Yesterday, I spent about five hours outside WalMart at a table selling Sheetz coupon booklets for the organization I serve as faculty advisor at my job. We were between the bus stop in the middle and the garbage can by the door and of course, this being Pennsylvania, everyone going in was taking a last drag and everyone coming out was light up so the smell of smoke was even worse than the unwashed bus passengers and the garbage combined, and it was of course a warm day.
Carly and her friend Sara were with me, and I had to go to Firestone with the car for two new tires that we wore out evidently going to the DC. They were 70K mile warranted tires and went bald over cambering and toes because of the car's alignment. I fixed everything, and they held down the fort for me.
Evidently it was payday for a lot of people and with it being a holiday weekend for the world, there was plenty of traffic. We saw the entire range of humanity. Somehow, I think I would be driven mad if not for knowing the truth. I am simply heartbroken to see how people treat each other in public. I always wonder what do they do in the privacy of their homes? I'll tell you something. One year at the DC, a sister waited in line in front of me for about ten minutes for a stall in the restrooms. She had a toddler with her. A toddler, about two years old. The sister had a wooden spoon in her hand, and I just assumed that was to keep the little girl in line. But when they got inside the stall, the sister started walloping the little girl and she started shrieking.
I had two problems with the logic of that. It is considered adequate punishment to give a child an equal number of swats or minutes of time out to their age. More is excessive, and child psychologists say that children are not developmentally advanced enough to deal with more than that. The second problem was that the child had no idea what she was being "swatted" for. A two year old does not remember misbehaving ten minutes later, and makes no connection between the effect of being punished and the cause of acting out.
This was my sister, and she was clean and well-dressed. I saw a lot worse than that in front of WalMart yesterday. So, today, we went to Greensburg to do a little shopping. As we were going down Hwy 56, we passed a Sheetz, which is the PA brand of 7-Eleven or Circle K or EZGo, depending on where you are from. I personally like Love's Stores. How do you not like a store named Love's? Anyway, we pulled into the Sheetz on Haynes and Franklin so the girls could return a movie at the Blockbuster vending machine. As we were pulling out, there was a boy about 12 crossing the street with two younger boys, about 4 and 5. They were obviously brothers, all very cute and quite skinny. Clothes from the thrift shop. The smallest boy had a lidless Tylenol bottle clutched in his hand.
"Oh no," Kimberly, my youngest daughter, sighed. "That little boy has drugs or something."
"No he doesn't," I said. "That is what he is carrying his change in."
I cannot say how I knew this so certainly, but I just did. He had no pockets. He had no bills. But he was heading to Sheetz looking like he was getting something.
We bought some of the Sheetz coupon booklets for ourselves. We have a coupon wallet full of them. Free hot dogs, donuts, drinks, all kinds of treats. Carly had the coupon wallet earlier in the week. I asked her where it was. She said she gave it to me.
I handed Kimberly my purse but it wasn't in there. I don't know what those boys would have thought if I called them over or got out and approached them. But they looked like they could be convinced to accept my offerings. I couldn't find any coupons though, so we drove on to Greensburg.
Of course, when I went to pay the toll, I had to roll the window down, no electric windows, and the arm of the roller hit the coupon wallet in the pocket-well compartment of the door. I was sick at my stomach.
All day long those boys have been on my mind.
When Kimberly was five, she had her tonsils removed. The following week, an artery came unstitched and she started bleeding fiercely. She had to have another operation, and as the medical personnel rolled her on her gurney away from me in the ER and told me to wait, she started screaming:
"I want my momma! I want my momma!"
I remind her of this sometimes now, when she thinks I am a stick in the mud in her way.
That may be the hardest thing I have ever faced as a mother. I wanted to be with her, and I wanted her to not have another operation, and I wanted her to have no pain and to suffer nothing. I would gladly have jumped on that table for surgery if I could have traded places with her.
Not much has changed. I bought her a shirt today and she insisted on paying me back. She will be 21 next month and she tells me she likes paying her own way on somethings and she doesn't want to be a burden. How does she not know she is my baby no matter how old she gets?
If it hurts me to sit outside the local Johnstown WalMart and see people who need intervention in their lives, who look poor, who have canes and are stooped arthritically over and gnarled, wearing glasses, missing teeth, missing common sense and enough soap, how much more so must it hurt Jehovah to look down here at the condition we are all in, even the ones of us with clean dresses at the meeting. He has to watch us go down the hall in the ER because while it is painful right now, it is for the greater good to endure this system, to prove his sovereignty, his right to rule us all.
I've always wanted to fix everything. I want to clean and straighten what is dirty and misplaced and I'm always thinking I can do something to better someone else. Which is kind of ironic considering I'm right here in the same imperfect boat as everyone else. Most days I can't even help myself. I bought an apple pie at Sam's today just because it reminds me of my grandma and I wanted it, but I want to lose weight and get in better shape, so who do I am that I think I can hand out a few coupons and make life better for three little boys? I was too stupid to know the coupons were right there by my left ankle.
The scale of the hurt Jehovah must feel looking down on us is beyond my understanding. And it is his undeserved kindness that will fulfill Revelation 21:3,4, also my grandmother's favorite scripture. I love that new resurrection song we have, how Jehovah is longing to do the work of his own hand. Of course he is. And we, made in his image, long for such suffering to end, even down to the hunger of three little boys crossing the street to Sheetz.
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