Brieanna Fist

This morning, I got asked how to spell a word. If this was my little sister, it would be unremarkable. But it was a stranger.  I was sitting on the station platform, as she unconsciously selected the seat next to me.

I didn’t even notice that somebody else was on the farthest opposite reaches of the bench. ‘til she interrupted me. ‘Sorry to be so rude, but my phone won’t let me spell a word’.

I glanced at her a second time. Was she was somehow, mildly, disabled? Its an awful truth; the only raconteurs I expect are perhaps the elderly, but too often only these wonderful people. They travel together to work each morning, courtesy of the employment scheme of their disability agency. And every morning, they call out to each other across the bus. They talk to the rest of us! They give us compliments, ask us questions, and beautifully have no sense of the social imposition that we call a norm, of pervasive silence.

‘What word is it I’m trying to spell again? Oh, measure. It’s m-e-s-u-r-e, isn’t it?’

I told her not quite, that there was actually an a in it, and she thanked me, finished her message and after a moment, slid back over to the opposite end of the bench.

She’s probably already forgotten; just another moment in the haze of a morning. I haven’t, at all. I can’t help but to continually admire her willingness to unashamedly admit her fallibility. She didn’t know everything, and she needed help. I don’t know everything, and I need help.

I know that I am not sufficient, but I don’t want to parade it. I know that I consciously manufacture a demeanour that suggests my control. I am stunned even when its the people closest to me admitting they don’t understand. I’ll Google a word, a phrase, a concept, before ever asking what it means. I’ll run a little bit faster whenever I pass somebody on a jog, just to show that I’m really not exerting that much effort. I’ll walk along a street the wrong way, deny my gender by trying to read a map, before I ask for directions. There’s exceptions, to be sure.  Weaknesses I’m willing, even happy, to admit. There’s some people, there’s some situations where I don’t mind asking for help.

It would never occur to me to ask for the advice of a stranger on a station platform. I am so wrapped up in the way in which they perceive me. Am I an interruption, an annoyance? Are they thinking about my stupidity?

I do not have all the answers. Jesus does.  And maybe recognising my imperfections innately in the tiny milieux of life is just an illustrative recognition I am sinful and broken, yet made whole and blameless in Jesus who mercifully loves and saves.