I pushed a grocery buggy slowly this summer for a woman named Katherine, pushed it extra slowly at a food drive.

Katherine is the perfect vision of a mountain lady. She was made in the mountains, survived their winters, thin as a stalk of wheat, barely touching earth with two feet and an old cane. Her eyes peered kindly from beneath the brim of her straw hat. This was a rough straw hat, looked like a bird built it, looked like a bird might like to nest in it. Her skin was leather, lined with years. A quilt patterned skirt and knitted vest hung off her small frame. I couldn't picture her anywhere else aside from these haunting, smoky mountains.

She was very picky, very quiet, didn't pick up any item she didn't need. She told me that she really liked cinnamon. Told me how a pit bull scarred her frail body with its bites and how "it didn't heal on the inside." I think we backed up about 20 grocery-laden people while we were easing turtle-pace down the long concrete ramp to the parking lot. We sat by her on the curb of that local high school as she waited for a bus. She told us how she liked English in school, but that she got sick and had to drop out.

We prayed for her softly, hugged her thin self. And she hobbled onto that city bus and out of our sight for forever.

Meeting so many folks lately has me thinking about this: the wonder of a human life.

In particular this summer, there was the aforementioned food drive that our mission helped with in a mountainous, impoverished part of North Carolina.

We had quite the variety of people come cart-pushing through our stacks of food.

All shapes and sizes, all kinds of stories. Mustached man with his wife's name blazed across his forearm. Little boy toting toy car, eyes peering wide at the stacks of cereal most of us take for granted. Humbled parents trying to put food on the table for kids. A few souls with questionable sanity. Elderly women, old friends, leaning over tables, muttering and puttering. Countless with broken and scarred stories.

You probably haven't walked an easy road, haven't walked the high road, when you accept help like this, when you look at food in wonder like this, murmur thanks over and over like this.

But they're still priceless, still beautiful,

these humbled souls.

Time for a confession of sorts:

People have always scared me.

They aren't controllable. Aren't safe. You can't learn them and check them off like most tasks. They demand that you not only receive, not only spectate, but give. "Strangers" oooh I hate that word. I've always viewed strangers as a giant obstacle.

I like safety, like knowing. And people mean risk and mystery.

But lately, I've been learning how much I've really missed out in life. Maybe you've been missing out too. Because it wasn't comfortable.

Every soul, handmade by the Maker with a purpose, seen and unseen. Eternal and brimming with strange joys and sorrows. Every face in the crowd has a story and a soul.

This is what I haven't known: that it's a blessing to meet each one, no matter how homely they may appear, and to learn more about the nature of God in so doing, more of His laughter and light, His creativity and genius. To touch the rippling surface of these lives is akin to touching the face of God. His scripture says that however you treat the least of these, you treat Him.

All my life long I've been in love with places, with the things of this earth.

People hurt too much, I told myself.

So I've loved the mountains, the twisting trees, the wide meadows. I've loved horses, log cabins, libraries and gardens.

These things can't look at you and reject you. They say nothing at all.

And I've hidden my soul away in their quiet beauty, away from prying eyes and cruel words.

But of course, there's deep beauty in knowing and being known, and it isn't good to always sit in silence. Doing so is like.. when Hide n' Seek has ended, and the other kids are eating pizza, and you're the one who missed the message, lying with sweaty palms beneath a bed, frozen in fear. Sooner or later, you gotta crawl out of there, gotta risk it.

Even Adam needed somebody, and he walked with God in the garden.

We were made for this great word: Fellowship. Communion. Made to love and give. This is why I can reach out in risk: because I am fully known and fully loved by Jesus.

And I'm still learning: among all the beauties, all the joys, of this earth, with its plummeting waterfalls and vast oceans, people are truly the greatest treasure to be found. It will cost me to know and to be known. It'll hurt sometimes. But the joys drown the sorrows. The risk of relationship is worth the cost.

And life was never about preserving self anyway.