It's crazy to me how often we are consumed with our own lives. I mean think about it.. How many times do you see other cars on the street? Sure, we make assumptions sometimes that "that guy is an asshole because we totally cut me off" or "that kid is totally irresponsible because he is right on my rear," but that's not what I'm talking about. How many times do you see other cars on the street and how many times do you actually stop to think what pain might be consuming their life and gripping their throats so tightly that they can barely breathe?

Have you ever looked to your right at a stop light and tried to imagine what that person driving the old beat down Camry is like? What they are currently dealing with in their life right now? Where that person in the brand new Mercedes is coming from? Where they're going to?

Well I have. I have wondered often. In fact, those people I wonder about have caught me wondering (well, staring, but not in a mean way) on numerous occasions. Wondering about these people I know nothing about brings a sense of curiosity and wonder to my life.

We spend our days consumed by our own to-do lists, wants and needs. I have found myself, that almost 99% of the time I am in the car, I am rushing. I usually leave my house too late for an appointment, or I only have 15 minutes to get home and grab something to eat before I have to be at my next meeting-- regardless of my agenda for the particular day, the time I spend in the car is usually time I spend thinking about where I need to be next and rushing to get there, which might be the source of my terrible habit of "road rage," but let's not get into that today.

So on a Thursday afternoon, I'm leaving a friend's mother's house when I'm stopped at a familiar intersection with an abnormally long red light. If it were any other day, I probably would have sped through that yellow light but today, I didn't have anywhere pressing to be.

As I'm flipping through the radio stations, I realize each of my top 8 stations have a commercial on. How does that happen?! I awkwardly take in my surroundings. A long line at the ice cream shop to my left. Straight ahead is a couple of kids crossing the street on their bicycles, and to my right, a woman weeping in her car without control.

I've been there before. In fact, I've been there often. During my days at college, almost every time I felt tears coming on, I'd hop in my Jeep for a little drive to avoid the awkwardness of explaining what was wrong to my roommates, who I hardly knew at all. In my car, I could blast a few sad songs, cry it out, and return home to go back to acting as if nothing was wrong.

In the few short moments I shared next to this weeping woman, I felt the excruciating pain that was consuming her. It broke my heart, but I didn't know how to respond to this call I was receiving to do something.

It was in that moment that I remembered a chapter from a book I had been gifted by a dear friend of mine named Katie. In the book called "Bittersweet" by Shauna Niequist, there is a chapter called "say something".

"When something bad happens, people say the wrong things so often. They say weird, hurtful things when they're trying to be nice. They say things that don't hurt until later, and then when they do begin to hurt, you can't get the words out of your mind.
But there's something worse than the things people say. It's much worse, I think, when people say nothing. When I lost my job, embarrassed and hurt and tender, I remember exactly who walked the other direction when they saw me at church and who walked towards me."

Why do we so often choose to avoid difficult conversation when we know someone is in pain? Why do we allow the discomfort of heavy subjects deter us from displaying God's love and grace to people who need it most?

I'm guilty of avoiding an ex's mother in the grocery store for the sole purpose of saving us the awkward discomfort, even though I still care deeply for her. I'm guilty of looking down at my phone when I see an old best friend out at the bar after ending on poor terms. Worst of all, I'm guilty of avoiding a conversation about a divorce in one of my best friend's family, simply because I was going through the same thing, and I didn't know how to give encouragement about her situation when I couldn't yet see the light at the end of the tunnel myself.

If there was anything I wish I could go back in time and do in those moments, I would "say something". In fact, Shauna describes in that chapter a list of times she was guilty of staying silent. She too wishes she had just said something. We go about our lives as if we're peering through a toilet paper roll.. So much is going on around us, but we only see what's straight ahead. We only focus on what's in front of ourselves.

Well, flash back to sitting in my car beside this poor, weeping lady. I roll down my window.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

She is taken aback that I had the courage to speak to her-- a total stranger.

"Pray." She said.

The light turned green, we took one last glance at one another, and I shook my head to let her know of course I would pray for her. And I did just that.

Now I don't know what was going on in this woman's life. And I certainly can't say that my first instinct is to approach a stranger who is in tears. In fact, this is the first time I ever felt called to do that. But I do hope it becomes first instinct someday. Maybe if I challenge myself enough to just "say something" as Shauna Neiquist says, when things like this occur, it will become instinct. All I know is I'm sure I wasn't the only person who saw that woman crying, but by the way she responded to me, I'm almost certain I was the only one who said something.

I'll leave you will this last quote from "say something" in "Bittersweet":

"I learned to say something. And I offer my apologies for all the times I didn't say something. I'm really sorry about that. For a whole bunch of not very good reasons, I didn't know better then, but I know better now.

So when there's bad news or scary news or when something falls apart, say something. Send a note. Send a text. Send flowers. And if you don't know what to say, try this: 'I heard what happened, and I don't know what to say.'"