(40-45 min).
The letter
Mrs. Patty Johnson
113 Bel Vista Rd.
Boca Raton, Florida 33427
Dear Mrs. Johnson:
My name is Mark Holmes. I believe you met my grandmother, Ethel Holmes (maiden name Wojcik), many years ago. Does that name sound familiar to you? It might not, because according to my grandmother, the two of you spent very little time together. Just the same, you made a big impression on Grammy (our name for her). She passed away eight years ago and gave me something from her time with you.
I should start at the beginning when my grandmother died. At 13 you don’t have a clue how you are supposed to feel. I wasn’t sad, but then I wasn’t happy either. I guess when it’s the first time you experience death there’s no reference point, and so you watch other people to figure out what you are supposed to feel.
I remember the night she passed. Grammy lived with us for many years but was confined to the spare bedroom during the last two months of her life for cancer treatment. My mother would bring her dinner and usually spend an hour or two trying to get her to eat. But that was just an excuse really. I think Mom knew her time with us was short, and she wanted to get as much of Grammy as she possibly could.
Grammy said that she only spent one afternoon with you, so I don’t know if you could sense what all of us knew and loved about her. If you did, then you know why my Mom spent so much time up there and maybe understand why so much went wrong after that.
I knew immediately that my grandmother had died when I heard my mother wailing in the bedroom. Just the same, my sister and I went running to see what was wrong. The sound of unbridled human anguish to a 13 and 10-year-old was unnerving. The two of us stood in the doorway watching the scene of our mother draped over the dead body of Grammy alternately crying out uncontrollably in loud sobs and screaming at the top of her lungs like she’d been stabbed.
We had seen some tough times my sister and I mostly because Mom was chronically disappointed and needy. She didn’t talk much about her life growing up and apparently her own mother and father were not the sort of people she wanted us to meet. Although I think they were alive, my mother kept my sister and me away from them and adopted Grammy, my father’s mother, as her own.
Grammy met her expectation of what a family should be in spades, but the rest of us failed miserably. My father was never home at night like a good husband should be. I wanted to play basketball instead of being by her side for heady political discussions, and my sister? Well, she was the biggest disappointment of all. Of all the idealistic relationships my mother cooked up in her head, the one she was supposed to have with my sister was by far the most out of whack with reality. Mom wanted my sister to need and adore her. But it wasn’t going to be. Stephanie was perfectly content to be left alone. To my mother, this was a sin of the worst magnitude, and she did nothing to hide her disappointment. Although quiet, Stephanie needed her mother’s approval and never got it while I was there. So, I knew firsthand that things were not well in our family, and they only got worse after Grammy died.
For two kids it was a tough seen to take in. She pushed herself up from the bed and turned away from Grammy like she just couldn’t stand to look at her anymore. Then as if she felt bad about it, she turned back and picked up Grammy’s hand crying more quietly with a torturously painful expression on her face. She gently laid the hand back down and exploded into anger, sweeping everything on the top of the dresser to the floor with one big whoosh of her arms. A perfume bottle broke, and the shards scattered toward our bare feet. My sister started to cry, and I pushed her behind me and stepped back from the doorway into the hall. My mother’s eyes fell on us and seethed with anger.
“What are you two doing here?” she screamed at us as if we were responsible for the whole night. “Didn’t I put you to bed? Can’t you do one thing I tell you to do, NOT ONE!” she bellowed at the top of her lungs.
We raced down the stairs and could hear her cursing and then crying again uncontrollably. I called the hospital. Dad was in surgery and could not be disturbed. With that, we heard my mother slamming the bedroom door over and over again as if that was the only way she could express her intense frustration without destroying the objects of another dresser top. Stephanie got under a blanket on the couch and clamped down on every corner of it as is if she could keep the whole night out by pulling hard. I called the hospital back. I told them that my mother was going crazy and if my father didn’t call back, his two children might be dead. That got some action, but not from my father.
