Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns
If you think Jesus would have come into your home that day and not issued a strong rebuke to the head of household, you are mistaken. These words of condemnation have been haunting me for days now. They aren’t all that different than the soundtrack I play in my head on an almost-daily basis. It’s…
I am nesting. On Saturday I emptied the refrigerator. Last summer’s homemade pickles in their jars. The bread ends that seem to multiply on every shelf. The eggs. The milk. The fruit and veggies. All of it sat on the floor or the counter as I carefully removed the shelves and wiped them down with…
I’ve heard that life is like a highway. And it definitely seems like that sometimes. The pace of life swirls around me at dizzying speeds. We’re all so busy. In such a hurry. Always somewhere to be, something else to do. I’m a get-to-the-point, get-there-quick kind of girl. I don’t like to waste time on…
My daughter and I stood at a distance, not wanting to crowd the guy just trying to do his job. Although when your job is to offer samples at Costco, crowding comes with the territory.
I hate to hover, which means that the kids and I are often the last to get to the next round of samples or we end up waiting through a couple of rounds. It’s fun and sometimes sad to watch people snatch up a free taste of something they may or may not like. I’m not the aggressive sort, so we hang back and wait.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure what we were waiting for here, but my daughter spotted it and wanted it and since it was just the two of us for a change, I was saying “yes” to almost everything.
The server slid a new tray out to the front of the display and the hot fresh samples disappeared before we even had a chance to take a step forward.
And that’s when the miracle happened.
Another bystander had grabbed two samples, one for him and one for his wife, when he saw my daughter waiting patiently.
“Do you want one?” he asked her. Then to me, “Is it okay?”
I nodded “yes” and he gave my daughter one of the samples. Then he looked at me and said, “Did you want one?”
I usually decline if there aren’t enough to go around because honestly it doesn’t matter much to me. Or maybe it does and I just don’t want to be a source of conflict. I declined, saying, “That’s okay” but he insisted.
“Go ahead,” he said, handing over the second sample, leaving him empty-handed.
“Are you sure? Thank you so much. You might be the kindest person I’ve ever met here.”
No offense to anyone who works or shops at Costco but the vicinity of any sample table at Costco is not a place where I usually see kindness, much less receive it.
Minutes later, after we’d finished our sample of burrito and salsa and checked out another sample, the man and his wife were still waiting for their turn, and gratitude overwhelmed me.
It was the second time that day we had been the beneficiaries of sacrificial generosity.
Evan Kirby via Unsplash
—
A few hours earlier, the kids and I had stopped at the grocery store, trying to squeeze in a quick trip before my son would join some friends for a birthday party he’d been invited to on short notice. Our Saturday was packed tight with errands and cleaning in preparation for some friends coming over, and I was stressed to the max. I had already yelled once that morning because I just couldn’t see how we’d get everything done in the hours we had.
I needed to get in and out of the grocery store so we could deliver my son on time.
By the time we pulled in to Aldi, we had an hour to get in, get our groceries, and get home before the birthday boy’s dad was coming to pick up my son. We found everything we needed in a relatively short time, but there were four Amish women, each with a cartload of groceries ahead of us, so the line moved more slowly than I would have liked. A second lane opened with a first-time checker, but since we didn’t have a cart full of groceries, it went smoothly. We bagged everything and as we headed out of the store, I started digging for my keys in my bag.
They weren’t there.
I searched again, hoping I’d just missed them in the clutter.
Still, nothing.
I tried to keep calm as I told the kids I couldn’t find my keys and that we were first going back to the van to check to see if they were in there. If not, we’d backtrack and hope I had dropped them.
Sure enough, they were sitting on the cup holder inside the locked van.
Now was the time for panic.
I couldn’t remember ever having done this before and I wasn’t sure what to do. My husband was at work. He had the other set of keys. We only have one vehicle, so it’s not like he could have run them to us. I texted him first just to let him know of our dilemma. The wind chilled us on the coldest day of the week as we huddled near the van with our grocery cart.
Not knowing what else to do, I started dialing people from our church. I started with people who lived nearby and might be home on a Saturday. No one answered the first two calls, but on the third one, I connected with someone who was home and willing to come to our rescue. I thanked him, and we hunkered down to wait.
My son was worried about making his birthday party so I got on the phone with his friend’s mom and explained our situation and we worked out a solution. I figured our church friend would take us home and my son could be picked up for his party and then my daughter and I would figure out how to get back to the van from there.
