wanted to pick you up earlier down there, but I was checkin’ you out,” he said through his Georgian accent, “you look harmless…”
I smiled, “You look harmless too.” We both laughed a little harder. Even though we didn’t talk much, I felt like God was in that pick-up. We were both scared, but happy to risk sharing life together.
Looking back at my hitchhiking trip to the coffee shop, I rediscovered God at the end of my comfort, and the beginning of my dependence.
And in that dependence, I thrive.
Speaking of dependence, brokenness, and thriving, I am still fundraising for my vision trip to Tanzania. Click here!
