10.14.05
Posted in Uncategorized on October 14th, 2005 at 11:58 am by Dee O'Neil Andrews
by: Dee Andrews
None of our contributors have jumped in here, yet, so guess I’m going to have to start us off over here this first week.
I wrote my first “Grace Note” post last Saturday over at
Finding Direction, and said I’d met three of them last week and I did. Here’s a short take on my second one.
I don’t even know his name. I met him unexpectedly last Wednesday while I was out on one of my marathon expeditions around Slidell trying to get some things done. And he not only took the couple of minutes to help me out greatly, but also most likely kept me from later being in a car accident.
You see - after I left home and before I reached “downtown” my front left turn signal light burned out. Traffic was horrible, as usual, moving at a snail’s pace everywhere when it was moving at all and I had several more hours of errands ahead of me necessitating several left turns on busy streets without being able to let anyone directly behind me know what I was getting ready to do. So, as soon as I could get down the main street across town far enough, which took a good while, I pulled off the street into the parking lot of PepBoys Auto supply and repair business. Luckily for me it was to my right.
I went in, went back to the parts counter and told the tall, lanky young man what I needed. He walked with me over to the the aisle light bulbs were on and picked up the right package for me, handing me the two bulbs. I then told him what my problem was and that I was afraid to be out around town now and asked if he had any idea what I needed to do to change it out or where to start.
He started walking me up to the front of the store to pay for the bulbs, pulled one out and said, “Where’s your car? I’ll run out and change it out for you while you’re paying for them - it will only take a minute.”
And he did!
I know - that doesn’t sound like a lot, but to me at the time it was. A whole lot. I’m not sure I could have gotten under the hood to get to the right place to change it without at least getting all dirty and messed up. I wrote one day before in my blog about
my total lack of auto “repair” skills the time I tried to change out a headlight and what a fiasco that was!
Plus, I used the time he was doing that to say to him, you are very kind. You must be a Christian. He said he was, where he was a member, but that he hadn’t been going to church because he worked so much and so did his wife. I asked him how they did in the hurricane, the standard question you ask everyone you meet around here, and he said they did fine. Then he said they had a little 3 year old daughter named Bailey and I told him they really needed to try to get back to church to take Bailey to Sunday school and he agreed.
It wasn’t any great mind boggling event. No big deal in life as most people measure such things. But it was a moment. A graceful moment in the middle of a busy day when two people took a few moments to help each other, talk with each other, make some connections and bring God into the conversation for good.
It was enough for me to thank God the rest of the afternoon every time I turned left for having had the opportunity to meet him. Even though I don’t know his name.
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