From '20 lines a day' assignment
At Youth Group you find yourself in a conversation with Ryan, one of your favorite kids, perhaps because he is so needy, so uncertain. He is scrawny, with a large, angular face––something he will grow into, but that for now is too much for him.
He tells you how his life will go. He will get out of his s-hole of a school (he actually says that, s-hole, and you consider him, wonder if he would so censor himself were you not in a church, and realize he would; and for a moment that gives you pause, that utterly un-self-conscious clinging to some sort of innocence) and go to a Christian college, near home so he can still go to his same church, and meet a girl at the beginning of college and get married and have four children, and get a job as a youth pastor. He speaks easily for the first time since you’ve met him: this is something he’s long considered, planned carefully, come to know as truth in his life.
But you know––you know––that he will be wrong, that life will, of course, inevitably tamper with his plans, toy with him, smirking, and send him off on other paths, test and refine him and one day remind him of those plans he made, by then so different than reality that he’ll laugh. Parts (hopefully his faith, the way he doesn’t quite sense himself as he speaks) will hold, but many won’t. But, too, you know this: it will be more than okay, in the end.
He fades out and you’re looking, from a distance, at yourself: jeans a size too big bought before you understood how they stretch, glasses you wore because you’re told they make you look older and each week you’re mistaken for a high schooler, hands that always, even in your wedding photos when the photographer directed them, look awkward and misplaced, betraying your nervousness.
How on earth, you think––how on earth would any wisdom for Ryan be imparted from you?
He tells you how his life will go. He will get out of his s-hole of a school (he actually says that, s-hole, and you consider him, wonder if he would so censor himself were you not in a church, and realize he would; and for a moment that gives you pause, that utterly un-self-conscious clinging to some sort of innocence) and go to a Christian college, near home so he can still go to his same church, and meet a girl at the beginning of college and get married and have four children, and get a job as a youth pastor. He speaks easily for the first time since you’ve met him: this is something he’s long considered, planned carefully, come to know as truth in his life.
But you know––you know––that he will be wrong, that life will, of course, inevitably tamper with his plans, toy with him, smirking, and send him off on other paths, test and refine him and one day remind him of those plans he made, by then so different than reality that he’ll laugh. Parts (hopefully his faith, the way he doesn’t quite sense himself as he speaks) will hold, but many won’t. But, too, you know this: it will be more than okay, in the end.
He fades out and you’re looking, from a distance, at yourself: jeans a size too big bought before you understood how they stretch, glasses you wore because you’re told they make you look older and each week you’re mistaken for a high schooler, hands that always, even in your wedding photos when the photographer directed them, look awkward and misplaced, betraying your nervousness.
How on earth, you think––how on earth would any wisdom for Ryan be imparted from you?
posted by Kelly at
1:14 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home