The old tow truck driver.
The old tow truck driver.
Let me confess something that’s haunted me for a while…
Earlier this week my niece, who lives with Brett (my wife) and me, got in a car accident. She's OK but her car was totaled. The front end crumpled like an accordion. A couple days later she needed to get some of her belongings out of it, so I drove her to the tow lot where it was being stored.
When we got there, we had to be accompanied to the back by an employee. It's policy. Something about insurance. But I love people, and I love talking to them, so I didn't mind waiting. Within a couple of minutes our junkyard babysitter arrived. He was an older gentleman with leather-like skin and a crooked hat who kind of just hobbled along.
As we weaved through the cars positioned like headstones in an automobile graveyard, I struck up a conversation. Eventually I asked him how business had been since COVID. What he said surprised me.
"Before Covert, we would bring in 12-18 cars a day. Now we do that in about a week. We had to lay off our entire night crew."
By the way, that's not a typo above. In the most endearing way, and with a slight accent that sounded more like it was Midwestern than it was Texan, he constantly referred to the coronavirus as "covert" instead of "COVID." In thinking about it, it's a mistake that's not wrong.
As he explained the downturn in business, I found myself in disbelief. The effects of "The Covert" had completely changed this man's life and the lives of his co-workers. Less people on the roads means less car wrecks, less car wrecks mean less tows, and less tows mean an entire shift of people were out of work and the rest were limping by. I'll admit that on my mental list of people affected by the virus I never even had tow truck drivers on there.
And yet here was one — a kind, gentle, hard-working man — in front of me explaining how so many lives had changed.
Later that night I was still replaying what he said. As I did, it got me thinking about something bigger, something deeper, and it forced me to ask myself a few questions:
How are my actions affecting people in ways that I don't even realize? What kind of impact am I making that I never even considered? What am I doing today that will change someone else's life not just tomorrow, but a year or two from now?
And then I remembered...
A couple years ago I got a Facebook message from a woman I knew in college. The Facebook algorithm had suggested we be friends so I sent her a request, curious to see what her life was like now. A couple weeks later she responded with something that still stings to this day.
"Hi Jon. I hope you're well. Your family is adorable, by the way. I just wanted to quickly explain why I haven't accepted your friend request."
My heart sank. She went on to explain how something I said to her while we were friends had a lasting negative impact on her, something I had completely forgotten about. Maybe I thought she wanted something more, I don't know, but at one point I told her "God told me" that we should put some distance between us. I cringe writing that. Like many typical young college students, I suffered from confusing what I wanted with what God wanted.
"That moment had a profound impact on me, and on the way I viewed [the college], Christianity, and Christians for a while afterward," she explained to me.
My stomach still churns reading that. I still struggle with the thought that I hurt someone deeply and negatively affected their view of God and their faith. There are times it almost makes me sick.
Needless to say, that woman and I are not friends on Facebook. And I don't blame her one bit. In fact, I am grateful to her, grateful for her honesty and for her bravery to tell me what she did. Because her words always seem to pop up at a time when I need to hear them the most; when I need to be reminded that my actions have consequences — consequences that are real and lasting and that I may never realize.
I've never really told anyone about that message, maybe because it still makes me feel so ashamed. But I'm telling you about it today because that's exactly where my mind went this week while thinking about the unintended consequences experienced by the tow truck driver. I'm telling you about it today because I hope it serves as a reminder to you that what you're doing now, what you're saying, can have ripple effects for years to come.
And let me tell you what's not fun: Hearing how those ripples have turned into waves in someone's life — waves that have tossed them about and made their life extremely difficult.
Instead, I urge you to think about how you can make sure the impact you're having on someone else is something they write to you about years later and are thankful for. It's a prayer I'm continuing to pray, and a lesson I'm continuing to learn. There are times I forget it. Or times I ignore it.
And there are times it takes an old tow truck driver with a limp and a crooked hat to remind me of it.
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