I have a friend, let’s call him George. When I first met George, he was always moving, always doing something, and if you spoke with him…you didn’t actually speak, it was impossible. He would not stop talking, or leave any room for you to say anything back. The topics he spoke about were always intense, politics, the 1%, the environment, or music, but music at a level of intensity that is difficult to imagine.
George was also very paranoid, and constantly afraid that people were judging him, backstabbing him or just in general hating on him in an unjustified way.
Perhaps that was why he was uninterruptable, that way you didn’t have a chance to judge him, that way you couldn’t have hurt him. He would often come up, speak for 10-15 minutes and then leave.
One day, George came flying down the street on his bike straight towards me, he got off his bike about 3 feet from me while still riding at near full speed. He slammed his bike down, stormed up to me, and looked at me with intense anger, and yelled, “IS IT TRUE?! DO YOU HATE ME?!” and added quite a bit of other stuff, and words…I’ll let you filll in the blanks however you want…
When I got the chance, actually before I got the chance (since George is uninterruptable, you have to just barge in with your own words) “GEORGE, IT IS NOT TRUE! I LOVE YOU!” It’s a little weird to yell those words at someone, but that’s what I needed to do, so he would actually hear them above his own rambling anger. I said it a few more times, and put my hand on his shoulder gently to indicate it with touch. All of the sudden George softened. “YOU DO?” he yelled. “I do,” I said gently. “Well…thanks,” he said, “that’s so nice!” and he rode off.
A few weeks later George started coming to Grace Point’s services. He was still himself, very intense and uninterruptable, pacing in and out of the building, grabbing coffee, spilling coffee, yelling at people and always getting someone ticked. But he was there, and we tried our best to love him.
A few weeks after coming to Grace Point, George came up to me and said, “I’VE BEEN READING THE BIBLE, AND IT BELIEVES EVERYTHING I BELIEVE IN!” We spoke – or he spoke – some more and I left the monologue wondering, “is this what a conversion looks like for someone like this?”
About one year later, we were continuing to experience George, he got involved more, playing guitar, hurting people, and being part of our church family.
One day as a few of us on leadership were talking we wondered out loud, “are we really doing anything here?” One person said, “Look at George! of course we are!” We all kind of looked at each other a little skeptically, “George?!” “George is our shining light?!”
Then we started to reflect on it:
One person said, “yeah, he is being helpful around the building like crazy!”
another, “I went for lunch with him the other day, and I shared with him! He didn’t even interrupt me!”
another, “he sits longer, and he’s really listening to the messages during the service!”
another, “he is friendly, and sometimes serves others coffee when he’s up wandering around during the service!”
another, “sometimes he doesn’t dominate the conversation at Bible Study!”
Wow! This is what progress looks like! I love George!