Last week, I wrote about my travels to D.C. and all that trip meant to me.
What I haven’t written about are all the nudges I experienced while there.
It started with the two Minnesota businessmen seated across from me at the conference dinner, the ones whose accents sounded so familiar. The fellows who told their stories in the modest way Midwesterners do; what stays with me is how easily we laughed, as though we were old friends reunited after years apart.
There was the English couple making their way to St. Louis; his brown eyes locking on mine when he said, “It’s my Mother, you see, and she wants me to come.” I found myself nodding in agreement. We talked of the bond between Mothers and children, regardless that she was 84 and he 61. I’d forgotten it was Mother’s Day that coming Sunday. His wife, serene and beautiful, like Jane Goodall, smiled in support of the journey.
There was the businesswoman softly sobbing in the seat next to mine, our flight delayed again and again because of weather. But it wasn’t the storms that made her cry, it was her husband’s terse texts about being late to their 9 year old’s birthday.
There was the Arizona executive I met at an evening mixer, the woman who smiled as she told me of her Dad’s health challenges and how no other siblings were involved because he was such a cranky-puss these days. She smiled her way through the fatigue.
There was the skinny smiley cab driver from Afghanistan who showed me photos of his baby daughter and the cleaning lady with the shy smile who never failed to say “Good morning!”
Maybe I was just a country girl in the city overwhelmed with the sights, the smells, the significance.
But I don’t think that’s it.
I felt it. With each of them.
A nudge.
A little push that said, “hear them. see them. listen.”
And so I did.
And in the listening, that’s where I find the lessons live.
“An invisible thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle. But it will never break.” – Proverbs
Have you ever experienced nudges like this? What did you?
related:
- Lessons in the snapshots of life
- I saw her
- Seeing the need
- Because sometimes I just know
- Starting points
:: google.images.com::
