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Jen Johnson
I have always resonated with Charles Schultz’s comment: “I love mankind—it’s people I can’t stand.” I know this is not very Jesus-like of me, but this weekend when the eye-rolling, gum-smacking teenager sitting behind me at the movies insisted on pushing the back of my seat forward with her feet, and when I channeled my Julia Sugarbaker and turned around and said, “Take your feet OFF my seat and put them ON the floor” instead of pinching her little nail-polished toes with my elbows … well, that was as close to Jesus as I could come in that moment. Loving humanity is easy, but individual humans make me want to throw popcorn. There’s a reason I watch movies at home.
But for all my self-righteous misanthropy, even I have to admit people sometimes surprise me with their kindness. Since 2006 I have used the same Macbook, a sturdy little thing that keeps plugging despite its advanced age (I believe one computer year is equivalent to ten human years, so this thing belongs in Apple assisted living). It holds a charge for about 15 minutes and the headphone port doesn’t work and occasionally the screen blacks out without warning, but it generally gets the job done. I mean, I’m writing marketing copy here, not managing the Mars Orbiter.
About every two months my husband Matt has told me to go get a new one already, but there are always so many other things we need to spend money on, plus the payments to our lawyer in this never-ending custody dispute (or as we like to call it, the “Save The Children” campaign) basically means we’re buying a Mac each month already. An(other) new computer just wasn’t in the cards.
Until last week, when an old friend of my dad who wishes to remain nameless sent me a brand-new Macbook Pro. I barely know him, but when I ran into him at a conference in July he said, rather out of the blue, that he could get me a new computer. I appreciated his offer without getting my hopes up that an actual laptop would really materialize. But materialize it did on Friday afternoon, with a note saying, “I hope this helps you! I am proud of your work.”
It would be dramatic at this point in the story, at this point in a year of stresses and strains that have caused nearly constant anxiety, to say that during the great computer reveal I collapsed into sobs. But that didn’t happen.
I just sat quietly, staring at the box, not even wanting to open it because then the wonderful moment would start being Over instead of Happening Now. And it would be a tidy ending to say my faith in people was suddenly restored. But that didn’t happen either. I know too many of us, including myself. We are all beyond broken and we go around knocking into each other and causing injuries with our ragged edges.
Instead, I sat there feeling burdens lift because one person, with perhaps a few more God-smoothed edges than most, chose to be kinder than required. I felt humbled that he would do this for me and that maybe, perhaps, possibly God was involved in some way saying, “I know things have been hard in about 700 different ways. I am paying attention, you know. I do care. Now go word process something.” And I felt affirmed that a brother in the faith did what he could for a sister in the faith, just because he could and because even though we are all tumbling through this Lord of the Flies universe, we are also siblings in a greater Kingdom together and that counts for something. It’s much easier to love people in the abstract, but he made the effort to love one person—messed-up me—in a practical way. So I sat quietly.
The next morning I opened the box and fired up the machine and began installing apps, programming in a few shortcuts, updating software. I’m grateful. It’s a wonderful computer, an unexpected blessing, one of the nicest gifts I’ve ever received. And it will be a great way to watch movies, too.
Photo (Flickr CC) by photochem_PA
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Jen Johnson
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