Logging on, I checked through the emails that had filed in over night and before attempting to respond, headed to the kitchen to pour some Fruity-Bix for brekky. Other members of the Procurement & Contracts team would file in while I stuffed myself full of miniature Weet-Bix and responded to simple emails flagging the more complex ones for a later, slightly more awake time in the day. It was just a carbon copy kinda day.
Ian the fleet manager who sat diagonally in front of me was a level headed and responsible kinda guy. He was consistent and professional, the kinda guy who ate breakfast before he arrived at work each morning. Managing a fleet of thousands meant his phone rang constantly every day, and his tone didn't differ much from one conversation to the next, but this day it did. He took a call and my attention gravitated instantly to his end of the conversation. It wasn't your usual carefree Friday conversation, it was serious, and the very unflappable Ian was now stressed.
It wasn't much further into the conversation and the distress made sense, one of our Hi-Rail vehicles had been involved in an accident with a private vehicle, fatally injuring both people in the car. My heart sank. Surely things like this are too horrible to be real. Then, within moments my direct line rang, caller I.D. pre warning it was Mum, and her tone was also slightly less casual than normal and it was obvious she didn't have good news. She was calling to ask I pray for my sister's friend who had just had some foggy news that her sister had been in an accident. Putting the two puzzle pieces together we quickly realised that the two accidents were one and the same and I was grieving. Grieving for my colleague and for the lives cut short.
I wanted the work day to be over. I wanted to be in the only place I knew to go on days like this and that's where Jesus was, and at that time there were two places I most easily found Him; the shores of Nobbys Beach or the pews of my church.
It was a beautiful coincidence that I found myself in both places that evening. After an extended afternoon turn evening beach walk I had a course on at church. It was for people wanting to serve, and, as you do when you've spent a good portion of your day considering the uncertainty and brevity of life and you're getting ready to head out into your night, you reach for those cute infrequently worn mary jane heels and recent Melbourne splurge (one-of-a-kind vintage number) that you were saving for a special occasion, and you wear them.
I arrived at church still feeling a little wide-eyed to find an intimate gathering of around 50 people. Matt opened the evening playing solo on his guitar leading us all in songs of worship before we started the evening with the passing around of the wireless microphone to introduce ourselves and give a little blurb about 'why we are here'. Apart from being in complete denial that the girlish voice I heard coming back through the P.A. was mine, I got through the brief public speaking moment without too much perspiration, and as the microphone continued to float around the room I automatically started preempting how each person would respond to it, whether the next person would take it in their stride, take it for just that little too long or rush it on like a hot potato to the next person.
I was generally right in my assumptions about how each person would react. As the mic was passed through an aisle of semi familiar young adult faces and was about to reach the hands of a tall, slim, dark haired seemingly shy hoodie-wearing guy I was ready for a rushed-out, bare-minimum response and a hasty moving on of the mic to the next person. But it didn't come.
D took the mic, spoke at an even pace introducing himself, and without a shake in his voice or any physical appearance of squirming discomfort, he shared the unnecessarily long version of 'how he got here, and why he was here'. Not bare minimum. Not pathetically rushed and no lack of confidence - just total control.
In a church full of huge attention grabbing personalities, D had gone unnoticed by me for a really long time. We had obviously been in the same room countless times before that night, but I had never seen him, and this night, this first impression stuck with me because he wasn't what I was expecting.
