My Thoroughfare

This is an old blog that I was looking through one day and found. I’m not having writers block, because I could always just write nonsense and put it up for amusement. However I’m going to spare you my idiocies. I wrote this blog my freshman year of college. It changed my life:

• Just like every Wednesday morning I arose at 9:12 (yes that is the time I set my alarm clock for) and partake in my micro waved jimmy dean sausage biscuits. One would think that this would get old, but I assure you those biscuits cannot be beaten. A little off topic I know, but they’re amazing none the less.

  Anyhow, this frigid morning I’m walking up to Ivy Tech and see a withered man in a trench coat passing out little green books. Amused by the awkwardness both put out from him and other students that approach him, it gives me a sinister smirk. As I neared this withered man I saw that this was no little green book, but the New Testament with other nib lets of books thrown in. Almost annoyed by the fact that he would even offer a Bible to Brian Ramsey, otherwise known as the saint of Ivy Tech. (Kidding I assure you.) ”A copy of God’s word today?” So I took it with a bold “Thank you sir,” and took the small passage not missing a stride in my step.

  It just so happens that this morning was my day to give a speech and as usual I don’t really prepare and was going through the speech in my head. I had to take up three minutes…easily done. I did just that, I gave my speech with great poise might I add, and took my seat. (Surely everyone was jealous.) We had to share a time in our lives that changed us the most. No need to tell you what I shared because if only the moment that I experienced would have happened a day or even an hour earlier, I would have shared that. (You might have to read that sentence twice.)

  There is this girl that sits in front of me. I don’t know her name, or where she came from, what she likes or dislikes. I don’t know her from Adam. She came to class with nothing, cept this green little book. You could tell she had a rough night, or rough weekend for that matter. Her name was called because it was her turn to do her speech. She presented no paper to the professor, but stood in front of the class and started to tell her story. It turns out that she had spent the weekend in jail, domestic violence was her crime. Through teary eyes she told the class how her boyfriend had beaten her, controlled her life, and was telling the girls in the class the warning signs. She told everyone that you had to act alone. Because no one person could help you. That if something needed to be done, to act alone. I was not only appalled at the fact of a man beating/controlling a woman’s life, but that this woman felt as if she were alone in this world.

  As she continued to her seat three feet in front of me, I sat. I sat wondering what I could do to make her feel like she wasn’t alone. This was no ploy to woo her into my arms, but to let her know she’s loved, even in the times she felt when she was most alone. And as a brother to a sister, I slipped but one word and two numbers in my Bible into the correct page…Psalms 27:1. And I nonchalantly said to her, “Will you trade me Bibles for a tick? I think mines better than yours.” She looked at me with the most accurate thoughts of me being crazy, but then her eyes softened at the sight of that slip of paper book marking a passage that could possibly change her life. She opened it, looked at it. Stared at it, studied it. The longer she took the more my eyes began to itch and the more my heart felt what she was feeling. She then turned around and simply said, “Thank you.”

  I’m not the best Christian, and I never will be but I know in my heart that this morning I changed that girl’s outlook on life. Even if it was for a second. It was a second that I could give her hope through our Lord and Savior. And that I hope and pray that that one second, could change an hour, a day, or even a life, through that second. Don’t underestimate God and His plan for your day. Cause every morning you wake up, God has that little thoroughfare waiting for you to stumble onto, and change someone’s life.