This was our plan until our friend showed up. The kids scrambled into the van to warm up and I transferred our groceries. I sat in the passenger seat with a sigh and then it dawned on me: I couldn’t get into the house either. All of my keys were in the van.
So, I asked our friend if he would mind driving us to my husband’s workplace to pick up the extra set of keys and then bring us back to Aldi to get the van. He graciously agreed, and I let my husband know we were on our way.
I wish that was the end of the story.
It is October and we live in Amish country, plus it was a Saturday, so what I’m trying to tell you is that our backroads “rush hour” happens when these factors align. Our trip to my husband’s workplace in the heart of Amish country was slow going. But we got the keys and headed back toward the grocery store.
A few minutes into our return trip, my daughter said, “Mommy, my tummy doesn’t feel so good.” She has a history of motion sickness that we think she’s growing out of, but the car was warm and the traffic was stop-and-go and all she’d had for breakfast hours before were apple slices. I calmly asked our driver friend if he would pull over.
My daughter got out of the car, took some deep breaths of the cool air and let her stomach settle. She was refreshed and thought we could continue our journey. We lowered the temperature in the van.
But a few more miles down the road, her face paled and showed red splotches. She was not going to make it this time. Had we been in our van, I would have handed her the plastic bags we keep for just such an emergency. But we were not in our van. Our van was sitting in the parking lot of a grocery store with the keys inside. So, I did the only thing I could think of that would prevent her from puking all over the inside of our friend’s van (which might have killed me from embarrassment had it happened). I asked her to puke into her sweatshirt that she had taken off.
And she did.
By the time we reached our van, I was ready for the whole day to be over. And hoping this was the low point.
We transferred everything back to our van, thanked our friend again, and headed on our way. We pulled into our driveway just in time to meet the birthday boy’s dad, and in seconds, my son was on his way. My daughter and I regrouped at home, then got on with our day.
Which included a girls-only trip to Panera for lunch. That was already in the works before the keys-locked-in-the-van fiasco, but it was the best decision after a morning that did not go according to any kind of plan.
Surprisingly, that detour was the very thing I needed to calm down about the rest of the day. Our quick trip to the store turned into a two-hour adventure, so there was no possibility of getting everything done. I had to scale back my plans and just do what was necessary.
It was a lesson I didn’t know I needed.
—
The other lesson I didn’t know I needed was the one about kindness. I aim for kindness. Usually. When it suits me. When it doesn’t cost me anything. I can allow someone ahead of me in the grocery line when I’m in no hurry, but if I’m stretched for time, forget it. I might let someone else get a sample at Costco, but only after I’ve calculated whether there will still be enough for me and the kids. Otherwise, I’m no better than those who hover. I don’t want to take someone else’s turn, but I sure don’t want to give up my spot, either.
And I have to wonder how I would have responded if I had been the one called. If someone needed me to come pick them up and take them to get their extra set of keys. I’d love to think I would have said “yes” without hesitation. But I know myself. I know that even if I did say “yes” it would be reluctantly, counting what it would cost me in gas and time and inconvenience.
That, there, is the hard truth: I am consistently kind when it is convenient.
If kindness carries too high a price, I will not automatically say “yes.”
(I should note that it’s not always my job to say “yes” to every need, either, but I say “no” much more than I say “yes,” and that is not okay.)
Kindness that costs me nothing is still of value in a world where everyday kindness is scarce. But kindness that actually costs me in the way of time or energy or gasoline, well, that’s a variety of kindness even rarer in this world, and I saw it twice in one day–once from a stranger and once from a friend.
Joshua Clay via Unsplash
And this I think is the third lesson: Sometimes it is easier to be kind to strangers and sometimes it is easier to be kind to friends, but on that Saturday, I needed both and was encouraged by both. So, when I feel the urge toward kindness, I need to yield to it.
Because maybe there’s someone having a rough day on the inside but holding it together on the outside and maybe a small act of kindness will be the one bright spot in their day. Or maybe there’s a bigger, more obvious kindness to pass along and it will be a message of hope delivered straight to their heart.
And even if it is neither of those things, can kindness ever be the wrong move?
Have you ever experienced the kindness of strangers? What about friends? How do you respond to being the recipient of kindness? And how do you deliver kindness?
