From the middle of nowhere: or, the kindness of lesbians

Try this one-sentence statement on for size:

My first open conversation with a lesbian occurred as she was giving me a ride to a parts store to pick up an engine belt, after she had stopped to help us when my family and I were stranded next to the highway out in the middle of nowhere.

And I'm almost thirty years old.

So the story begins on the road from Pekin to Kristy's relatives in Winigan, MO. We're on Route 136, about a half hour outside of Keokuk, Iowa, when I hear the sound of the serpentine belt shredding. It sounded like a bird was being chewed up in the fan or something.

I pulled over in a driveway, and from where we were, I couldn't see a house in either direction. I started to walk up the driveway toward the house, when an SUV pulls up, and a woman, and a younger man get out.

"No sense walking up there. She doesn't answer the door," the woman says. "You need help?"

Yes, actually, I do. I explain that something's wrong with the belt, and am not really sure what to do next.

"I have a brother who works on cars," the woman says. "I'll go get 'im."

She gets back into the SUV and pulls away, leaving us with the young man, who turns out to be the woman's son. He takes a look at the belt, talks about heading out for Jeff City in a few hours, talks about who could possibly work on our van on the Saturday before July 4th - he never really stops talking, actually.

In a few minutes, the woman is back with her brother, who takes one look and decides that he can put another belt on, if his sister will run me to the next town, ten miles away, where another sister runs the local parts store.

So I get in the SUV with the woman, who has introduced herself as S____. The whole ten-mileish way, she's pointing out houses: her parents', her brother's, hers and her partner's. We get to town, purchase the belt, and she keeps talking all the way back: out as a lesbian for fifteen years, shunned by people in town until three of their daughters came out, decided to come out after hearing about and visiting a gay bar in Quincy (there's a gay bar in Quincy? It's less than 50,000 people stuck in the middle of a corn field!), and so on. She asks if we can stop at the convenience store, to pick up drinks for the kids and Kristy. Um, sure.

We return to the van, and S____'s brother and son start putting on the belt. It's going fine, until they get to the part where the belt's supposed to be tight, and it's six inches too long. Turns out, the belt had been returned, and the wrong belt was in the right package. So S____ takes Kristy and the kids to her brother's house, where they can play on the trampoline and stuff, while her brother and son and I run back to town to replace the belt. We get back, they put the belt on, it's the right one, we go to the brother's place to pick up everybody, we're back on the road.

For two minutes. Then the belt starts shredding again. Ughh.

We quickly turn around and head back to the brother's house, and then the most amazing thing happens. The brother asks, "Where'd you say you were headed?"

I told him. It was about a ninety-minute drive.

"Well, I got a car trailer. Let me hook it up, and I'll just haul you guys down to a shop."

So the brother loads up my van on his trailer, and now Trey and I are riding with him in his truck, hauling our van to our destination. The brother decides he wants to spend the evening in the big city while he's headed that direction, so he asks S____ to drive his van, which now contains Kristy, Gracie, Derek, the brother's wife and other kids, and follow us to the shop, and then drive the truck back to his house while his family enjoys the evening.

So Kristy's in the van for an hour and a half with S____, her sister-in-law, and a bunch of kids. The conversation turns to God pretty quickly: it starts with "do you guys go to church or something?", and then this moment of I-knew-it-all-along satisfaction when Kristy says that yes, we're Christians, and Mike is a pastor.

So S____ starts talking. She doesn't understand the Bible versions issue. She hasn't been to church since she was ten. She needs to read the Bible more. She's afraid that she and her partner "are doomed before we even open the door" of a church.

And Kristy was able to listen. To point out some places where she should start in reading the Bible. To present the notion that God might actually love her. To present the notion that each person is going to be accountable to God for their behavior. To begin to present a Christ that was not like the one that had formed in her mind. In the words of the Apostle Paul, To sow, perhaps water, trusting God for the increase.

It was an amazing experience. As we pulled in to the shop, I asked S____'s brother what I owed him. "Oh, I might've used twenty bucks worth of gas coming down here. If you could send that along later, that'd help."

I came away thankful. To S____'s brother and family, for going completely out of their way to help a family they'd never seen before. To S____, for giving me the chance to talk to - and listen to - a lesbian. As it turns out, she was a real person too: in need of God's love, looking for something and not even really sure what it is she's looking for, willing to help a complete stranger. I was truly enriched by the experience.

And I was thankful to God, who shredded my belt in the middle of nowhere in the first place.