What I Saw There

A note before I begin: I have written critically about The Ramp over the last couple of weeks. Those posts weren't easy to write, but I believe they were necessary. If you've read them, you know I haven't pulled punches. But I want to be equally honest in the other direction. Because dishonesty isn't only what you say. It's also what you leave out. And if I only tell you what went wrong, I am lying to you just the same.

There are things I saw at The Ramp that I will carry with me the rest of my life. Two of them in particular. Here they are.

Waffle House

Karen Wheaton had taken a group of us kids to Atlanta for a concert at a large church. I don't remember exactly how many of us were there, but enough to fill a Waffle House from end to end. After the service, the pastor had given each of us twenty dollars. Twenty dollars in the hands of a teenager is a small and powerful thing.

We decided on Waffle House. Of course we did.

When we walked in, I don't think that waitress knew what hit her. She was working the floor alone with only the cook behind the counter. I don't know what had happened to the rest of the staff, but she was it. And then a bus load of kids came through the door.

I can only imagine what went through her mind. Kids are loud. We were loud. We were the kind of loud that makes seasoned restaurant workers consider career changes. And the tips that come from a table full of teenagers are, historically speaking, not a source of financial comfort.

What she didn't know was that somewhere between the church and the parking lot, we had made a decision. We were going to give her everything. Some of us gave the whole twenty. Others gave whatever change they had left after paying. The amounts varied. The intention didn't.

When she rang up the last person, she was standing at the register holding a stack of cash. And she started crying right there.

She came through the front door after us, running. She was holding the money against her chest, and she told us through tears that her power was about to be cut off. That she hadn't known what she was going to do. And that God had sent us to her.

I have thought about that moment many times since. A group of loud, broke teenagers from North Alabama walked into a Waffle House in Atlanta and, without anyone telling them to, without any fanfare or announcement, quietly left behind something that changed a stranger's week. Maybe more than her week.

That happened at The Ramp. Those were the kids it was producing. Whatever else I have said or will say, that is also true.

The Winter Conference

The first Winter Ramp I attended, I was carrying something I haven't told many people about.

I had felt for a long time that I was supposed to go into ministry. It wasn't a dramatic feeling. It was more like a low hum underneath everything else, present enough that I couldn't ignore it and quiet enough that I could always talk myself out of it. I was young. I was uncertain. And there is a particular kind of self-doubt that comes with youth where every genuine thing in you gets cross-examined until it sounds ridiculous.

That night, during the altar time after the guest speaker finished, I asked God quietly for a sign. I didn't say it out loud to anyone. I didn't write it down. It was a private question between me and whatever was listening. I just asked: if you want me for this, show me.

I kept my head down as the room moved around me. I heard the speaker step off the platform. A few minutes passed.

Then someone stopped in front of me and stood there. I kept my eyes down. He didn't say anything for a while. Then he stepped close, put one hand on my chest and one on my back, and spoke quietly in my ear.

You know you're called. Stop fighting it.

He said more after that and prayed over me, but I couldn't hear any of it. I was gone. I was weeping in a way I couldn't control because the thing I had asked in complete silence had been answered in plain speech. There is no other way to explain it except the one most people are afraid to put in words.

I don't know how to account for it any other way. I have tried. God is sovereign, and he could have used anything or anyone. But he used that conference. He used that room. He used a moment created, in part, by the ministry Karen Wheaton had built.

I know how complicated this is to hold alongside everything else. I know what The Ramp has been associated with now. I know what I have written. I stand by all of it.

But I also stand in front of a Waffle House in Atlanta where a waitress ran out the door crying. I stand in an altar with a stranger's hand on my chest and words in my ear that I had not spoken to a living soul.

The same place can be the site of genuine grace and genuine harm. Institutions are like that. People are like that. The hard work is not choosing which one to believe. The hard work is learning to hold both without letting either one swallow the other.

I am still learning that.