A few days ago I had an odd memory pop up in my head. It was something I had not thought about in many years but I used to think about quite often. This memory goes all the way back to 1st grade. There was a girl in my class, her name was Shannon, and she was confined to a wheelchair. I can’t remember why I just remember that for some reason her legs did not have the ability to straighten out or function in such a way as to allow her to walk. She and I had become good friends through the year. I don’t remember it ever mattering to me that she couldn’t walk like me. I don’t even know that I gave it much thought at all. On our way to lunch one day she told me her arms were tired and asked if I would push her. I agreed and remember feeling pretty special and excited that I was going to get to push her in her chair. Well, as we were going to take a turn I didn’t judge the angle right and somehow her chair slipped off the sidewalk and the whole things collapsed on her and was caught in the middle of her chair as it fell to the ground. I was so scared! So I ran.
I know, I know. It’s awful. I still feel bad about it. I took off. I left her there in her collapsed chair, laying on its side on the ground. I don’t know how long it took a teacher to find her, but eventually our teacher came up to me and asked if they could speak to me for a minute. I am sure my face was bright red. I got up from the lunch table and followed her outside. She began to ask me about what happened. I was so embarrassed I couldn’t find words and I just froze there, which was unusual because I was never quiet. She looked me in my eyes, took me gently by my shoulders and simply asked me, “Whitney, why did you leave her?” I told her the truth. I was scared. I knew I had messed up and I didn’t really want to stay around to see how bad my mess actually was. I didn’t want to know if she was hurt because that would have been my fault. I didn’t want to know if the chair was broken because I would have caused it. I didn’t want to know if she was mad at me. So I ran. I ran from the mess and moved on with my lunch.
I can’t help but see that same story played out in the lives of so many people today. We start out with an idea, a dream, a request or something that we are excited about, and somehow we hit some bumps and mess up. Sometimes the truth of the matter is that we actually fall completely off the path we were on. What we thought we were going to do never comes to fruition. We get disappointed, hurt, frustrated, and disenfranchised. And we run.
We don’t want to see how we may have hurt people along the way. We don’t want to take a good look at what might have happened as a result. We don’t want to hear what someone may have to say about what we have done. We don’t want to take time to learn how we could fix it, learn from it, or take responsibility for what happened. Too many time we duck our heads, turn our eyes and run for it. We go into survival mode and find the next new thing to throw ourselves in to and try our best to move on with our day, or even our lives. My prayer is that for the rest of my life I have, and each of you have, a “teacher” (perhaps a person or even the Holy Spirit) in our world who will gently call us to the side, look us straight in the eye and ask, “What happened? Why are you running?” We have got to be people who take responsibility for even the messy parts of our lives, face them and allow God to teach us through them so that we are not leaving people stranded and hurting in our wake. We are not perfect. We will mess up. We will hurt people and disappoint them, but there are ways to make things right and work through them instead of running.
So to Shannon, wherever you are in the world today: I am so sorry for running that day. I was wrong. I have learned a lot since then, and I do much better at turns!
