Story

Larry and I had breakfast a year after I graduated from the MA program. A year's worth of my questions poured out in 90 minutes.
We stood to leave, for me to pick up my wife Diane, who had been breakfasting with a girl she had worked with when we lived there.
Larry asked, "What will you and Diane talk about on your way back to the Chicago airport?"
"You kidding?" I said "Of course we'll talk about what you said, your thoughts, your counsel."
"Do me a favor," Larry intoned. "Talk about anything else than what we talked about."
"Why?" I complained."What else is there to talk about? This is why we can't to Warsaw."
"Just do it," he said."Why don't you just talk about her breakfast with her friend?"
I left, disconsolate. Her friend didn't know the Lord. She wasn't interesting. She certainly wouldn't have discussed the deep questions I had discussed with Larry. Boring 105 miles to O'Hare, here we come.
But oh, did I learn something! Refusing to answer Diane's questions about Larry's counsel, I pretended to care about her conversation with her friend. "Tell me about it," I asked, scarcely concealing my indifference.
Through numerous efforts to interrupt herself to ask me about what Larry had to say, Diane unfolded a story of such grace and kindness and love for this girl, that I was humbled: I saw Christ. As I asked questions of Diane, drawing her out, I saw the power of love. The love Diane modeled to me for this friend was new to me. It prioritized the other person, even when they might not appear all that interesting. I saw in Diane's story of breakfast what it looked like to love. It then began helping me better learn what Larry had been teaching all along.
"Imitate me as I Imitate Christ," says 1 Cor. 11:1.
I hope I keep learning how to do that like Diane did that day and countless times since — and like Larry did in my life.