The Listener

There are a short list of nights in your life that you’ll never forget. This was one of them for me. It was after church on a Wednesday night and I ended up at Panera Bread, but not with my normal friend group. Instead I was there with just two other people. The first was a friend of mine; she and I were both in a stage of life where we were hungry for knowledge, or maybe more accurately, for truth. The other person at the table was an adult, a man who saw that desire in us for understanding the ways of the world, and who obliged us that night. We’ll call him, Mr. E. 

He told us that night about the “behind the scenes” of adulthood. Difficulties with his family and his marriage, mistakes and funny stories from when he was our age, what made him frustrated and what he planned to do about it. You have to understand that where I grew up, no adult was this honest with us. It was like, for this one night, all of the regular rules of growing up had been suspended and we got to look into our future and prepare ourselves for what lay ahead. It wasn’t just the night that did this though, it was Mr. E. This is the same thing he’s done for probably thousands of young people, he’s given them hope that they aren’t a waste of space when other adults just get mad at them, he listens to their strange teenage thoughts and tells them that what they think matters even though they don’t even really know what they think. He cares for people, and its evident every time you see him in his smile, his demeanor, and his love for crazy hormone-rattled young people.

Mr. E told me a story once. He said a young boy, maybe 14 or 15, long ago told him that he was in love and wanted some advice. In response, Mr. E told him that he was far too young to know what love was, but the boy replied back in a way that gave Mr. E the hypothesis for the way he handled young people from then on out. The boy replied, “I can know love in as much as I can know love”. I think that probably since that day, he has always given young people, whom everyone else might have over-looked or dismissed, a chance; he believes in them even though their thoughts aren’t fully formed and their emotions are running haywire. He believes that even if they’ve wandered towards something dangerous, there is space to turn them, lovingly and thoughtfully, in another direction. And because of that, everyone loves him. I know that’s why I love him.

Mr. E is still out there, doing what he does best, making people laugh, helping them through the hardest of times, showing them hope when they see only darkness. Honestly I don’t know what I would tell you his job is even if I was going to reveal his identity. He does so many things for others and I bet far too few of them bring him any financial gain. He’s a secret person who really isn’t so secret, since there are probably thousands of people who would agree with me about his character and greatness. Being secret, though, isn’t just about being unknown, its about not seeking the recognition deserved for your good actions, and by that definition, he's as great a secret person as there is. 

That night at Panera I learned that the hard stuff of life doesn’t mean its all going down hill. I learned that faithfulness to the things you’ve committed to should be valued above all else. I learned that greatness doesn't come in grand gestures or major recognition, but it comes when you do something loving for someone else. Something small but powerful, like staying up way too late at a Panera bread on a Wednesday night, just so you can give two teenagers hope that there is life on the other side of their confusion and worry.