Friday, April 19, 2013

Just one person

So there I am, stuck in traffic.  Not just traffic but horrible traffic.  The kind of traffic where four lanes just shrunk down to two.  We are on a pretty mean uphill when the car in front of me stops and their hazards begin to flash.  I wait for a good 3 or 4 minutes because this car has just turned four lanes into one and they were gonna need help pushing.  But they don't get out to push.  They just sit in their car waiting (probably knowing that one person can't push this car up this hill alone.)  So I pull over and run over.

"Can I help you push?"

I can just imagine them thinking "We need six big truckers, not a tiny little girl with no muscles."

But they took me up on my offer.  The guy in the front seat jumps out and we start pushing.  The kind of pushing where we are parallel with the ground pushing as hard as we can and we are barely making any ground.  One inch at a time. My feet keep slipping, but I keep pushing with all my might.  We are nearly stopped even though are muscles are strained and I say "one, two, THREE."  And we give the car a real hard push and it rolls about six inches.  We try to use the momentum but the hill wins and we are back to just inching along.

We are about to give up when we look up and see SEVEN guys running toward us.  They had all pulled over and were coming to help.  Thank God.  I was so tired.  So we just hold our ground waiting for the guys to get to us.  One of the guys kindly pats me on the back and says "We got it from here."  And with ease the guys push the car to the top.

I stood up, arms and legs jelly, and smiled.  I knew I couldn't push that car on my own, but I knew people would join me if I just had the courage to start.  It just takes one person to start a movement.