Last night, I had the privilege of going to a Christmas party hosted by one of my lovely nursing professors and her equally lovely family.

It seemed as though a lot of people must have been going to Christmas parties last night, because the roads were crazy…as in, really crazy. I almost felt like I was driving in D.C., except in D.C., there would probably have been more Smart cars weaving maniacally in and out of traffic. So I was glad that I was in Lynchburg.

I was on the phone with my sweet little mother as I drove, which may not have been helping my already-directionally challenged self to navigate to this new and unknown location. I was armed with mapquest directions, however, so I felt somewhat confident in my ability to eventually find my way from point A to point B.

During a particularly intense point in the conversation with my mom, I had come to the point where apparently I needed to take a right on Cottontown road. I saw a sign up ahead that read “Cotton…” something, but a telephone pole was obscuring the second half of the word. I assumed, and took a right.

It was one of those roads that started out ok…and then there was a railroad track…and after that, the road got really bad rather quickly. I have never seen such large potholes. Neither has my car, apparently, for a few moments later, I felt the bottom of the car hit the top of the earth’s surface with a rather sickeningly-solid, grinding thud.

Yeah. That…wasn’t my road. It was Cottonwood road. Very crumby road. I would recommend you don’t take it unless you’re riding a fourwheeler, or a camel, or something.

I found the right road, found the right house, met some awesome people, had a lot of fun watching Elf with them, heard their stories from the seasons of yesteryear, enjoyed some really incredible culinary delicacies, and finally decided that I had better see myself off to home before the clock struck midnight.

My instructor’s adorable little eleven-year-old daughter, Katie, and her twelve-year-old son, Jessie (who is every inch a boy, and one of the most hilarious little dudes I have ever met) had been conversing with us off and on throughout the evening, and now as I stood at the bottom of the staircase buttoning my coat, Katie was standing on the stairs just above me, smiling almost wistfully.

“Thank you for coming,” she said in her sweet little girl voice, “I’m really glad you came. I enjoyed it.” And she meant it. And I was touched, and wanted to grab her up in a big hug…I remember what it was like when I was that age, but I doubt that I was half so charming as little Katie. (She, like her brother, is possessed of social graces far beyond her years).

I went with Katie into the kitchen to say goodbye to my gracious hosts and some of the other Liberty faculty members in attendance at the party. As we exchanged hugs and Christmas blessings, one of nursing faculty smilingly shared a couple words of encouragement that brought a smile to my own face, and a bigger one to my heart. (We forget that we can be generous with our words, but in fact, our praise and affirmation is perhaps the single biggest gift that we can give on a consistent basis).

Maybe my head was a little off as I left, or maybe I’m just still very much in need of practice with reading directions in reverse, but…I got lost on the way home. Like, really lost. As in, stop-for-directions lost. As in, had been driving somewhat aimlessly for thirty minutes lost.
It was almost eleven o’clock on a Friday night as I pulled up in front of one of the few houses on the street that had its lights on and still looked somewhat alive.

I cringed as I rang the doorbell, hoping that the person inside was not the frazzled mother of a colicky baby that I’d just wakened with the bell.

There were voices moving around somewhere upstairs…happy sounding voices full of life and energy, which was especially impressive given the lateness of the hour.

The person who eventually came to the door was a pudgy, cute-as-a-button little black girl who peered curiously out the window of the door without seeing me. She opened the door then, and leaned out, looking first to the right, and then to the left. As she turned to the left, she caught sight of me standing there for the first time.

I’m not sure what she expected, but I was apparently not it. She jumped six inches up and possibly as many more to each side, and her heart visibly leaped into her throat from its former perch inside of her chest. Her beautiful brown eyes got wide as saucers, and a shrieking gasp burst from her mouth as she clutched the door frame with both hands and stared for a wide-eyed moment.

I smiled what I hoped was a reassuring smile, explained my predicament, and asked if her mom or dad were around to give me some pointers as to how to get back into Lynchburg.

She smiled proudly then, tossing her little head with its proliferation of braids, all of which ended neatly in a series of brightly colored plastic beads.

“Oh, AH can tell you THAAT,” she drawled in a friendly little accent, “You just git raaght on this road here, and ya fallow all the cuurves, and you don’t tuuuurn, and then, yew’ll git to the CVS, and that’s Lynchburg.”

I assured her that she had been most helpful, and that I was grateful. And then I left thinking “I’ve been all the way to the end of this road. It ends in a cornfield…”

But I resolved to find the CVS of which she spoke, regardless of how many turns it took, and eventually, I found it—and I smiled, remembering how much I’d loved to give directions when I was a kid about the same age as my little friend with the braids…like her, I usually managed to leave out most of the necessary turns, but if you say something confidently enough with volume and conviction, it doesn’t really matter, because people believe you anyway.

There were several things for which I was very thankful as I drove home last night. I was thankful for my mom, whose words of wisdom have very much blessed my heart and straightened my thinking during this past semester. I was also thankful to be back on familiar territory, headed towards a known location—that was awesome.

I was thankful too, for children. For little boys. For little girls. For the fact that their young hearts are often so tender, that they’re so gifted as listeners, as empathizers—so much more than we often give them credit for. Inside of each one of them lives a man or a woman who will one day walk a path very different than what we can today imagine for them…but I was challenged last night to remember always to treat each little one as an individual, to converse with them in such a way that they know that they matter to me…

You never really know what children remember from the social interactions they have, but I know that when I was younger, before I hit my teen years, there were a couple of college kids who took it into their heads to take an interest in me as an individual…and it changed my life. And somehow, in some way, I wanna pass that on…not just to kids, because I guess we need to be relating to every individual in our lives as though they matter, as though we genuinely care…but I want to be especially aware of it when I’m relating to kids. Because they do matter…so much more than they know.