My husband and I were driving back home from a date in Wichita. As is usual for us, it was a little too late in the evening to be getting back to our children so they could have a decent bedtime. (It is actually rare that our children get to bed around the time that most normal youngsters retire. We haven’t quite reached perfection in that area of our lives. Well, on with the story.)
I was looking down at my phone, reading Caleb some pithy quotes, no doubt, when he slowed down to make a turn. “I don’t even know where we’re at,” I said. The scenery along K-96 stretched on in similar fashion for many miles, and I had not been paying much attention to it. But he was actually doing a U-turn. After mumbling something about our location, he shocked me by saying, “There was a body back there.”
The evening was about to become an adventure. I perked up, my heart pounding with a sense of the unknown and a question about just how my paramedic husband was going to deal with this. A mile later, we turned around again and eased up behind another car that had stopped by that time. A few yards ahead of the first car was a very still body, its feet pointing toward the road and its head near the ditch. The body was very straight, as if it had been determined to lay itself to rest in the neatest fashion it could imagine.
I hopped out of the van with my phone, determined to catch whatever was about to happen on camera. The body made a slight movement. Okay, so not a dead body. But apparently one who was wanting to garner some kind of attention.
These kinds of things happen to my husband. It is not worth being afraid for his safety, because the stress of planning his funeral before he’s dead has the propensity to make any normally good day a very bad one, in a matter of seconds. And God has protected him many odd circumstances so far. Just a few months earlier, someone who wanted to commit suicide had jumped out in front of Caleb’s car, and he’d had to swerve mightily to avoid being the desperado’s unwilling executioner. But God protected them both that night.
At any rate, I was now with Caleb on one of his unsought-for adventures, and I was jumpy. He and the other man who had stopped were attempting to make conversation with the hobo, and the hobo was taciturn and unhelpful. He made a sudden move that I couldn’t fully see, and Caleb jumped back. Later I learned that it was only a fist making a slight connection with Caleb’s mid-section, and Caleb went right back to talking with the man while keeping a more circumspect distance.
I inched forward until I was within range of the mostly one-sided conversation. I deduced that the man had walked quite a bit, had lain down to rest in an unlikely place, and did not want the police or the paramedics to assist him in any way. “Well, sir,” Caleb said persuasively, “as long as you’re lying here, you’ll just get more and more people stopping to help you. We want to keep you safe.” The man did not respond, but his eyes continued to stare straight ahead—and since he was lying down, ahead was skyward.
“Well,” I said, glancing at the perfect sky, “at least he has a beautiful view.” And then I began to realize that he was doing something that I should have been doing. I mean, not on the shoulder of a highway. But somewhere. Have you ever stopped to notice how peaceful it is to lie flat on your back and look up at the sky? It should be a no-brainer, but I think adulting sometimes makes us lose parts of our brains. Looking up at the sky can provide an epiphany akin to Pooh’s when he said, “Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.”
Peace is all around us when we think about God’s bigness and goodness and love of beauty. Sometimes we just have to reach out and take it, or notice it, or place ourselves in a position where it can envelop us. Calming our anxious hearts might not be as hard as we imagine sometimes. Pro tip, however: putting a blanket down when sky-gazing can keep our arms from being lacerated by blades of grass while also putting a little distance between our bodies and pesky little beasts like chiggers.
Mr. Hobo was eventually picked up by the paramedics and went willingly to the hospital. I sincerely hope he got the help he needed. I’m pretty sure he’s made numerous unfortunate decisions in his life, but there was some redemption in his decision that night to gaze at the sky just as much as he wanted to, whether it was a convenient time or an appropriate place—or not. Even in his state of relative uselessness, he was able to remind me that I can learn from anyone, and that slowing down to appreciate beauty is always worthwhile.
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