Everyone loves a taco. I’ve never met one person in my life who ever turned down a good taco.
A few days ago, I was sitting in a hostel in Las Penitas, Nicaragua and my friend and I were talking about tacos. See, the night before, we went to this really great taco place with a group of fellow hostel loving travelers and had the best time. We sat around the table with people who we’d only met two days before as if we were family. A family of misfits laughing and saluding and telling stories. That’s what I love about the people who find themselves in places where you sleep beside strangers and trust that you can leave your stuff unlocked because you’re all in this thing together.
People are odd creatures. We are all so different but inherently the same. We want to live, dream, feel, adventure, create and explore. We want to be known and to know.
So my friend, Markelle, and I were talking about tacos. She said, hey, we should get a taco tattoo! I laughed. And then I looked up taco tattoos. I found this gif of a stick figure taco that runs and trips and all his contents fall out. So he scoops his stuff back into himself, jumps up, does a little skip with a smile, and keeps going. This taco made me pretty happy and he made a lot of sense to me. That’s what I do all the time. I’m walking along, trying to live a life of boldness and whimsy and without fail, I fail. I fall and all my contents spill out. It’s happened before, so now I know what to do and I scoop everything back where it belongs, do a little skip with a smile and keep going. I keep daring and living and trying and exploring because Jesus died so I wouldn’t be filled with shame every time my stuff falls out.
So I drew the taco from the gif and I drew another one so he wouldn’t be alone, because after all, we weren’t made to be alone. I looked at my friend and said, what the heck. We high fived, had tacos for dinner and got tattoos that night.
We made friends with a guy named Jason and we showed him the picture of our cute little tacos and said he should get them too. Without a second of hesitation, he said, “okay.” And he did it. As we’re getting our tacos, Hanna and her boyfriend Ron come in to the studio. They love our tacos and we said, “hey, you guys should get some tacos too!” Ron says, “Hanna, if you get them I’ll get them as a tramp stamp.” Eventually Hanna says, “okay.” So Ron says, “okay” – but don’t worry, he didn’t get them as a tramp stamp. And now I have a matching tattoo with five beautiful people – two I’ve known for a year and been through some tough stuff with and three I barely know.
I don’t know for sure what made these three people get tacos on their foot with strangers, but I think it has something to do with connecting and writing a good story with this life we’ve been given. Or maybe because, in the words of Bob Goff, “love always assumes yes is the answer.”
We weren’t created to do this thing alone but we were created to be set apart, to live a life that points to our Creator and not to ourselves. I spend a lot of my time trying to be a taco that everyone likes and understands and not enough time being a taco, filled with Spirit, that people look at and wonder if it is even a taco.
We are supposed to be in the world but not of it. We should look so different that people don’t recognize us. Most of the time, my actions point to myself and my words glorify me and not the One who gives me breath. So often I am held back by fear and I don’t do what’s in my heart to do.
The other day, I was on my way back from teaching English on a hot, armpit Managua kind of day and I was walking with a girl named Brittani. She started playing music and we started dancing. We danced all the way home while people we passed watched or yelled or stared or danced. There was something quite special about that dance home and we realized you can’t be mad or angry or sad if you’re skipping or dancing instead of walking. We wondered why the whole world doesn’t do that. We wondered how we became so normal and what would happen if we decided to live a life off uninhibited oddness.
So, in light of wanting to stop being so normal, I decided to make a list. I turn 26 today and I want to devote this year to the odd and unfamiliar, to making people question and laugh and hopefully join in. So, I have 26 tasks that I’ll do every day for two weeks at a time for the year. Tasks that make me feel uncomfortable and ridiculous but bring God and others joy.
The list is an invitation to anyone and everyone who might want to join me this year in being weird and doing things people look at in wonder and confusion.
I hope you come to my birthday party and here’s the list off oddities that you can feel free to modify as you wish, as long as they stay strange. Twenty-three is waiting to be filled in by Rye. If you want to do the list but don’t know what something is, send me a message or write a comment…. COME BE WEIRD WITH ME!
1. Worship with dance (flags) like David did.
2. Treasure hunt
3. Find some place to skinny dip
4. Silent dance parties
5. Leave notes on people’s cars
6. Invite a random person or family over for dinner
7. No shoes
8. Make someone breakfast in bed
9. Bring flowers to kids in hospital/nursing homes
10. Wash someone’s car or rake their yard
11. Paint something in a coffee shop and give it to a stranger
12. Volunteer somewhere
13. Wine and cheese picnic
14. Ask random people their stories and take a photo
15. Pay for someone’s food at a restaurant, fast food or sit down
16. Tell random people cheesy jokes
17. Hand out food and eat with homeless people
18. Everything is opposite and backwards
19. Do something Jimmy would do (ten year old boy things)
20. Spend 30 minutes talking out loud to God
21. Ride a bike and sing as loud as you can
22. Take care of kids or go on sister dates or do something kind for a sibling
23.
24. Cook baked goods for the neighbors
25. Run in a banana suit or costume of some kind
26. Dance or skip instead of walk
