Lessons in humility, trust, and southern hospitality

I accepted a ride from, for all intensive purposes, a complete stranger Friday morning. I didn’t have much choice. One of my teammates had dropped me off at Mass and I banked on being able to secure a ride home with someone I knew. But there was only one man in attendance. And I had never met him before. It was ride with the stranger or walk home in the newly cold weather.

I chose the former.

Prior to this week, I always thought I didn’t like asking for things (rides included) because I didn’t like to impose or put people out. I think this is true to an extent, but this week I learned a deeper reason to why I don’t ask: pride. With every question there is a possibility for rejection, a possibility that someone will say no. In sharing a van with four other people, I am learning to swallow my pride and embrace humility in the form of rides from people whose names I sometimes struggle to remember.

I also learned an entirely new aspect of humility this evening in Heavener, Oklahoma, attending Spanish Mass said by Fr. Don, the priest at my church, with one of my teammates. Perhaps for the first time in my life I felt completely lost in a Catholic Church. My 22 years of Sunday attendance had ill prepared me for this moment. I clumsily flipped through the hymnal trying to find the right page and follow along in English to no avail. After the service I was almost entirely dependent on my Spanish-speaking teammate to keep me in the loop on conversation with the parishioners.

In the same way that I find myself almost overwhelmed with opportunities to grow in my humility, I am also amazed by the amount of trust I have seen in Booneville. I am pleasantly surprised by the trust placed in us as interns, as temporary people in this community, who just over a month ago were complete strangers.

But the trust, combined with a good dose of southern hospitability, makes my newfound humility a lot easier to swallow. I rarely have to ask for a ride before one has already been offered. I would much rather accept an extended invitation (or not accept) than be turned down by someone. I have been able to experience so many great, new things thanks to the generosity of the people here in Booneville (not to mention that they have saved me a lot of long walks home from church). Earlier in the week I even got a ride offered from a random car passing by.

I did, however, turn down that one.