Curbside Neediness
Posted on November 8, 2009
A few months ago my wife read a book.
It truly changed her. It caused her to see people who live on the street differently.
One result was that she now regularly purchases a small handful of gift cards from fast food restaurants. And she hands them out just as regularly.
Tonight we were coming home from seeing a movie. As we exited the freeway there was a disheveled teenage girl sitting at end of the off-ramp holding a sign. I neither read the sign nor made eye contact with her.
My wife reached for one of her fast-food gift cards and handed it to me. With traffic backing up behind me, I rolled down my window and offered the young woman the card. She immediately took it and returned to where she was sitting at the curb.
What struck me about her were here eyes. They were bright, if not lit-up. I didn’t sense our gesture of kindness lit them up, rather I sensed her eyes expressed her current feeling towards her life.
That is, her curbside neediness suited her fine. Or put another way, a teenage girl appeared to find sitting on a curb begging from passing strangers a fairly pleasurable life experience.
Much could be written with that in mind, but I only want to draw one connection between the life of this young woman and the life’s we live. We see a sad situation and/or perhaps a young con-artist. Yet I would submit to each of us (myself included!) that her life isn’t all that far from ours. May I be blunt? We too often find a unhealthy life choices a little too pleasurable. May it not be.
One more connection, if I may. My wife read a small book and it changed her. We all know too well, that we don’t change very easily. We’d like to see this teenage girl get far away from begging at freeway exits. We’d like to see her change. Yet what we want in her, do we model lifestyle changes?
Barbed wire fences animals in. Sometimes we fence ourselves out of a more blessed life.
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Wow, Steve. Thanks for this post. I would like to read that little book, too.
And you’re so right. We DO sometimes fence ourselves out of a more blessed life….
Thanks Linda!