Ten minutes later the police rang the doorbell. My mother abruptly stopped her crying when she heard the chimes and I rushed to let them in. I told them she was going crazy upstairs because my grandmother had died and that my sister and I were scared. One of the policemen sat down with me and quietly asked questions while the other one headed up the stairs to the guest bedroom.
I got peppered: “When did your grandmother die? Was it your mother’s mother? How long had my mother been upset? Had she hurt us in any way?” On and on the questions went. My sister stayed hidden under the blanket the whole time. When the policeman understood the situation a little better, he asked Stephanie if he could pull the blanket down enough to see her head. You could see the lump of her head shake up and down in a yes movement. He lifted the blanket revealing her face and asked, “Are you okay sweetie?” She shook her head yes, but that wasn’t true. She was never the same again.
We buried my grandmother three days later. I still had that adolescent uncertainty of how to behave so I stood at the grave site empty inside. My mother was wailing again, and my father stood by her side offering little comfort. My sister refused to stand with the family. She was on the other side of the grave, the steel gray casket in between us. The minister from the local church we never attended was talking about death and hope altogether. I tuned him out and remembered the last conversation I had with Grammy the week before.
“Come in Mark, come in.” I made my way across the room and sat in the chair where my mother sat every night.
“How are you Sunny?” That was her name for me. She didn’t call anybody by their real name. My sister was Matilda. I’m smiling just thinking about how happy that crazy name made old Matilda. She didn’t really like Stephanie so Grammy told her one day, “Well it could be worse. What if your name were Matilda?” She called my mother Daughter Oh Mine, or more often just Miney for short.
“I’m fine Grammy, how are you feeling today?”
“Better now that you’re here.” She smiled at me, and in a way only Grammy could do, plunged right into the heart of the matter. “This whole cancer thing disturbing you son?”
If you remember anything about her, Mrs. Johnson, I’m sure you will remember this. There could never be an elephant in the room if Grammy was in there too. She always knew what was bothering people and went right after it.
“It’s going to kill you isn’t it Grammy?” I said looking down at the floor unable to keep eye contact. At 13, I just couldn’t match her courage. She reached out and took my chin and lifted my face so we were looking at each other.
“Yes Honey, it’s going to kill me. But then you had that figured out a while ago didn’t you?”
“No,” I said, afraid to admit that I had been thinking about her dying.
“Don’t lie to your grandmother boy.”
“I don’t want you to die Grammy.”
“I love you too Sunny,” she said, once again pushing to the heart of the matter. “I want you to listen to me now because I have something for you that’s very precious to me.”
“I don’t want your stuff Grammy.” It just didn’t seem right to be talking about taking her things.
“I’m not asking whether or not you want it, I’m asking if you’ll keep something for me. Will you do that?”
“Are you going to want it back?” I was suddenly getting scared that maybe she wouldn’t die, and I would lose track of whatever this precious thing was.
“Nope, it will be yours, and don’t worry about it. You won’t lose it. If I trust you with it, you’ll keep track of it.
“Okay,” I said. She had me now. Whatever she gave me, I would take to my grave before I would violate the trust of Grammy. “What is it?”
“Go over to my dresser there and open the second drawer. There’s a box on the left side and it’s locked. I have the key right here.” A key materialized in her hand. “Go on. Do as I say.”
I did as she asked and retrieved an old wooden box with a lock built right into it. It was just a little bigger than a sheet of paper. I figured it could hold one of those reams they make for laser printers these days.
“What’s in it?” I asked.
“Something I want you to read.”
“Should I read it now?” I said as I took the key from her hand.
“No, Sunny, you can’t read it now. You’re still too young and I am not dead.”
“You have to be dead for me to read this?” This didn’t sound like anything precious to me. “Why do you have to be dead for me to read this?”
“Because.” She said this shaking her head wisely like that was all the explanation needed. I knew her well enough to know that was that. There would be no additional information about why she had to be dead first. I took another tack.
“How old do I have to be before I can read it?” I sort of ignored the part that she would also have to be dead.
“Twenty one.”
“Why 21?”
“Because 13 is too young.”
“What about 17?” I couldn’t help myself. Grammy had gotten me so curious about what was inside this box.