“How do you buy a house in America?”
She passed me her phone displaying the question in English beneath the Arabic words. My fingers hovered over the keyboard on my phone as I considered how to reply.
The woman and her daughter sat next to me in a stuffy upper room of an old church, newly arrived in the United States, refugees from Iraq.
Iraq. The place I read about in the news. The place where, even as we sat safe and secure in a city building, is at war. The place my husband spent a year on a military base. A place I can’t begin to imagine.
“America is beautiful,” she told me as we earlier tried to talk about what she spent money on Iraq. Our poor attempt at communication left me with the understanding that she hadn’t needed to pay for much. Or that there wasn’t much she could buy anyway. Maybe I misunderstood.
“You need to get a loan from a bank,” I finally typed back on my phone, the Arabic characters displaying on my screen in what I hoped was a clear answer.
“How do you get a loan?” she typed in reply.
I typed out a short answer about applying to the bank, paying bills on time and having a good job.
“Houses cost a lot of money,” I typed. “Thousands of dollars.”
She pressed me for how many thousands so I ventured a guess, one that disheartens me. I underestimated by a lot, knowing that even a low number could be discouraging. We calculated the equivalent in Iraqi dinar, an incomprehensible amount to my brain.
“Ah. Okay,” she said.
And that was that.
—
A lot of the refugees I meet have this goal: to buy a house of their own. They rent houses and apartments in our city and many of them dream of getting out into the country.
Confession: I am not unlike them. Phil and I will be married 10 years next year and we have rented apartments or homes in that entire time.
I want to buy a house. And even to us, it seems almost out of reach. Income is one of many factors, and we have one full-time job and one part-time job in our household. I don’t know if I’ve ever truly latched on to The American Dream, and if I have it seemed a reasonable goal. Shouldn’t getting an education and working hard lead to dreams come true? (I know it’s more complicated than that.)
I wonder how this American Dream in the Land of Opportunity looks to refugees. And how does it live up to their expectations? How does it fail?
One of the most common observations refugees make about our country is how expensive everything is. Here, we pay for a house, utilities, transportation, food, clothing, Internet. It is not the same in these countries, and sometimes that is because of life in the refugee camps, where food and clothing are provided through humanitarian organizations and other things are unavailable or also provided in limited quantity.
The closest comparison I have is when I moved into my first apartment after college back in my hometown. Until that time, most of what I needed had been provided by my parents. We didn’t have a lot but we always had enough. Less than a year after starting my first full-time job, I was in an apartment with a roommate and my very own bills to pay. It can be a bit of shock to discover what it costs to heat a home or use electricity or gas up the car.
—
It is not only refugees who face these kinds of circumstances. I know legal immigrants who live here and cannot find jobs in their field so they end up working second shift cleaning a school or housekeeping at a hotel. Or they have a legitimate background in a scientific field but cannot find anyone to hire them. Some of the refugees have medical backgrounds. They teach us when we try to teach them about disease prevention.
Sometimes there is a language barrier, sure, and sometimes it is a scheduling problem with childcare or the school day.
So, I wonder sometimes if the American Dream is a letdown.
Maybe we oversell it.
I love the opportunities we have in this country and I love that we are mostly a land where children can go to school in safety. Where we do not have to worry about bombs falling in our neighborhoods or dictatorial rulers. I think we have a lot to offer people from other countries where this is not the case.
I just think maybe we need a reality check on what the American Dream really is and how attainable it is. Even some who are born and raised here in the United States do not have a guarantee that they will achieve the American Dream.
—
I don’t know where exactly this mother and her daughter are from, but as we sat in that upper room of a downtown church, half a world away, a military offensive began in Iraq to free its second-largest city from the control of militants.
And the little girl colored pictures.
Maybe the American Dream is flawed. But the little girl smiled at me as she drew and colored while we taught the grown-ups about finances. She left early with her mom for a dentist appointment.
I don’t want our country to fail her.
My biggest struggle when I work with refugees is to find a balance between hope for the future and reality of the present. Settling in to American life can be a long walk uphill, but so many of these men and women have already traveled great distances, literally and figuratively. I believe they can persevere here.
But they can’t do it alone, and that’s why I’m there on Tuesdays when I could be other places.
To make the transition a tiny bit easier if possible.
And to cheer them on to the kind of future we all want for our kids and families:
Better.