friends in strangers

Well, it seems the impression I may have given of bus rides in my last post ('Through a Window' poem) isn't always correct.

It seems every strange, bored face staring out the window has a unique, special personality, history, and future behind it (or painted on it by laugh lines and worry wrinkles).
In the past two or three days I've had more than just a couple brief encounters with the real people bundled up in winter jackets and waiting at bus stops or sitting next to me. Today's was really neat.

A girl who looked about my age sat down next to me on the crowded 3:30 bus I was taking home. She looked interesting, so I wanted to start a conversation but had no idea what to say (using the weather works really well sometimes, but just seems way overdone at other times) so we sat in silence for a bit as I did my English reading.

Eventually, though, we got talking and for the rest of the bus ride (about 20 minutes or so) there was hardly a silence! It ends up she's a student too, at a college downtown. Even cooler is that she's a believer and has gone on a DTS (with YWAM) and is into missions!

We also talked about our families, and she had something interesting to say. She said that while she used to feel bad for being far from her family because she is so close to them and it seemed like a bad thing ("if you're close, you'll stay close"), but it's when you have close family ties that you're really free to leave because you have their support and always have people to come back to.

Studying a few provinces away from most of my family, I find that this makes lots of sense. My siblings and I have often wondered why and how, if we're so close, we are all eager to go anywhere in the world. Maybe this is why!

And maybe it has something to do with the fact that one Father will always be with us :)