The Bungee Cord 6-11-25

Hello,

The reason that I am a couple of days late with the Bungee Cord is that I just got home from a long weekend with my son in Denver. My father, who is living with complete dementia, is in a cognitive care unit in Davenport, Iowa, and so after visiting him, I continued my drive to Denver. Now that I am home from my trip, I have become completely certain that when I did not choose to become an over the road truck driver, I made the right decision.

Distance makes being with my son far too rare, but he has spread his wings, and he is soaring well. While I was with him, we did a bunch of father/son things, of which one of them was to go to an Italian restaurant that he had been wanting to go to. Not knowing the restaurants exclusiveness, I went severely underdressed as I wore an Illinois hoody. No one said anything, although everyone else was clearly more sharply attired. The restaurant was such a hot item, that it was hard to get a reservation , so we got the only reservation we could get: a couple of seats at a common table. I had never done such a thing before, so I didn’t know quite what the appropriate etiquette was.

There were two open seats on one end of the table that sat eight, so we sat ourselves in them. A couple of mid-aged ladies sat on our left, and a young couple sat on our right, which was at the end of the table, so they sort of faced us. Soon after we took our seats, a waitress came and placed a menu that was leather covered in front of us. When I opened it, I saw the price tag for the “sampler” page, $115.00. I snickered as I noted the price to my son, thinking that my credit card was going to be the recipient of the cost.

My snicker must have been audible as the young woman at the end of the table, snickered, too. And with that snicker a two-hour conversation began. My son gave me a tap on my thigh to tell me that I should leave them alone as he sensed they were out for a special meal. And they were. It was their 5th anniversary. We briefly shared our stories, and I figured that that would be the end of it, but not so. Every time that I tried to end our conversation by saying that I didn’t mean to interrupt their celebration, the woman would always say, “Oh no, you aren’t interrupting .”

Being naïve about these sort of things and realizing that I would never see these people again, I kept the conversation going. As it turns out, the young woman’s father grew up in Ligonier (the town that we are nearest to, and the town where my last parish was), and he was very active in the Episcopal church in the neighboring small town. What a small world!

So, on and on we chatted amidst the waitress’ interruptions. She had been to Africa, as had I. Her husband was an attorney that dealt with food safety cases…very interesting. She knew of where my son lived, next to a hospital. She was the head nurse in a NICU unit. It was all very fascinating. She even was hoping to make further plans to meet my son’s wife at a dinner.

After dinner, my son told me how nervous he was about my lack of etiquette when our conversation got started. They were obviously, as far as he could tell, on a significant dinner date. But funny enough, as the conversation got rolling, the significance of their dinner time was swept up in an enjoyable sharing of stories and lives.

When we left the restaurant, we thanked the maître d’. After our thanks, she said to us, “Sounds like you made some friends. I think that couple needed some love.” Of course, we were given no idea of why they “needed some love”. Maybe they had been quite bothered when they were seated? Maybe they had brought with them obvious baggage that they were carrying? Who knows?

Just as Jesus said, you never know when you find yourself in a position to bring life changing love into people’s lives. It would be fun to know what might become of our loving interaction with those two young people, but this I do know, it was a delight to unknowingly put a dent of love in their lives.

A delight that I hope you will one day come to encounter, too.

Have a great week

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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