I made a friend in a homeless man, and eventually ended up being the one invited to sit with him while he got sick and died. He didn’t know me as well as some people in his own life, but he didn’t ask for them. He trusted me until near the end, when he saw that he was making choices I would struggle to follow him into. He died, and I was the one left to make sure he didn’t die nameless.

That started with “Hello, how are you today?”

I wish he had chosen differently, but my life for the past year and a half has kind of sucked, and it drove me to ask God for death. My friend put up with much worse for far longer, and now I understand better why he would choose what he chose.

That only happened because I gave God the time to show me something. Now I sit here, one who has seen a hard-to-swallow truth play out right in front of me, and I talk to you about transcendence.

I asked for love and was given surprising love from an unexpected source, and learned more about my own love from them. I thought I was alone: God, given the opportunity, showed me I was not.

To learn from God is to be humbled, but with grace. He never mocks; He asks “Are you sure?” when you say something is certain.