the theys, thems, and whys

She kept saying it. My back to her, she couldn’t see my facial contortions. “They, all of them, they just seem to not care. They, all of them, it seems they just don’t know anything.” Thems and theys shot from her lips, dropping like lead balloons, shattering the dirty hospital linoleum making craters in the med-room floor, but she was clueless. She kept saying it, her hands and lips moving both still moving, but all I heard was the thems. And I couldn’t turn my face to her while I gritted a response out from between my clenched teeth, “They are not just them. They are people. People.” People. Them. People. They. People, my sermon resembling a bird flying directly into a spotless window-pane, while her verbal thought-train skipped along like a scratched disc. I wish I would have said more, but I don’t know if she would have heard the sermon in the word. People. Faces, stories, homes, families, each with their own kitchen tables, shoes, wallets, spaces, jackets, fingers, receding hair lines, wrinkles, mismatched teeth, blood, bones, anxiety, words, lips, hearts.

The THEYS are people. They are creatures created with purpose. And love. And thought. And hope. And meaning. Everyone of those THEMS. Those naked I serve. And see.

Not one giant blob of a nemesis that manufactures a paycheck for me every two weeks. Not a giant glob of humanity that consists of cookie-cutter shaped oompa-loompa bodies filling beds, blank minds, blank faces; but people. Each bump and bulge and wart and drop of blood and epithelial cell distinctive. Each naked lump of flesh inimitable and worth seeing. Worth seeing because each they is created in the image of a him. A Creator who painstakingly shaped. And formed. And expressed Himself in the faces of the thems.

And I think the second I find myself in the world of theys and thems, I lose my soul. I lose my sight. Become blind. Gripping the counter after the door clapped shut behind her, pity hit. Pity and compassion. Compassion and vehement words. We don’t need healthcare reform. We need to see again.  We need to see hope in each in face. Each body. Each room. Each them. Each they. The second I start they and them dropping, I stop seeing the beauty hidden in each curmudgeon-y creature.

“Carrie” was not a them ignorant and illiterate with a blank mind and face, she was a simply happy woman who consistently resiliently bounced back from all the shit the world had thrown in her life.

“Harriet” was not a they addicted to attention and pain meds, she was a woman who was bed-ridden, body and soul broken, lonely and desperately needing to feel loved and remembered and seen.

“Don” was not a they to be talked about as if his ashen blistered silent face dripping with sweat and fear was devoid of personhood.

I don’t want to be a them dropper. I want to see. I want to help others break out of blindness, to see, not as I see, but as He does.

And I am beginning to think that is why. Why I write. Why I am writing. This book. To bring some sight to the blind. Just as much of a fight to have my own blind eye see, as to open wide eyes around me. See through darkness. And faintness of hopeless hearts. And politics. And money. And cynicism and bitterness.  There is this verse in Isaiah that goes like this, “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners…” In Hebrew, that word for release literally means “the opening of eyes, wide”.

But I don’t think this just applies to me, I think this is for all of us. That we are all sent to help each other remember to see, to open wide eyes, of those around us who are imprisoned, by our own darkness, blindness.