Deja Vu: A Relationship Existentially: Wal-Mart

Tonight was weird.

I was reminded of so many different things tonight. That's what was weird about it.

And I would be reminded in weird deja vu ways, like I couldn't actually remember what this was hearkening back toward, just that it was somehow hearkening back. I guess it was just a night facing the wrong way.

I remembered seepage, storage bins for clothes, speeding back through the parking lot and screaming at each other so that we could get her keys. I remembered getting donuts just because I was already out there, 16 Blocks, and telling secrets via an IM guessing game.

But more than anything other, I remembered a story that went down before any of the rest of that.

It was a little over a year ago, when it was just starting to get coolish at nights down here. I was out with the girl who was occupying all my time (either with her presence or her phantom staring back at me in my mind), and I was really nervous. We were, I suppose, interested in each other. I was filling my car up with gas, chatting with her through the door she'd opened for just such a purpose.

At this point a man walked up and accosted me. He asked how things were going. I could sense where this was going to take me. He looked me in the eye and told me this long story about how he needed just $24.78 in order to pay his rent at the Days Inn just down the street. He told me all about how he had done the whole Seed-Faith thing and he was just broke now from having given it all away, and I closed her door.

I told him that I didn't have the money. He looked at my car, at her, and he looked back at me and called me a liar. I don't think she could hear. On second thought, my car isn't very sound proof. She may have. I hoped that she didn't. I told him that I really didn't have any money, that all this--except her, I suppose--was my parents' money, not mine. He said something rude.

As I started to walk back around to the other side of my car, I told him that we'd definitely be praying for him. He told me not to. "Don't pray for me, pray for yourself. You don't know God, man," he said. I told him to have a good night. He walked away.

I went out and had a great night.

But it gnawed at me. Had I done something wrong? We talked about it and she took my side. She said that God would provide what the man had needed, and if it wasn't me it wasn't me.

The next morning I was driving to church, prepared to teach about Micah 6.8 ("He has told you, O Man, what is good, and what does YHWH require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."), and it just gnawed at me and rang in my heart. "You don't know God."


And tonight was kinda like that.

God, please know that I did the best I knew how; please bless my (probably failed) attempts at walking out this faith that you've entrusted to me. God, know that whatever I did or didn't do that I did it all with the best of intentions. God help me.


Peace, love, and joy to you all.