My heart is very heavy tonight.
I stopped at a rest area approximately 2.5 hours from Nashville this afternoon. It was cold and starting to snow. I saw a note taped to the mirror in the ladies' room: "The lady in the gray Mazda needs help. Had to use gas and grocery money for repairs to car. Please help! God Bless!"
Do you ever see people standing at intersections with signs asking for work or food and turn away? Yeah, me too.
On the way to the vending machines, I spotted the gray Mazda. Sure enough, there was a woman in the car talking on her cell phone. I knocked on her window and saw that she was going through an address book to find help. I never have cash, but today I had $10 in travel money and I gave it to her.
Today I did not turn away, but I didn't really help. It was cold and snowing, and I left that lady in the rest area parking lot with my crummy $10. To be brutally honest, I was afraid to do anything further because she was a stranger. The rest area was staffed, so in my mind she wasn't alone. Giving money was easy. This lady, and my cowardice, was on my mind for the remainder of my trip.
And then my mom called.
My brother Matthew is a 2004 graduate of The Citadel. He got news this evening that his college classmate, Junior-year roommate and friend Capt. Warren A. Frank was killed in action in Iraq last Tuesday. According to The Citadel website, he was killed delivering humanitarian aid. He left behind a wife and two young daughters.
Tonight I am thinking about Captain Frank and the lady in the Mazda and I hope next time I will have the courage to do more.
"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." Robert Kennedy
Monday, December 01, 2008
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1 comments:
You read, you took pause, you approached, you asked, you gave.
How many other people who visited that rest area did anything after the first read?
I am so, so sorry for your friend and his family. There are no words...
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