The working hypothesis of the trip was this: No matter what we look like, what we believe in, who we voted for, or where we live, human kindness and human decency is something that runs through all of us. People want to be good to each other.
In Midland, Texas, we stayed with a friend of a friend – someone we didn’t know and hadn’t met prior to showing up at her home. When we arrived, she and her husband had prepared dinner and we sat with her son and mother as well at the table talking about the trip and community service and their town.
The next morning, we would go on to ride in a food truck with this woman and her friends at Breaking Bread Ministry to deliver breakfast to the homeless community. She would go on to pack us lunch, lots of snacks, and even give us a cooler and a new water bottle before we left.
She was amazing. But it was more than the food and the stuff. It hit me really hard for the first time as I climbed into a crazy comfortable bed in the spare bedroom that night. She – like so many of the people we’ve encountered before her and since her – had no reason to be kind, no reason to open her door to us or answer our emails or take our phone calls. She didn’t know us – relying only on the testimony of our mutual friend. And yet she opened her doors. She took us in and took a genuine interest in what we were doing. She personified love.
I laid in that bed for a long time before I fell asleep, shocked to the point of near tears thinking about how we had gone so far relying on the kindness of our friends and family but also on the kindness of strangers. People are just so, so good. Everywhere we’ve gone. Everyone we’ve met. People are good.
Love always,
Liz