"Same Kind of Different as Me"

I'm usually very happy after posting something on my blog. Vanity no doubt accounts in part, but there's also that sense of creating something - even if it's just an account, a retelling. And there's the work aspect of it, the satisfaction of reaching the end, of having communicated. There's not much else that I do that brings those things together in such a way.

But not this time. I was glad to no longer have the weight of this story (previous four posts) hanging over me like a dreaded term paper, but absent was the sense of pleasure I usually feel.

I think it's because the Not-So-Good Samaritan story was so unflattering to me. When I write something humorous, I don't think I'm doing it to flatter myself, but making people laugh has that side-effect. When I write about deep things, I'm flattering myself there, too, because it feels good to think I 'm wise, that I can offer something that is helpful, even illuminating.

Not that I write with those motives uppermost. At least, I hope I'm not that deceived. If you're saying, "Yep, she's as blind as she is egotistical," let me know. Just be gentle, my friends.

But this story was hardcore narration. I wrote it in the third person because I wanted some distance; I wanted to see myself as I was, to recreate the scene without the airbrushing effect of the first-person perspective.

And so, when it was finished, I was depressed. Just like the photo you see of yourself, and you say, "Do I really look like that? That middle-aged? That frumpy?"

But here it wasn't about appearances. It was about my heart, or lack thereof.

Just a week or so before this incident, I'd finished a book I've since been requiring my family and badgering my friends to read. It's the story of a friendship between an international art dealer and a homeless former sharecropper, and the woman who brought them together. It's called "Same Kind of Different as Me" by Ron Hall and Denver Moore. Whether you desire to be a better follower of Christ or just like quality non-fiction, this book should be on your list.

I don't want to spoil the book because I do hope that all of you will read it, but I promise that you will find yourself caught up in a story so incredible, so impacting, so vibrant with purpose, that you will not be the same afterwards. That's saying a lot, I know, but it's true. Fortunately, you will not find within its pages the "Not-So-Good Samaritan", but rather individuals of heroic stature, people who make you rethink what it is to be Christian, what it is to be human.