At Nanna's people encountered my photographs and some stopped. Looked. Asked questions. 

 

The photographs were doing something I had forgotten was the original intent: "Will you join the conversation?"

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Then came an opportunity to support Honor Flight. I began inviting customers  to choose a card, write a personal note to a veteran, and leave it in our basket to be bulk delivered.

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The photographs became a way for someone else to offer kindness. And people responded.

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The Regis University women's volleyball team came to Nanna's House for lunch. While they waited for their food, I brought the display to their table and invited them to write messages for veterans. They embraced the opportunity fully.

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When I returned to check on them, one young woman was holding a rather unusual card and studying it with a puzzled expression. It was a reproduction of my own bone scan from a clinical trial. A card I had made almost as a joke.

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Having spent so much time being injected, inspected, detected, and otherwise processed by the medical establishment, I had borrowed a little inspiration from Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant Massacree and its wonderfully absurd account of military induction.

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Beneath the image was a reference to Psalm 139:16: You saw who you created me to be."

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I had made only one of those cards. I hadn't even realized it was among the others.

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And there it was, in the hands of a young woman who wanted to know what she was looking at. Another conversation. Another unexpected connection. The photographs hadn't changed. But the invitation had.

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What had begun as something I created to help myself find my way back toward life had become a means of reaching into the lives of others. And then, giving them an opportunity to reach into someone else's life.

 

I've begun recognizing something else. There have been angels along my path for a very long time. Not necessarily angels with wings and halos. People.

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Some arrived at precisely the moment I needed them. Some stayed for years. Some appeared briefly, offered something I didn't even realize I needed, and continued along their own roads.

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Keelin held out her hand and opened a door.

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Katie helped me begin recognizing the walls around my heart and introduced me to the possibility of allowing them to tumble.

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Sabrena listened when others hadn't, helped save my life, and shared a faith that encouraged my own.

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There have been many others. Their stories are theirs to tell, not mine.

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What matters isn't a list of names. It's what I have begun to recognize through these encounters.

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At Pathways Spiritual Sanctuary, I encountered words that have stayed with me:

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LOVE. COMPASSION. TOLERANCE. FORGIVENESS. For myself and all others.

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For much of my life, I was far better at extending those gifts to others than allowing myself to receive them.

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Now I'm beginning to understand that the two belong together. I can love someone without clutching desperately at the relationship. I can care without needing to control what happens next. I can give without demanding a return.

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And I can allow myself to be loved without treating that love as something I must somehow earn or protect against inevitable loss.

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I am not always successful. I am still learning, but I am learning.

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On any given day at Nanna's House, I might be baking, frying donuts, frosting cupcakes, making pizza crusts, stocking supplies, serving customers, washing dishes, bussing tables, or helping Joanna keep the place from descending into complete chaos.

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And sometimes the chaos is considerable. Cooks quit. Staff  arrive late, or not at all. Customers show up in numbers we haven't seen before.

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So I plan. I prepare. I improvise, adapt, and overcome. Forty-four years after leaving the Air Force, some habits are still useful. But there's a difference now.

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I can do what needs doing without believing that every outcome rests entirely on my shoulders. I can prepare for the day and still allow it to unfold.

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And amid all the work, I find opportunities to do what Joanna has come to call: "Mike stuff."

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Meet people. Listen to their stories. Share a laugh. Offer a photograph, a kind word, a little encouragement.

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Love on people, as best I can.

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Not because I have some carefully designed ministry strategy. Not because I expect anything in return. Simply because I have begun to enjoy being the person I am. I no longer need to know what will bloom from an encounter.

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I need only be present, offer what I have, and allow.