Walking Buddies
Instead of telling you what a Walking Buddy is, as we consider who our fellow travelers are while we journey through seasons of Wandering, Waiting, and Weariness, let me show you by highlighting the story of my best Walking Buddy, Steve.
Sometimes We Come Close to Missing Out on Great Walking Buddies When We’re Not Paying Attention to the Road We’re On.
The most unforgettable first words that launched one of my life's most impactful, unexpected friendships were:
“Out of my way, A-hole, you’re blocking the sidewalk.”
In the Fall of 2014, I lived down the street from my college. On the first day of the semester, I walked to campus, as I had all through the summer, blasting the Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 1 Soundtrack in my headphones. Head in the clouds, I would groove on down to class like an intergalactic superhero. But in my blissful unawareness, I became “That Guy,” you know, the short, skinny kid who still manages to block an entire walkway.
My first reaction to Steve’s first words to me was a mixture of the self-consciousness of being “That Guy” and a simmering level of annoyance with the grouch for shouting at me, followed by another wave of embarrassment when I realized I had blocked the pathway from an old man in a motorized wheelchair.
[Side note: He wasn’t that old. That was just my first impression in the early morning.]
After letting him pass, I spent the remainder of my walk to class thinking, surely, I have just earned myself a ticket to Hell’s waiting room for inconveniencing and getting annoyed at a disabled individual.
I overcame my self-induced shame just in time to walk into my Fiction Writing Workshop.
But there he was. Parked in the front row of the classroom.
I had blocked his way, and he beat me to class!
Sometimes Walking Buddies Cross Our Paths in Unexpected Ways at Unexpected Times.
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment on that first day of class when I knew Steve and I would be great friends. Maybe it was his grin when I walked it, which seemed to say, “What took you so long, slowpoke?” Or it could have been when we both rolled our eyes in sync at the unrequested pontifications of a student wearing a fedora and vest.
Actually, I’m confident that I knew Steve and I were going to be best buddies when he uttered one of the most hilarious, poetically vulgar suggestions during an ice-breaking group exercise.
[Unfortunately, that comedy gold will not be included in this post since, most likely, at the time of writing this, my readership consists of only a handful of church friends and relatives.]
Steve also had a beautiful way of introducing himself by telling the story of how he ended up in the wheelchair, and he would always conclude it with:
“The bad news was I had to have a heart transplant, which resulted in a spinal cord injury and put me in a wheelchair. The good news is that I had a heart transplant, which resulted in a spinal cord injury and put me in a wheelchair. God is good.”
I knew I wanted to walk alongside this man who could still find the good news in bad news.
From that first day of class, Steve and I shared the sidewalk to and from class, sometimes racing one another because he could get some serious speed on an open sidewalk when no one blocked his way.
What is a Walking Buddy?
As we journey through the Wilderness in seasons of Wandering, Waiting, and Weariness, who are our fellow travelers? Here are three questions that may be helpful to ask:
1. Who is walking beside me when I don’t know which direction the next steps lead?
2. Who will sit with me in hard moments, heavy emotions, boredom, anticipation, and all the other in-between seasons?
3. Who are the people who help carry my burdens when I get so tired from the weight?
Walking Buddies Travel With You During the Smooth Sailing and The Hard Climbs.
Somehow, these two knuckleheads made it to finishing college! It was a tie in the race to Graduation. He only won because his last name comes before mine alphabetically.
During my final year of college, I grew weary from sitting alone in the cafeteria while all my friends were in class or cramming to finish procrastinated homework in the library. I suppose that was one of the earlier prices I paid for choosing to be an English major when most of my friends studied Engineering.
To combat the awkwardness of sitting alone, yet also not wanting to interrupt people who were sitting alone with their headphones on, I devised the idea of propping up a cardboard sign I made that said, “Eating alone, but will welcome friendly strangers,” any time I ate lunch.
Ironically, Steve was the first person to sit with me the first day I used the sign.
He wasn’t a stranger, but he usually had a way of rolling up when people needed a good laugh with a great friend.
Photo Credit: Steve [The photo that made it to the front page of our school newspaper the following month.]
Walking Buddies Leave an Impact.
The last time I saw Steve, I was visiting Memphis after spending a summer in Kenya working as a photographer for a global mission organization. We grabbed lunch at Central BBQ, some of the best pulled pork BBQ in the world.
No cardboard sign necessary this time. Just two brothers catching up over the best BBQ in the world. (No offense, Rendezvous…)
I can’t think of anyone else with whom I would have been more honored and privileged to have my first bite of Memphis BBQ (aka Real BBQ) in two to three years than Steve. [Fun Fact: The year before, he served as a judge for the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest alongside Dave Grohl.]
As we left the restaurant, I walked to my car, and he was riding alongside me, on his way to the bus stop.
You know those awkward moments when you hug someone goodbye, but then you both still walk away in the same direction? It’s not so awkward when your friendship started out awkwardly walking in the same direction.
His wheels were still quicker than my walking pace. So I challenged him to one last race.
Full of BBQ and Brotherhood, just before one last race in the parking lot.
Three days later, after I had returned to Orlando from my trip to Memphis, I received a message from another friend of mine that Steve had passed away.
I may have won the race on foot in the parking lot, but Steve won the race of making it to heaven before me.
I miss my Walking Buddy.
Steve was one sharp dude. The last thing he had said to me during our last lunch was:
“You know, all this time I’ve spent in this wheelchair, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I don’t have any of the same moves I used to. But I’ve learned that sometimes the best move is to open your arms.”
I still carry that will me, and when I’ve felt most weary from losing Walking Buddies or waiting for new ones to come, sometimes all I can do is open my arms, ready to let go or embrace. You never know when or how your Walking Buddies will cross your path. If you don’t pay attention to where you’re going, you might miss them. And when you’ve had a great Walking Buddy, you’ll miss them, but you’ll never forget their impact on your walk. Let’s strive to be the kind of Walking Buddies that are there in smooth sailing and hard climbs.