Note: These are true stories, but I may have omitted names for their privacy. Oh, and they’re stories and hopefully will read as such. Enjoy!
Home Depot is like Narnia (of the beloved C.S. Lewis series). I’ve set foot in perhaps 5 Home Depots in my lifetime and have ogled the rows of strange, hard-core, man stuff (this is not meant to be a sexist comment… that’s just what my untrained eyes/mind thinks of it all as) as if I’m looking at speaking animals. Thus, it’s not surprising when every Home Depot employee at the store asks me if I’m lost or need help finding something. (I’ve learned my face–which in many ways is my nemesis–will never help any poker games and will always give away my wonder and confusion.) And in my pride, I will always say, “No! Why!? Are you racist?!” (JK, I don’t ever say that.)
I voluntarily went on three Home Depot adventures within the last month. Rope lights were easy enough to find. But then where else could I buy chalkboard paint, cable ties, and a sponge roller in one convenient location where I could have all the items in my clutches immediately? The internet?! No, thank you! Five orange-vested workers helped me find my way!
After Home Depot, my next adventure was locking myself in my frigid apartment (we don’t turn on the heater… c’mon, why pay money for heat when I could just wear my snowboarding jacket indoors?!) for eight hours with boba milk tea to assemble a word out of white rope lights.
Photo by Raymond Gao
“Awaken” in cursive lettering shines above a cardboard cut-out of the San Francisco skyline. And because of the blue backdrop behind the rope light sign, the Epic Conference worship team has a bit of a blue tint to them. That blue glow is the only light in the ballroom. The lead singer with arms raised and eyes closed cries into the microphone: “I give myself away… I give myself away so You can use me…”
Main-speaker, Pastor Brandon Ahu, comes up and asks the crowd, “Who wants God more than your insecurities? Who doesn’t want this world to have a hold on them anymore? Who wants God more today than you did yesterday?”
“Awaken” shines upon a hundred hands raising. Not every hand looks confident or strong. “Awaken” shines upon a student, who I know from CSU Long Beach, her head buried in her hands. She brings her head up out of her hands. “Awaken” illuminates her tear-soaked face–and mine–as she slowly raises her fingers, her hand, her arm…both arms! and shouts to the Lord, “I give myself away…”
(my apt. gets very cold)
