Somewhere down there, shuttling passengers to and from the airport in New Orleans, is a taxicab driver by the name of Jean Duval.
I thought of him last evening as I looked out the window of the airplane carrying me back to Seattle following the conclusion of the National School Board Association annual conference.
The tulip pin I always wear over my slowly healing broken heart, in memory of my tulip-loving Dutch wife of 50 years married who I lost to cancer just a year ago, once again blossomed into a beautiful conversation.
When the driver heard of my wife’s death to cancer, as I explained to him the reason for the tulip pin I wear, he glanced at me in the rearview mirror and responded that he too has fought cancer recently.
Because I had also mentioned I was a retired pastor he said, “please pray for me.”
I said I would.
And because I shared this on Facebook, now a number of people are praying for this young man they will most likely never meet.
But there are many like him.
In fact, everyone is like him.
That’s because every single human being alive on planet earth has a heart (likely broken at one time or another), a life (sometimes desperately lived), and a story (one that needs to be told).
It’s the fairytale story of the wart-covered ugly toad – who was really a handsome prince – all over again.
But who would stop – and stoop – to listen to an ugly toad much less, with a kiss, set him free?
In the cacophony of chaos that has become our cancel culture, there are voices – as in everyone’s voice – not being heard.
Like one of the many flowers now noticeably beginning to display their myriad colors in the garden where so many tulips were planted in my wife’s memory, so the beginning of beauty from the likelihood of brokenness that at one time or another will characterize all of us, simply requires someone to notice (in a world so distracting), to stop (in our hurry somewhere else), and listen (with our own heart that has been broken).
