I had an unusually quiet shift at Joe’s Addiction yesterday. It was a real nice change of pace that afforded me two wonderful conversations with a couple people from the community there. It was so nice to be able to just sit and relate together our similar journeys in life.
One person was my first friend at Joe’s – a formerly withdrawn man who has learned to have friends, you just need to be friendly – who was adopted as a baby and who was different than his peers… we had a great conversation connecting about the struggles and lessons learned along the way as he looks back on his life and as we look forward in raising our own adopted son.
The other person was a new friend whom we’ve gotten to know just since we’ve moved here. She’s been fighting her way forward in her own life journey, learning to follow God and trust Him, swimming upstream, against the currents of her circumstances. She and I have been working through similar issues in our understandings of doctrine and theology and it’s just encouraging to know you’re not the only one, even if neither of us has all the answers, and finding freedom in that letting go of “answers” in exchange for holding on to Jesus and His love.
I just really enjoyed the simple blessing of my short four-hour shift in a little coffee shop in Valley Brook. God is in the small things, yes?
Darrel Voth 