God Drives a Tow Truck (17 page)

“He told me he
had
coffee, but thanks, and so I offered him my lunch that I had just bought. He wanted
that
. So we sat there while he ate my lunch. He was really grateful. And then we talked for a long time. I figured that was what he needed the most.”

“Oh Matt, that does my heart good!”
“I want to see about starting some sort of way to help people like him, Mom. I didn’t know who to call to try to get him some help. I think I will bring him lunch tomorrow, too. Gotta run, have to head to class- I am late cause I spent so much time talking with him.”

I was stunned. My boy had given up his lunch, and then hurried to class without lunch, so that he could offer kindness to a stranger. And beyond that, this selfless act had changed his heart in such a way that he was anxious to do it again.

God has shown me many miracles over the three decades I have walked with Him. By far, the miracle I
most
desire is that the children He has entrusted to me would walk with Him as well. Despite
my
imperfect example, I prayed they would love Him with a pure and faithful heart through all the inevitable maelstroms of life.

Over the years, Matt has phoned or texted me with wonderful news: good grades, awards, commendations from professors, admission to Law School, acceptance to Law Review. But nothing has made my spirit rejoice as joyfully as his call about this “
God-thing
”. For all the failures and disappointments of parenthood, out of nowhere came the splintering crash of a soul breaking into adulthood with the exact likeness of God.

Chapter Twenty Five

A Thanksgiving Story- Joy In the Midst of Weeping

Psalm 30:11-12

¹¹
You turned my wailing into dancing;
   you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
¹²
that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent.
   LORD my God, I will praise you forever.

When I think of the fullness of joy, I remember a woman with half a face.
I had not seen my friend, Marsha, in over a year. She had moved an hour away, and there were always a million other things I had to do than drive two hours for a visit. But that week, near Thanksgiving, my daughter and I were driving close by her home, and I called to see if we could stop by for just an hour. She was ecstatic. When we arrived, we hugged, stood back and grasped each other’s hands. She offered to brew a pot of tea. Asherel, my daughter, scurried off to play with Marsha's daughter, one of her favorite friends that she had sorely missed.
Just then, the doorbell rang. Marsha explained that she had invited two boys over to play with her son. She swung open the door, and the boys tumbled in. The mother in the van was busily gathering her purse to come in.
Marsha quickly told me this was the woman she had asked that I pray for over the years, who had lost half a face to cancer. I realized she was preparing me tactfully for the difficult first glance. With my usual sweet and compassionate nature, I had a fleeting, longing thought of the heart-to-heart talk I had hoped for
alone
with Marsha, and the vision of the tea slowly cooling to tepid. I gritted my teeth and pasted on as sincere a smile as I could muster, given my disappointment.
Grace entered the house, holding out her hand to greet me, as Marsha introduced us. One eye was swollen shut, or perhaps gone; I couldn't tell which. That side of her face was covered with scars and misshapen. Her teeth seemed crumpled together, and as she spoke, I had to listen very carefully to understand the garbled sound. I could tell what she was saying, but it required my full attention and effort.
"Can you stay for a cup of tea?" asked Marsha.
"Sure," said Grace, happily. I was struck by the contrast of the physical appearance with the surprising bubbly effervescence of spirit.
We sat down, and she instantly began telling me about how she came to look the way she did. She spoke with no sense of self pity or horror. In fact, the only thing I could detect was joy. She told of the diagnosis ten years ago, and then the multiple surgeries, healings, and renewed cancers that were ravaging her body. Even now, after ten years of her face being slowly removed, piece by piece, untreatable cancer lurked in her lungs.
"But it is slow growing, so we are just watching it," she told me, as though this were a blessing.
Within minutes, I was so transfixed by her stories, and laughing with her, that I began to not see the disfigured side of her face. I focused instead on the beautiful eye that saw the world through a prism of joy.
"The tea!" remembered Marsha, “Can you have some?"
Grace lifted her shirt to show me the tube through which she was fed.
"I love to cook," she explained, “But I can't eat anymore. The surgery that removed half my jaw also created a cleft palate."
"But can you have some tea?"
"Yes," she said to Marsha, "But forgive me if some spurts out my nose."
"Oh, that's ok,” said Marsha," I have
boys
...."
"Well
I
am not doing it on purpose," laughed Grace.
As we settled in the kitchen, and Marsha poured the tea, I again thought dejectedly of all the deep issues I had wanted to talk with her about. A pot bubbled on the stove. The smell wafting from it was filled with spices and tender meat, garlic, and onions. Grace walked over, and lifted the top. She took a deep breath, with a rapturous look on her face, soaking in the steamy scent as though it were an offering from God. This was all she could do, I realized. She could never again take a bite of stew.
Smiling, she returned to the counter and she told me about homeschooling her two boys. Between the frequent trips to Dallas for the surgeries, and the hospital visits, radiation, and recuperation that involved intense pain, she managed to continue to homeschool. School shuts down over hang nails in
my
stoic home school.
"They are learning in the school of hard knocks," she told me, somehow without bitterness.
An hour passed. It was time for me to leave. Grace glanced at her watch, and realized she had to hurry off somewhere herself. She handed me a little pamphlet she had developed as part of speaking tours she conducts.

