I am different, and I know it. 

It maybe doesn’t show so drastically on the outside, but I still know it. 

Life choices have a way of leaving their mark.

Some of my life choices were my own.  Some made and implemented by others when I was still young.

Regardless, I have their mark to live with today, and it makes me different.

I know that my kind of different probably isn’t so different than the way you think you are different.

But my personal different is big to me.

It holds me back from a full range of life experiences.

I am hindered by it mostly because I feel like I don’t measure up.  It always tugs on me when I’m with my friends or in a group. 

Sometimes, it rides with me when I’m all alone in the car. 

I know that I have some good things about me, but because of my different, they are often pressed down and pushed to the back.

So, it came as quite a surprise one day when I got a message from a friend with whom I had only limited contact, inviting me to his house for lunch.

I often thought about this friend with admiration.  I often wished to be ‘in’ with him. 

But I always figured my different is what kept anything from happening.

My different did not keep it from happening, as I found out later, but not in the way I had been thinking.

I’ll never forget the way he said my name when I walked into his house. 

It rolled off his tongue in such a kind way; but more.  I am convinced from the way he said it that he honestly wanted my friendship; that he had been lonesome for it.

We talked about a lot of things that day.  Eventually I made reference to my different and asked why he had invited me to his house in spite of it.

“No, you have it wrong,” he said.  “Your different is the sole reason I invited you here today.”

“What?”

“Yes.”

I sat numbly, waiting for the happiest hour of my life to end with a rebuke or course correction given by him.

“Look,” he said, “some folks have cabinets with all the same kind of coffee cups in them.  They don’t know if they are drinking out of the same one today as they did yesterday, because they all look the same. 

When I go to my cabinet, there are many different kinds of coffee cups.  I stand there for a while each morning, thinking just which cup my coffee will taste the best in, and once I’ve decided, I can’t stop smiling for how good it tastes, just because of the unique way the cup is.  I know, you probably think I’m a little somehow that way.”

“So you invited me today because I’m different?”

“And because you were the one, above all else, I wanted to spend my day with,” he said.

*****

Every morning, when I step outside, I smell it. 

It’s the same smell I smelled when I first met him at his place.

I wonder.  Do you ever smell it?  Have you ever been to His place?

Song of Solomon 1:3-6