Isn’t it amazing that we can all see the same thing, yet see something differently at the same time? That’s exactly what happened to me a few weeks ago.
I was touring through the Celebrity Car Museum in Branson with my little cousin, Caleb. There was the Batmobile, a motorcyle driven by Elvis, and of course, the 1976 Pacer driven by Wayne and Garth in Wayne’s World.
We turned the corner and there sat the black limousine Jackie Kennedy and her children rode in the day of John F. Kennedy’s funeral. I read the placard, then walked on.

Then something in my heart changed and I had to go back. 

All of a sudden, my reality shifted, and I took a moment to embrace the history of what took place inside that car.
A broken woman and her two children sat in the backseat as the driver took them to and from the funeral of her husband. At that moment, he wasn’t the President of the United States. He was a husband and a father, who in an instant, was taken away from his family.
As she rode home from the funeral, her mind was probably racing. How would she comfort the hearts of her two children? Why would God take her husband? How could someone live with a broken heart like that?

She went home to a bed where her husband would never sleep again. She would stand in a foyer where her children would never be greeted by their daddy again.
I got emotional staring at that old car. I wasn’t looking into a piece of machinery – I was peering into moments of heartache for a woman and her children. For a moment, I felt her pain.

There’s a lesson to be learned for all of us from this. 

Perhaps that cranky waitress at Ihop just learned she has a lump on her breast. Maybe the man holding up traffic at the light isn’t lost physically, but his heart is wandering aimlessly after burying his wife. What if the store clerk who refuses to look you in the eyes desperately needs a friend but has too much shame to ask?
[Tweet “We never know someone else’s reality until we take time to see inside their hearts. https://www.sundijo.com/jackie-kennedy/”]
I could’ve walked past that car, slightly acknowledging a piece of history, and quickly walked over to see the motorcycle Michael J. Fox rode in Back to the Future, but I didn’t.
I stopped. I went back. I embraced those moments. I let go of the busyness and rush of life, and felt something.
I encourage you to do the same. Take a moment and embrace the reality of others’ lives. See past their flesh and look into their hearts. Offer them a smile in the midst of their pain. For you may be the only one who offers.