He does a double take.
It’s got to be my ridiculous bed head.
I step back from the luggage carousel, run my fingers through tired hair.
It’s mid June and I’m coming home from Raleigh, through Charlotte, only to find my flight home to Canada canceled. It had been after 2 in the morning when I finally fell into the pillow in a darkened hotel room, heavy air freshener masking a million travelers who’d gone before.
Then four hours sleep.
Then pull on a dress, back to the airport to take my place in humanity’s lines of leaving and dreaming.
I had watched how a woman held her swelling abdomen as she stepped down the escalator, caressing the coming one, attending to the unseen, and I remembered that unconscious cradling right from the beginning, all those times.
I had smiled when a woman breezed by with her hair done up in wedding veil, her flipflops slapping, a grinning man right on her heels.
Now and then, I glanced at the woman beside me writing in a looping, lopsided scrawl on a yellow legal pad, making her numbered list. I had made mine own mentally with a flourish of thanks, me waiting and watching, bed headed and bare-faced and without make-up, relieved to be going home to the Farmer who takes me anyways. A man who thinks the best thing any woman can wear is a smile, the hidden within wore happily on the outer. I am praying for this.
And when I land at home on Canadian turf midday, and the man at the luggage carousel does his double take, when the man turns from the the luggage conveyor belt spewing out a stream of black carry ons, all a bit like adolescents with identity crisis, each sprouting a wild head of ribbon to set them apart from the crowd, he asks, “Yours?”
I shake my head, no. Not yet. Still waiting.
I don’t expect what he says next:
“I like your dress…”
I must have misheard. Without luggage, I’m wearing the same dress as yesterday, the same one my mother frankly called bland and bag-like, the one without a zipper or shape, that you just slip over your head, long, mid-calf, and simple, neckline round and high and plain. I’m shaking my head. No. Not at all.
“Your dress…” he says it again so I hear, his accent heavy. “It looks so… spiritual.”
A Travelsmith dress, bought off ebay, spiritual? It’s in pale purple. I’m wearing a strand of pale mauve glass beads. I’m not wearing a headcovering, habit or bonnet — just bedhead. No crucifix around my neck, no robe with a rope tied around waist, no Beth Moore button on shoulder (though I do fleetingly think of Miss Beth’s airport story and wish I knew what she’d say right now.) I inadvertently look down at bland purple — what exactly looks spiritual?
“So…. what do you do?” he circles his hand likes he’s trying to get me to roll out me tied up tongue. What’s he expecting me to say?
“I’m a … a farmer’s wife.” I stammer it out. This is what I do: love and serve one faithful, hardworking man. I am a wife. Oh, and the other important part: “We have six children. I teach them at home.” I’m pulling hard at those strand of beads and I can feel it, the flush of heat rising up my neck.
He nods slow and, face on fire, I keep looking for my luggage.
“I work in stocks. Out of Chicago.”
Oh? I nod, keeping my eyes on the spinning carousel, feeling only a tad spun.
In deep, Eastern tones, he tells me about the last ten years of his life, this job, that city, and I keep nodding, fingering desperate along that necklace like a string of prayer beads, never turning from the luggage carousel.
“One week, my stocks, they make $80,000. Next week, I lose $100,000.” He shrugs his shoulders. “The way it goes.”
“Well…” I lean to see if that’s my zippered piece of baggage dropping off the belt. “Money isn’t what’s eternal, is it?”
“Ah!” he throws his arms in the air. “I knew it! So you are spiritual!”
Where is Beth Moore when you need her?
I breathe deep and smile, the Holy Spirit always within, giving the words, and I just pray that I hear Him right.
“So what kind of spiritual are you?” He moves to my right, trying to make eye contact. And I straighten.
“I’m a Christian.” The words come… without fumbling, surprisingly. This is who I am: loving and serving One who is Faithful. I am His. This is the important part.
“But…” he’s circling his hand again, wanting more. “what kind of Christian?”
Oh. Kind? Is being Christian rather like being pregnant? You either wholly are or you really aren’t — is there an in between? How did we become known as “kinds” of Christian instead of simply, humbly, loving Christians? What if it was just about a living faith over faith labels — about Christ-behaviour over Christian boxes?
“I’m an evangelical, born-again Christian.” I say it quietly, searching a stockbroker’s face. “I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as our only Saviour.” It’s startling how right the words feel in me, out loud.
Why don’t I say these words aloud to strangers more often? Why don’t I live them more clearly? I am ashamed of how many times, unlike the apostle Paul, I have been ashamed of the gospel, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Romans 1:16)
The dress may have appeared (for some inexplicable reason) spiritual — but what about my bare soul?
How much of my life is about looking spiritual on the outside instead of living with the Spirit on the inside?
Why scour the outer curve of cups and slight the inner communion with Christ?
Why drink dirty water instead of Living waters?
There’s no true holiness without deep humility.
The humility to lay down the pride and applause of work and pick up the hiddenness and affection of prayer.
The humility of secret service in a world shimmering with screens.
The humility of speaking humbly what the world considers wholly foolish, to be the weak that God uses to speak to the strong.
“I am going to see a friend here.” The man looks down at his watch and I wonder if it’s time for him to change the subject?
“She asks me why I come and I tell her that all over the world the spiritual make pilgrimages to places. So can’t I make the journey to see her?”
“Yes, yes, go see her.” I smile, stepping to grab the handle of my carry on. “It’s the souls that are eternal…”
I don’t know if I am doing any of this right at all and am I hearing the Spirit? And Beth obviously would have done this exponentially better and oh, just to simply clothe this ragged soul in humility and what kind of Christian am I?
The man nods warmly, reaches for his red suitcase dropping onto the carousel, and I tug the side of my skirt, unconsciously fingering along the seams….
Always the inner and hidden that needs the smoothing.
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All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another…
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Every Wednesday, we Walk with Him, posting a spiritual practice that draws us nearer to His heart.
To read the entire series of spiritual practices
I am finding this topic wrenchingly difficult to write about. Humility is timid. Write about it, talk about it, and it flees. But shall we spend another week bending the knee and wrestling this out? Oh, do hard work in me, Lord. I long to learn from You. Next Week: The Practice of Humility… We look forward to your thoughts, stories, ideas….
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