BIRMINGHAM, AL — People think I'm just out here waving a flashlight. They are wrong. I am a witness. I am a scribe. I am the last thing standing between Easter Sunday and a four-car pileup in the overflow lot.

I have seen a deacon, a man who reads Scripture publicly and is trusted with the offering plate, cut off a minivan full of children to secure a front-row space at 8:47 a.m. He made eye contact with me after. We have never spoken of it.

I have watched the same woman park crooked across two spaces for twelve consecutive Sundays. She teaches the women's Bible study. The unit is on grace.

“The parking lot is the only place in the church where people’s true theology is instantly visible. Turns out, a lot of us believe in predestination—specifically, that God predestined us to have that spot.”

“Gerald just loves serving,” said my wife, Diane Kim, 54, who has never once stood in a January drizzle directing a lifted pickup truck driven by a man who refuses to look at me. “He lights up out there.” She means the vest. The vest is reflective.

I do not do this for recognition. I do it because someone has to, and because twelve years ago I said yes when Pastor Holloway asked and I have not yet found a graceful exit. But I want you to know: I see you. All of you. Especially the ones who smile at me and then immediately ignore everything I’m signaling.

At press time, a first-time visitor had parked in the reserved space closest to the door, which belongs to no one officially but which everyone knows belongs to Margaret Odom, 71, and the situation was developing rapidly.