The night we got on those three old motor coach buses there in the high school parking lot, it was raining, lightening and thunder too. Suitcases being shoved underneath, hastily said goodbyes, chaperones checking IDs as students boarded, folks finding seats to sink down into as quickly as possible. And we were off, all 135 of us, driving through the wee hours of the morning to the Denver airport, to hop on an early flight to New York’s JFK.

There in my faded blue plaid seat, people murmuring all around, I bent to pray as I had so many times in the weeks leading up to this trip. Because two years earlier I’d been on another band trip – to Chicago – as a chaperone, and my heart then had been hard. So hard that it was still healing from that time away, in fact. So now, as the rain pounded and the wheels rolled, I pleaded for softness for myself, that I could see – really see – people, that this time, this next week, would not be about me, but them.

The first person I saw, was a high school senior named Michael. He was hard to miss – loud and vocal with long, fiery red hair, thick glasses, his voice easily extending to every seat on that bus. And it rarely stopped, usually off-handed comments that only his friend, the boy-man sitting next to him, found funny, inserting himself into most everyone else’s conversations, strange grunting sounds coming off and on. I found myself wanting to move away – physically, emotionally, in most every way really.

But when we’d gotten off the bus and onto the plane, flown over half a country, spent a night at a hotel and seen some sights, we found ourselves in the parking lot of a Golden Corral around suppertime. There was drama – something about some girl’s dad texting Michael and telling him to stop talking to his daughter. And Michael came to us, to Nathan and me, to talk there on the hot blacktop, near tears. He said he wasn’t doing anything, hadn’t talked to the girl, hadn’t even looked at her in months, didn’t know what this dad was even talking about. He was pacing and agitated, visibly upset. We tried to speak words of comfort, of truth, into his life, words encouraging him, that he could handle this maturely, that this is a life-long battle, facing people who insult you, who you disagree with. And too that you can’t let people who don’t know you have so much power over you, your emotions, your life.

And as we talked, Michael’s face changed, softened, his body began to relax, he was breathing more deeply, nodding now and then. And as this transformation took place in him, one took place in me, in my heart also. Because it was then that I started seeing Michael, not as he was or is, but as he will become. Not who he will be as a grown up man necessarily. But as he will become when he is redeemed, when he is miraculously transformed back into the son that the Father created him to be, back before sin entered the world and everything broke. And for the first time, I saw Beauty in him. I developed a tenderness for this young man, an understanding of him, a respect for him even. And I was inexplicably drawn toward him now, not away.

Not coincidentally, I believe, the day before I’d come across this quote from a book I’d packed in my carry on bag, to read on the plane from Denver to NYC, from Fyodor Dostoevsky. It said, “To love someone means to see him as God intended him.” To see him as God intended him. Love. To love well then may be to change how you see. Noticing all that is good and lovely and right and true. Noticing a person’s beauty. Thinking only the best. And somehow glossing over all that is not these things, all the worst bits and pieces.

Another quote that came upon my path just today, as I’ve been writing this post, and this by George Eliot, “Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take a sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.” Take all of a person, keep what is good, and in kindness, let go of all that is not. Yes. This. Love.

There were others I saw in NYC – there was Carl, another high school senior, who I sat with at dinner one night, who told how he and his sister had been in and out of nine different foster homes. “And what was your favorite foster family and why?,” I asked him, trying to make conversation. He didn’t hesitate, “Jeff and Amy, they were the best.” From me: “And why were they the best?” And from him: “Because they were the only people in my whole life that have ever treated me like a human being.” And that softening of my heart, it happened again, right there in that restaurant in the heart of NYC, that magnetic pull toward this young man who had suffered a dad in jail, a mom run off who he never knew, grandparents who treated him cruelly, a younger sister with lasting emotional scars from the mess of it all. And Carl, alone really – the high school band his only source of belonging and family.

There was Rachel, over yet another supper – a quiet, shy girl of fourteen who smiled constantly, but seemed almost frightened of life. I’d first noticed her the night before when she hesitantly asked me if she could borrow a tampon as we got off the bus at the hotel. She was chatty and asked good questions, clearly wanting to get to know me better. Gradually found out she was interested in Psychology (my college major), lived with her dad who she was worried drank too much, and she cooked supper every night, but wished her dad would let her buy more healthy foods, less stuff from boxes. I broke for her, this Rachel girl without a mama to mama her, to cook for her, to nurture her into womanhood. But too, I saw Beauty there.

And another person who buried himself in my heart, our bus driver, a big black man from Jersey – Lewis – who could navigate that gigantic bus of his beautifully in that insane NYC traffic, around pedestrians and folks on bikes, over massive bridges and through narrow tunnels, making it all look like child’s play. One of our tour guides had challenged all 135 of us to a limerick contest, to write these short poems about our time in NYC; prizes to be awarded at the end of the week. And so, I wrote about Lewis – silly, little ditties that started that low chuckle of his right up, a few that made him look back at me, disbelief in his eyes. He knew I was a country girl, so he teased that I should move to the City. I knew he was a city guy, so I teased that he should come to visit us in Nebraska. At CITI stadium where the Mets play, while the high school band was up on the stage performing, I tried to get him to dance with me. He shook his head, chuckled, smiled, put his arm around me. And I knew Beauty and I knew Love in this man who’d been a complete stranger to me the week before.

Love.

Before NYC, I thought you had to try to love people, especially strangers, like it took some enormous effort from inside myself to muster up those kind of feelings, like love was this product that had to be manufactured somehow. But, no. Love, like everything else, I am learning, Love is a gift.

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