Practice What You Preach

Life is really funny. So the past few posts have been all about how I'm trying not to judge people and how we should and blah blah blah. I should have known something major was brewing. You can't go around firmly stating your beliefs without expecting to get called out on them. And so begins my story...

This weekend Travis and I went to the mountains to celebrate our second anniversary. The second night there we decided to head into Asheville for dinner at one our our favorite restaurants. After an amazing meal we headed back to the small town where we were staying, stopping first to fill up at a gas station. That's where we met our friend Alex.

Alex is a 17 year old from Charlotte who rode up to Asheville with a friend. When the friend drove off and left him, he was stuck in Asheville two hours away from home with no money, no phone, no clue how far away from home he was and no way back to Charlotte. Alex lives in West Charlotte, which is not the best side of town. We didn't know if we could trust him, so we gave him $20 and drove off. This behavior is the exact opposite of what I've been talking on this blog.

Soon Travis realized he left his check card so we turned around to see Alex still sitting there, cold and lost. We decided to give him a ride to the exit he said he needed to go to. It wasn't until we were on the road that we realized the exit he was referring to was in Charlotte, not Asheville. Somehow I remembered seeing the Greyhound station on our way into Asheville so we decided to get him a ticket home. But of course, Greyhound was closed for the night. Our next plan was to put him in a motel near Greyhound for the night, buy the ticket online when we got back to our hotel.

After we got Alex settled in his room, we thought about all the decisions we made that led us to Alex. We thought about how we almost chose to ignore Alex, how we judged him for where he lives, what he was doing and how got himself into this situation. We realized how quick we were to put our desire to enjoy our vacation ahead of the needs of someone else.  Now we come off like the Good Samaritan, but in our hearts we were too busy and just passing by someone in need. I'm frustrated that it took a second chance for us to the right thing. I'm ashamed that because we spent so much on helping Alex we wound up cutting our vacation short and I pouted for a bit. But I'm also grateful that God provided an opportunity for us to serve someone other than ourselves. Maybe next time I'll get it right.