The most important person is the one God places in front of you

I went to hear a motivational Catholic speaker last night. Who is was is not important to the story, and I don't want to malign his character by what I am about to say - there could be 1,000 reasons for what happened. And objectively, it was such a TINY thing. Yet...

Well, I'll tell my story.

So I went to hear the speaker. The flyer description of his talk sounded interesting, and I was eager to get an hour away from the stress of home. He talk was great - he was funny, focused, got us involved but not in a childish way. He made his points well about becoming a better Catholic and better person, and I was excited to go home and think about putting some into practice in my life.

Because dh said "don't rush home!" (saint that he is), I stayed in church after everyone got up and was talking and filing out. Our church recently moved the tabernacle back into the church and I love to sit quietly and pray for a few minutes. The church was almost empty when I got up and genuflected in front of the tabernacle, noticing as I did so that the night's speaker was walking right towards me to go down the main aisle.

I stood up, looked at him, and smiled. I didn't want to take up his time, I didn't need any sort of real interaction. I didn't want much, really. Just acknowledgement that I existed. But instead of any sort of eye contact and smile, the man looked right through me. There was no one he was looking at, it was that blank look of "I'm avoiding making contact with you." No smile, no eye contact... and in that moment, his whole talk took on much less meaning in my mind.

If the man who could charm 500 people for an hour can't give a tiny smile to the least of these, then I don't believe the message.

Yes, there could have been 1000 reasons why, but in that moment it didn't matter.

..........

No, I am not better than this man. I am not posting this to sound boastful. Really - in the time I was typing this two of my daughters came up and wanted to sit with me, and I kind of brushed them off for a moment because I didn't want them reading this. God hammered it into my head that this is *exactly* what I was just talking about! So I get it. I get that life and your thoughts intervene.

But in that moment last night I was also made painfully aware that one's message can only go so far as your relationship with each individual. When you make a whole group laugh, they feel good and remember and believe what you say. But you can also ruin it all by ignoring the shy smile of one person when it's only the two of you.