And then sometimes it’s nighttime and you’re going for “funny and irreverent” and Life pumps those brakes hard when your kid texts to say she just caught a homeless man going through her car in a darkened parking lot, and when she asks him to stop, he does, and when she tells him to give back her stuff, he hands it to her, and apologizes saying, “I’m sorry. I’m a shitty person. I’ve been on drugs.”

I’m filled with gratitude and sorrow: grateful he didn’t scare or hurt her but sorrowful that he lives with the constant burden of feeling guilty for his own pain.

I pray he gets the help he needs. I pray I can someday/somehow reciprocate so that maybe he could see what he did with the eye of a self reclaimed from such sorrow.

Thank you dear man, for not harming her and for, instead, being decent to her in spite of your own pain. I’m so sorry that life is so hard. I wish for us all that it were not so and that your gracious actions in the midst of your own suffering becomes the light by which you’re both soothed and able to see.

1/8/2017