Sarah Anne I Am

  Today I was at Goodwill when an older man came up and struck up a conversation. Indicating the bike helmet I was looking at, he asked, “Do you ride a scooter?”   “No, just a bike. Not a motorcycle or anything, just a regular bike.”   He looked like an innocent man in his fifties or sixties who was lonely for conversation. There were plenty of people around and he didn’t make me feel uncomfortable as our conversation continued.   “I’ve been riding a motorcycle since I was eleven years old,” he said. I told him that was cool. He pulled up the pants leg of his shorts slightly, showing me the twisted, gnarled skin. “I spent four weeks in Harborview when this happened,” he said.   “Ow! Oh my goodness!” I commented, and he- seemingly happy for a captive audience- continued.   “I was riding home one night, and some nice person had lost their dark brown couch in the middle of the freeway. I was lucky enough to hit it, and when I crashed the gasoline spilled on my leg and burned it clear to t

I have sat and watched those trained to move with beauty perform on spot-lit stages, while I am in the darkened audience admiring the way they control their movements to convey emotion. I have stood in line for five hours and then walked on tired feet through an art exhibit, awe-struck by the pure and undefiled brilliance of Picasso’s work merely inches from my eyes as I drank in the masterful talent he placed on canvas. I have sang the lines penned by someone else’s hand in their darkest or brightest hours, I have sang the verses and choruses they composed to show the place where they stood and the melody they heard as they stood there. But it is time that I danced, painted, and sang my own songs. I do not need to be the best at anything I do- I simply must be myself as I do it. Never before has anyone been me, nor will anyone ever be. I am unprecedented, unduplicated, and a remarkable work of art simply because of who I am. Thank You, Father, for making me who I am.

  Almost two years ago my sister and I went on a ten-day Caribbean cruise. We saw a lot of beautiful places, but what I want to talk about for a moment for the places that were not so beautiful. The dirty places, the sad places, the broken places…the places where the bus won’t stop.   Because we were traveling with my grandmother and her then-boyfriend, we didn’t go boogie boarding, scuba dive with sting rays, or go off-roading on four wheelers or anything like that. We went on lots of bus tours, which were air-conditioned, full of information, and relatively interesting most of the time. I always kept my sunglasses on in case I fell asleep, though.   But the day we were in Costa Rica there was something different about the bus tour. As the bus driver wove his way quickly through city streets to get us to the scenic routes where he could point out incredible, enormous bird nests, I watched the streets below us. They were filthy, the sidewalks literally stacked with garbage and filth. A