Finn and I got paired up for months of field work, driving for hours across a landscape that had been through a lot, assessing sites as we went. When you’re in a vehicle with someone that long, the small talk runs out fast, and what’s left is the real stuff.
Finn was walking through a hard stretch of life. Things at home were falling apart, and he was carrying wounds he was still learning to name. I didn’t push. I just listened, the way you can when there’s nowhere either of you needs to be for another two hours. Over time the conversations turned to the things underneath it all: pain and healing, whether a person can really change, what unconditional love actually looks like when life has been anything but kind. Sometimes we named God in it. Sometimes we didn’t have to.
I never gave Finn an altar call. There was no dramatic moment, no decision, nothing I could write in a report. What there was, was trust. He let me into the hard parts, and I got to point, gently and often quietly, to the One who I know meets people exactly there.
Since we stopped working together, I’ve kept in touch. I gave him a spiritual book for his birthday. I invited him along to a community program at church. We still check in. And if I’m honest, I don’t know how his story ends. I may never know.
That used to bother me. It doesn’t anymore. I’ve come to believe that my job was to plant, faithfully and without an agenda, and to trust that God sends other people to water what I couldn’t. Somewhere in those long drives, I watched a seedling start to grow. I’m praying someone else is there to tend it now.
Not everything counts on a scoreboard. But everything matters. Finn mattered, and the hours mattered, and I’d do every one of them again.
