Humans of Tennessee

Humans of Tennessee

Three years ago, almost to the day, I purchased two tickets to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, but my husband ended up needing brain surgery instead. I remember being on the phone for hours, trying to get our tickets reimbursed, like something so irrelevant could make my husband well. Though the woman I spoke with was extremely kind, I never received a check, and we never saw the show. So, this week, when I clicked on two tickets for The Piano Guys, I was leery.

My husband had an MRI at Vanderbilt this morning, and our consultation is on Tuesday, so we can discuss another craniotomy. The concert isn’t until April, and yet it felt like a gamble anyway. My cursor hovered over the insurance button. I thought to myself, as if a darker game of he loves me/he loves me not: If I purchase the insurance, we won’t need it; if I skip the insurance, we will.

So, I purchased the insurance.

Herein lies the strange little games we play when faced with something so beyond our control.

And yet, this painful, uncertain journey has shifted my sympathy to empathy, and I have found myself praying for an elderly man in Kroger while the produce glistened behind us in neat little Roy G. Biv rows. I prayed for a twenty-three-year-old young woman who was at Orange Beach, Alabama, because the doctor told her she was going blind, and her mother wanted her to see as much of the world as she could.

Then there was the time I was chatting with a mother at the park, and she told me she was going deaf, and she wanted another baby, but she’d almost died while giving birth to her dark-haired little girl, who was trying to make friends with my middle child.

But I didn’t pray for her, the mother. I, an extreme extrovert, felt shy because it’s sometimes easier to reach out to people I will never see again than to the people I will. But I never did see her again, and I will never forget how she told me—smiling, even—that she was someone who didn’t mind going deaf, but she’d gotten a cochlear implant so she could hear her daughter’s first cry.

And then there was the teenager, at a high school where I spoke, who wore a medieval dress with boots and a tiny gold crown on top of her long blond hair. I thought she must’ve just come from a play, but she hadn’t. She’d just come to hear me speak, and she’d run off to fetch a piece of fruit from the cafeteria when I became shaky between lectures. I could see the pallor of her skin and hear her hitched breathing as she passed me the green apple, and I knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure what.

I didn’t pray for her. I didn’t even get to talk to her after the second lecture, even though it touched me that she was going to listen to me repeat everything again.

All around me, all around us, are these hurting, aching, beautiful human beings, but I must continue holding on to the humans in my own life too. This week, my daughters were in bed but not tired, and my husband and I could hear their muffled laughter as we sat in the living room. They were attempting to read the same books in the dark, so they could synchronize their dreams. Today, I sent my daughters outside for a treasure hunt, but they returned way too soon with the requisite acorn, rock, and plant.

I said, “Why don’t you surprise me with something?”

My firstborn asked, “Like a root?”

And I cannot forget the moment, yesterday, while my daughters and I watched a matinee, Star. The cartoon Mary said on the screen (that, according to my three-year-old, was as big as a house): “Just because it’s God’s plan, doesn’t mean it’s easy.”

As I snuggled two of my three daughters in that popcorn-smelling darkness, my eyes flooded with tears. I have to believe God does have a plan for us: a plan for my husband whose veins were injected with dye today for the scan we will discuss soon; for the elderly man with the bum knee who asked what religion I was when I prayed for him in the nation’s Bible Belt; for the twenty-three-old who told me she was going blind while we sat in the hot tub; for the hearing-impaired mom who wanted to be a mom of two, and for the theatrically-dressed teenager who showed me such kindness.

I believe we are all going to find our wholeness one day, but until that day comes, I am going to love those around me as deeply as I can, switching from apathy (a defense mechanism that pops up when I’m overwhelmed) to empathy, because I too know what uncertainty feels like . . . the purchasing of tickets for an event in April you pray you and your spouse will be able to see.

And I believe we will.

Keep the faith this holiday season. Call your loved ones. Pray for someone. Hug someone. Use the breath in your lungs to say a word of kindness. We are more connected than you think.