I saw a girl crying on the street.

She wasn’t crying dramatically, a la dramatic Nigerian  mommy or creating a scene.

We were at a crosswalk ready to cross and the light turned red then lit up for pedestrians.

I was walking in the opposite direction and she was walking opposite to the other side of the street.

She walked along with the other pedestrians  and… cried.

She resonated with me because I have been that girl crying on the street on the bus on the train. I cried openly knowing that on a busy street no one cares enough to stop and ask or even worse no one notices. I wondered if anyone noticed.  Maybe that’s why I really look at people. I want to know if someone may have seen me  as I cried like I saw the girl.

In some ways, I believe humanity is losing our humanity.

Let me bring it home and say sometimes I fear that as much as I would like to think otherwise my heart is not what God wants it to be..is not what Christianity intends it to be.

I write this blog in a journey of self discovery so in some ways as I make my mistakes in life, someone else doesn’t have to go down the same path.

Even now, in retrospect, I would not have stopped the girl and asked her why.

She may not have felt comfortable opening her heart to a stranger in the middle of the cross walk.

And as life usually goes, her answer, if she chose to answer was probably going to be complicated.

However, there is an element of desperation in her act, a silent cry to be helped, so visible in the cross walk.

I don’t know why she was crying but at some elemental level , she wanted someone to ask her why.

To at least show they cared.

Every day I pray that my heart does not become hardened and calloused

I know you can do what is right or what is “Christian” and not care.

I give money to beggars without caring, donate clothes without a moments thoughts, listen to patients and not form any connection.

Maybe I am more powerful than I give myself credit. I always judge based on my own experience. I have wept silently on trains, in buses, while walking on the cross walk and made it through.

“ She will make it, too” I reason with myself.

But what if she doesn’t. 

What if she didn’t.

What if one act of concern could have triggered a domino effect of her downward spiral?

I really don’t know.

Every day I am realizing it’s really not about me.

It’s about the girl who is an oxymoron in itself, crying silently in the cross walk, asking the girl who calls herself apprentice of God

Do you really care

Does your God really care?