A Needed Respite

I've stood in front of lots of people to give presenations of all sorts. Whether preaching a sermon, singing a song, teaching a lesson, moderating a business session ... I've seen lots of people from a platform. The legendary bass singer, George Younce of the Cathedrals Quartet said it when I heard it first, and I've quoted him a few times, "Some folks just look back at you like a mule looking at a new gate!" I've seen quite a few of mule-like people in my day. I'm thankful that's not the majority, though!

One particular concert, we'd had a bit of a difficult time and the communication was harder than most. We've all experienced it at some point or another, but it doesn't make it any easier. Normally, when we look for a restaurant after a concert, we gravitate toward Golden Corral, Sonny's Bar BQ, Steak n Shake, etc. If we're in a bit of a hurry or money is really tight, we'll head to a McDonald's or Wendy's. You get the idea.

After this concert, though, we didn't have a particular place in mind, we weren't finding one of the above named restaurants and we had a little time to kill before getting to our next stop. On the bus, we were seeing all kinds of restaurants and just naming them one right after the other. Someone said, "There's an Olive Garden," about the same time I pointed out the Outback. The Olive Garden was on the right hand side of the road, and Buzz made a bee-line for it.

Rhonda and Jeff were on the couch across from me, and our eyes met and I could feel my eyebrow raise up. Sure enough, that's where we went. Buzz must have known something we didn't know! Buzz parked the bus as we went into the restaurant. We were seated before he even got to the door. They sat us in a little alcove to ourselves. It was much quieter and we were set a bit away from much of the restaurant.

William was our server and he did an incredible job! In fact, when the manager came around to ask about our experience, I told him that I didn't know what he was paying William, but it wasn't enough!

After the difficult concert, it was so nice to be able to have a room all to ourselves where we could re-energize ourselves for the next concert. We were extremely thankful for Olive Garden that day. Oh, and lest anyone think we're financially set since we ate at a nicer restaurant, we each ordered off the special menu ~ got full for less than a meal at Golden Corral!