Call it coincidence, but for some reason I’ve been seeing a lot of transsexuals lately.  Granted, I live in LA, but still—even here, they’re not the norm.  The one I’m touched by this hour is sharing a coffee shop and sitting across the room.  He’s dressed in cowboy boots and I guess what you’d call a midriff showing tube-top,” alongside a thong accented backside, wrapped in a mini-skirt.  Suffice it to say, he stands out a bit.  Minding his own business and reading a wedding magazine, of all things, but his demeanor is as gentle and unbothersome as they come.  And yet most who’ve crossed into our vicinity the past twenty minutes or so, have been visibly bothered.  How can a man so quiet open a story so loud?

Last night I watched Amistad.  (Yeah, I know.  A decade late.  So it goes in my life.  I still don’t have a digital camera.)  Actor Anthony Hopkins played what I’d consider a brilliant role of Former President John Quincy Adams.  In a most telling scene, he taught of stories and that in the end, regardless of the journey, it’s the better man’s story who’ll win the race.  (I actually found the film to speak a quiet obvious message of Jesus’ story being that which wins, but maybe I’m biased.)  

“Story” isn’t a word or concept foreign to us as go’ers of this generation, but at the same time, I find its territories of insight ceaseless in a constant readiness to tell anew.  I guess part of that follows the idea of a larger Story being eternally in motion, so that no story we know ever holds the full, or final chapter.  God is always at work, and always at work on a larger Story than we could know.

My first niece was born last night at 12:01am.  Avery Elizabeth.  I’m ecstatic, and have already been the possessive aunt who calls every five minutes for the update (sadly, Rhode Island isn’t close to California).  I want every chapter.  Every page.  Every new twist of this new life’s story.  And right now, I have similar emotions to the man across the room.  I curious what his story is?  I wonder what he’s wanting to say, or wishing he’d said, or wishing someone had said to him at this point in his story?  I wonder what he wants?  And I wonder if what he wants seemed so beyond words that drastically changing his identity seemed a helpful end, and beginning, to telling his story?

I think one of the greatest mysteries we've been invited into is hearing another’s story.  But the temptation seems to be already knowing it—we think we know what to expect and what such outfits usually unfold.  But I wonder what it would look like see every story and every hour as a new Avery?  As a new page of content.  As a new life.  A new chapter ushering us into new ways of Love.