Shannon Ethridge's Blog

I’ve been working all afternoon in a Panera Bread restaurant in Southern California (if you haven’t tried their Fuji Apple Chicken Salad or their Turkey Artichoke Panini, you haven’t lived yet – I’ve had it for lunch or dinner 4 times over the past 5 days).  I praise God for how well the events of the past several days have gone while speaking at a local church over the weekend, and BIOLA University, & Talbot School of Theology all week.  But after 5 days of being away from my family, I’m eager to get tomorrow’s radio interviews with Jim Burn’s HomeWord program behind me so I can get on a plane and head HOMEWARD myself (even though the forecast is calling for snow and ice.  Better soak up the California sunshine while I can, huh?)  I’m determined to get home ASAP, because my daughter Erin leaves for Australia on Monday to study art for 10 months in Sydney.  I’ll miss her terribly.

But I’m so thankful that I have such rich, rewarding work to keep me occupied as my baby birds begin leaving the nest.  I’ve spent the past several hours watching videos from last month’s BLAST meeting & reflecting on how blessed I am to get to witness so many participants BLOSSOM!  We’re currently reading a book together called “Bird-by-Bird” by Anne Lamott, and she’s really inspiring me to look beyond what you THINK people are like, and consider what really lies beneath the surface.

For example, on the flight here last Friday, a man sat next to me that I initially feared would slit my throat.  He was an unshaven Asian man with a black leather jacket and stocking cap, who looked like he just stepped off a Hollywood set as the bad guy in a Jackie Chan movie.  I was famished by the time the stewardess passed out peanuts and pretzels, but somehow as soon as she got to me she had run completely out!  A steward was servicing the rows behind me, and when he got to my chair, he’d run out too!  I thought I’d have to starve throughout the 4-hour flight, or drink my weight in orange juice to survive.  Suddenly the Asian man realized what had happened, and he held out his two snack bags and kindly said, “Would you like mine?”  I was humbled.  Then he reached into his jacket pocket, and I wondered if he was about to pull out a plastic box cutter or an underwear bomb detonator device.  Instead, he brought out a small sketch pad and a charcoal pencil.  He was working on a tiger lily.  My favorite flower.  And I sat there contemplating how terribly wrong my first impression was… and what an interesting character he would make in a fiction novel.

After de-boarding I walked into the airport restroom where I encountered a stunning woman, impeccably dressed, acrylic nails clutched around her suitcase handle.  She radiated the kind of class that would give you the confidence to leave your newborn baby in her care while you tend to your bathroom business.  But then she went from stall to stall, opening door after door, and soon began ranting about how “There are NO PURSE HOOKS in this *#*%* airport, and with the kind of money I pay to fly I shouldn’t have to put my Gucci purse on the *#%#* floor!”  And that’s when I realized that if I’d had a newborn in tow, I’d have been better off letting the scruffy Asian man in the black leather jacket babysit.

You simply can’t judge a book by its cover, can you?
-Shannon