“I want to use the time I have left as best I can,” she said.

I stuck it in my purse, thanked her, and she was gone. I, too, gathered my things, and thanked Marsha for the tea.
"Oh dear," she told me, “I had wanted to catch up with you. I am so sorry!"
"Oh don't be," I said, "It was a joy meeting Grace. All things happen for a purpose."
As I drove home, Asherel and I were quiet; she reveling in the joy of a friend she loved and hadn't seen in a long time, and I, with visions of a woman who could not eat, smelling pot roast with a look of wistful joy and remembrance on her face.
The next morning as I prepared for my Bible study with Asherel, I pulled out the pamphlet Grace had given me. She had written that if she could set back the clock, remove the cancer and all that it had wrought, and have her life back the way it once was; she would not have wanted it. The cancer had brought her to a deep and desperate reliance on God, and a loving relationship with Him that she said was unfathomable. She would never desire to give that up. She considered her cancer to be a gift. Then, I saw the photo on the back of the pamphlet. She had been a gorgeous woman. I looked for a long time at the picture of the beautiful woman she had been before all those surgeries chopped away her delicate features.
Our Bible study topic the next day was titled: "Joy in the Midst of Grief". The study was focused on the time when Solomon’s temple was being rebuilt. The new temple would be but a fragment of its previous glory and splendor. When it was finished, "the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping." (Ezra 3:13)
I suspect there is no real joy unless weeping comes first. We are a people of contrast, unable to truly know life unless we are aware of death; or peace unless we have suffered conflict; redemption unless we have known sin.

Unlike Grace, I will be able to do more than just open the oven and smell the glorious scents of Thanksgiving this year. I, like most Americans, will be stuffing my face with more food than some people see in a month.  Nonetheless, I think Grace will taste something far richer, and perhaps more satisfying.

Chapter Twenty Six

Just When You Thought You Were All Alone....

I Corinthians 12: 17-19

¹⁷
If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?
¹⁸
But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.
¹⁹
If they were all one part, where would the body be?

As I stood eying the beautiful sweater I knew I didn't need, touching the thick soft yarn between my fingers, the sales lady with deep, dark eyes and a strong accent asked me about my necklace. I glanced down at my Star of David, which I never take off, my constant reminder of the Jewish roots I have grown to cherish.
"It is a Star of David," I began.
"I am Jewish too!" she cried.
"The necklace is shaped like branches with this cluster of grapes- it was made to show the verse from Isaiah 11....from the root of Jesse a Branch will bear fruit. So I am a Jew, but I believe the fruit of Jesse, the Messiah, has come and He is Jesus."
"A Jew that believes in Jesus?! " she exclaimed.
"What are those called?" asked the man in the craft booth beside her.
"Messianic Jews?" I asked, not sure what he was asking.
"Yes, that is what I mean," he said, "I've heard of them."
I continued to tell the woman how the Old Testament was filled with Prophecy of the Messiah that I believed Jesus fulfilled, as in the verse my necklace symbolized. The man in the next booth listened.
The lady from Bolivia, bubbly and excited, told me about her heritage, and how she had not known much about her own Jewish roots. However, she
did
know this much. Jews didn't believe in Jesus.
All the while, I had held on to the sweater, loving the beautiful colors; a coat of many colors like Joseph of scripture had perhaps worn.
The Bolivian woman told me, "If you like that, I will give it to you half price."
Delighted, I bought the sweater quickly, before she changed her mind. My cell phone rang, and I waved goodbye to go find my daughter, who was somewhere in the holiday crowd. As I walked away, I once again felt the nagging inadequacy of never bringing enough of the Gospel message to provoke any real desire for God in the people I speak to. God is forever opening doors for me to speak, and I am never good enough, smart enough, or silver-tongued enough to say what I wish I had said. I clutched my new sweater and prayed that someday, God would help me to do a better job, and not always botch these opportunities.
The next morning, I entered church, wearing my new sweater, and saw the pastor's wife, Martha, with a sweet woman I had been introduced to once before. They were in "my seat", and so I had no choice but to go stand near, and say “Hello”. I knew that Melanie, the woman that Martha was talking so seriously with, had been battling cancer. My husband, who knew Melanie from the music ministry they both volunteered in, always prayed for her in our family prayers. However, I had never really talked with her, and had not seen her in at least a year.
I asked Melanie how she was doing, and she answered, “As well as could be expected,” but her face was grave, her expression sad.

Martha stepped into the awkward silence, and said, “Melanie is struggling. Would you like to pray with us?”
“Of course!” (
Since you are sitting in my seat. I presume after we pray, I can have my seat back
.)