Nobody

So here it is Friday night (not right now, but in the continuation of the story), and I'm a girl unexpectedly filled with the promise of the Lord all by the process of forgetting to remember and I don't know why exactly, but I decide to do something I've never done before.

I decide to talk to Dave.

Dave is the lead singer of the group in concert, the band in worship, which was - I know I haven't told you yet - Sidewalk Prophets.  Through the power of social media, I've been following these guys for a bit and you come to know them as Sidewalk Dave and Sidewalk Cal and Sidewalk Justin, Sidewalk Ben, Sidewalk Shaun.  Which is cool because it kind of makes them sound cool, right?  But it's pretty easy to think of them as big names when you see them like this all the time.

When you're sitting in their audience listening to Dave talk about this or that aspect of life as we know it, hearing him praise God for being awesome, letting the word Jesus echo through the auditorium without it sounding awkward and uncomfortable, you forget all that so-called fame.  He's just a guy.  A nobody like you.

That's rare.  I mean, that's really rare.  There are guys in my life that I've heard speak or worship or pray or whatever that I have wanted to have a conversation with, but they come off so contrived on stage that it's hard to think 1) they are a real guy at all or 2) they'd want to have anything to do with a nobody like you.  There are guys I know who won't give a common person the time of day and then declare themselves, you know, so uber busy that they could never even say hello to you in passing.  And they make it sound disciplined and righteous...when to the watching world it's more self-righteous.  Anyway, Dave was the anomaly.  He was just a guy.

I don't know whether that came from my profound realization of just how many nobodies were in the room, myself included, or whether it was the way things were or who knows what specific set of circumstances came together to make this happen, but I was so intoxicated by the presence of God that I found myself standing in a high school hallway waiting until every adoring fan had an autograph, every family a photo, every person a chance to have a minute with these guys, these band members, who are used to such press.  When everything settled down, I gathered my nerve and said, "Hey, Dave.  Can I talk to you for a minute?"

I hadn't planned this.  I'd never done this before.  I was still working out the details in my head when Dave walked over to talk with me.  See, I'm the kind of person who wants to have it made.  I want to introduce myself as somebody so that I can be nobody...if that makes sense.  I feel like I have to have it before I ask and then acknowledge as often as I can that I don't really have it.  I don't have it.  But here was Dave, and I had this moment.

"Dave, I kind of picked you because you're a fellow Raven," I began, playing on our mutual ties to our undergraduate education.  He smiled and we talked for a bit about the college life.  Then I continued, "And, well, because you strike me as the kind of guy who believes in what God does through nobodies."  Yes, yes, absolutely, he said.  "Well, I'm a nobody."

I'm a nobody, I told him, whose first book came out about a year and a half ago and currently has a five-star rating on Amazon, so I guess it's at least decent.  The problem is, I continued, "I've kind of gone as far as my nobodiness can take me.  Can I borrow some of yours?"  The deal was this: I had one copy of Recess with Jesus in the back pocket of the passenger seat in my car.  I would run out to my car and get that book, give it to Dave and Sidewalk Prophets if they would agree to take it, read it, and if they like it - only if they like it - tweet it.

I couldn't believe myself when he agreed.  Nor when he said he'd be honored.

It's the kind of thing that doesn't happen to nobodies and the kind of risk I'm not prone to taking.  Like I said, particularly with this, it's easy for me to feel like I have to have a name before I can ask for someone else's, but that night, I got a name.  It's Dave.  And whether he reads the book or not (I think he will) and whether he likes the book or not (who doesn't?), that night was about a risk for me.  While some people think the risk is only justified by the reward, I don't believe that's the case.  Sometimes, you just have to go for something that's on your heart and step out....reward or rejection.  Sometimes, it's just about the risk.

Because who knows when you're going to have this moment again?

And this moment, this late-Friday-night, hollowed halls of a high school, two nobodies coming together, was a moment that shouldn't have happened for more than a few reasons.  Tomorrow, I'm going to wind up the story of an awesome Friday night by telling you all the little details that had to come together, starting more than six months ago, to make an impossible, improbable moment.