I pull on my sheer black panty hose, slip into high heels, make my way down the carpeted corridor of the hotel , through the spinning door and walk into crowded streets holding my husband’s hand.  The air is thick with languages I don’t understand, curbs line with black cabs that look like bowler hats, phones hang in red windowed boxes.  We stop to take a picture of a Maserati twice.

We pass a man sitting on the ground covered in tattered blankets, his dog covered up next to him, notice that all the tables at the Lebanese restaurant  seat full.

The pace picks up like ants in line to food as we clip down steps to the underground train, stand on the platform under movie posters with silent crowds. The gusty hum of a train approaching fills the space with anticipation and we mind the gap around people getting off and on.

When we get off at Piccadilly Circus we walk behind a woman in a red dress, blond hair gathered high on her head, she holds the hand of a man in a flat tie, like a napkin pinned to his shirt. We follow them on cobblestones to Queen’s Theater with the flashing bulbs around the picture of that sad girl that reads Les Miserables.

And when we take our seats in the old theater with the lights that look like white balloons hanging upside down from the ceiling, I can’t help but wonder if we are the only Americans seated in this row.

Crocodile tears stream down my face at watching the way a man’s life changes in the single, unselfish kind act of another.  The same way Jesus died for me. My chest heaves at the wonder of redemption and the way it fills hollow souls.

The next morning, H reads to me from the news, that this week is the 150th anniversary of Les Miserables. That when originally published critics called it inept, immoral and overly sentimental.  How now it is one of the bestselling, most important novels of all time.

He gives me a breakfast of perspective on a tray of hope as a writer.

That God isn’t limited in the ways He chooses to use people, in how His message is communicated to reveal himself to the world, or by the perceptions of others toward your art.

That a heart moves toward Him in the overlap of our stories, in the way he redeems a life, and that just won’t be stopped by anyone, not even the critics.

Linking with Lisa-Jo for Five Minute Friday with the one word prompt: Perspective. (In my crazy morning of interruptions I went over five minutes, hope you extend grace.)