Wallflower - a shy or excluded person at a party. For most of my life, I've felt like a wallflower. Standing awkwardly in the corner, avoiding eye contact, inwardly hoping for, even while contradictorily dreading the point when someone comes over to break the ice and start a conversation, so I can finally feel included. What a relief it is when someone takes that step towards me so I'm no longer awkwardly alone!
So just last week the wife and I were in New York and we went to see the Statue of Liberty for the first time. The Statue is on a little island off Manhattan, so you have to take a ferry. As you would expect, there were a number of school groups on excursion, and we happened to sit next to a young man in his late teens. He was alone, while his schoolmates milled about at the other end of the ferry, happily chatting and laughing with each other. A middle-aged lady, probably their teacher, eventually ambled over and casually smiled, "Hey B! You can hang out with us you know."
To all you fellow wallflowers out there - what's your response when someone comes over at a party and says, are you ok? Wanna come over?
Yes of course - you say, "It's OK, I'm fine where I am", putting your hands out to subsconsciously form a little defensive wall, along with a watery smile.
And to those of you who have been kind enough to try to reach out to wallflowers, and then get gently rebuffed like this? What do you do?
Yes of course - you say, "OK", give an encouraging nod, and then slowly gravitate back to your much-easier-to-talk-to other friends, thinking to yourself "well, I tried". Right?
So the young man does indeed pull the classic "It's OK" and lapses back in silence. But the lady doesn't. She does look back at her other easier-to-get-along-with students, but then decides... to stay. And for the rest of the ferry ride, she chats with the quiet young man, finding out what he intends to study in college (I suppose he might have been in his final high school year), and not talking at him, but asking just enough questions to let him talk instead.
It was great to see.
It would have been easy, natural, for the lady to smile, walk away, and think to herself, well I tried. But she didn't. She chose to hang around, to reach out, to make that young man feel included.
I shared this story with my friends when we went for our bread distribution yesterday. When we meet the residents, that's what we're doing. Sometimes they don't want our bread, sometimes they don't want to talk. They say, "we're ok". And we can choose to say, we tried, and walk away. Or we can choose to come back, again and again. Instead of just giving bread, we can ask just enough questions to let them talk, hear their lives, and for a while, remind them that they are included, not excluded.
For group dynamic reasons that are too boring to document here, I recently switched floors - I used to cover floor 5-6, but I handed those floors to other members of my group, and took over floors 11-13 instead. I miss my floor 5-6 friends, but it's necessary, and they are in excellent hands with my other fellow volunteers. But I still pop by floors 5-6 when I have time leftover (and often I do, because the new floor 11-13 residents don't know me so well yet, and we have less to talk about, for now). I'm always touched by how they remember me, asking me why I haven't been to see them. Though I started out with the mission of making them included, they actually make
me feel included! In a funny way, I think maybe they realise that I am the wallflower, and they need to make me feel welcome when I turn up with my fractured Mandarin hellos :D
So yesterday I went back to visit an old lady whose calves/ankles had sores. I put my hands on her bandages and prayed for her, declaring by faith that the next time I came back, her sores would be gone. I deliberately put my hands on the wound, because people need to know that they are loved. There is a power to human touch that mere words cannot convey. When I was done, she said to me, make sure you wash your hands after you touched my sores! And I was glad I had done what I did - it was obviously on her mind that no one would want to touch her.
Later, after we were done, my friend who had taken over floor 5-6 told me that another lady had asked for me. I asked, who was it? And my friend said the lady had told her, "I am the one whose feet he prayed for. He will know who I am". And of course I did remember that resident. She was loud, coarse, complained a lot, questioned the genuineness of our help. When I first met her years ago, I started out praying with her children for their studies. Then sometime in the last year, I saw she had a really bad infection of her foot until it had turned black. I had put my hands on her foot, prayed for her, and she had recovered. She remembered that touch, and she remembered that prayer. I must go back and see her soon!
The world is full of wallflowers who want to be included. They may say, "I'm OK" and it's much easier for us to walk away, thinking, "I tried". But there is a power when we first choose to come, and then even more powerfully, choose to stay. To ask just enough questions to let them talk. To make them feel loved, included. Maybe for you, it's a colleague who is struggling at work. Ask him out for lunch. A family member who's lonely. Spend time after dinner to talk. Or the forgotten poor. Join me for bread!
Save a wallflower today :)
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