She smiled with the same impishness I had seen so many times growing up when she knew you were hooked. She chuckled a little bit to herself and grew serious.
“I’m not toying with you now, Sunny. I want you to promise me that you won’t open that box until you’re 21 and that you will keep it safe and sound until then. Will you do that for me?”
I’d do anything for her. “Sure.”
“Good boy.”
Our family went downhill pretty fast after my grandmother was buried. My sister was never talkative to begin with, but after the terrible night when Grammy died, she shut down altogether. I figured with time she would open up, but it didn’t happen. When six months had gone by, I asked my mother if she noticed anything different about Stephanie. She was tearing the plastic lids off microwavable dinners. That’s pretty much all we ate at home anymore.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said. Does she seem different to you?”
“Mark, I don’t know what you’re talking about or what you are trying to say, but there is nothing wrong with your sister. She’s doing fine.”
“No she’s not Mom. She’s walking around this place like a zombie. Has she said even one thing to you in the past six months that wasn’t an answer to a question you asked?”
“Of course she has.”
“Okay, what was it?” I wasn’t going to let her off the hook that easy. She had been changed by the death of Grammy as well. For the first three months after the burial, my mother didn’t leave the house. Most of the days she just sat in the room where Grammy had died, waiting as if she might re-materialize. One day I snuck up to the partially closed door and spied on her through the crack on the hinged side. She was laying in the bed on her back with her hands spread out as if she were in a trance or something. She was wide awake with her eyes just staring at the ceiling. She stopped talking to me or Stephanie. When I asked my father about it he just told me that she was grieving and to be patient. Easy for him to say, he was never there.
“I don’t know, I can’t remember everything your sister says.”
“That’s because she doesn’t say anything, Mom.”
“Well what do you want me to do?” she said, turning her back on the microwave and facing me head-on. “I can’t make your sister talk.”
“So you have noticed that she’s not talking anymore.” When was she going to start being a mother again? It was like she had just crawled into herself and forgotten about the fact that she had two children who were depending on her. You can’t simply lie on the bed and cook microwave dinners and expect your children to grow up on their own.
“Have you told Dad that she’s not talking to anyone?” That was a big-time mistake. I never should’ve brought my father into it. She slammed the microwave dinners onto the kitchen table. They were still frozen, so a huge dent was left as the Jolly Green Giant casseroles went ricocheting off just to the left of my ear.
I was too young to know what she was going through and too agitated to have any compassion for her, so I just gathered myself up and left. On my way out I slung one last parting arrow at her.
“You need to start being a mother again or your daughter is really going to be screwed up.” I heard her for the umpteenth time start to cry.
I brought my father into the whole thing and heard many arguments over the next three months spilling out of their bedroom late at night. I felt kind of bad about that because my father was a load. One night they had been going at it for a while, and I crept down hallway to hear what was being said. We had a nice house so it was hard to hear the actual words through the partially opened door, but he lost his cool this night, and I heard the yelling loud and clear.
“For God’s sake Margery! When are you going to wake up from this haze and start living again? It’s been six months since she died and six months that our children haven’t had a mother. If I need to check you into a facility or something to help you out, then let’s get on with it. I have patients to see and a department to run. I need you to be their mother again.”
More crying from Mom and an exasperated swear word from my father. I bolted as he turned toward the door. But his shouting had an impact. My mother stopped spending so much time in the spare bedroom and started to take care of us again. She picked us up from events and saw to it that things were moving along. But she was just going through the motion, and her permanent disengagement from us at a personal level cemented my sister’s new quiet behavior in place.
The family limped along this way. I guess all of us got used to it. Four years after Grammy died, I went off to college. When I came home for Christmas during my junior year, I learned from Dad that Stephanie had a new friend. This was great news because her old friends had drifted away as she became more sullen. For her to have made a new friend was as a good sign. Maybe she was starting to make a turn for the better.
I met Alex on Christmas Eve when I was 19. I came home from a basketball game and she and Stephanie were walking down the steps. They were talking quietly to each other. When I saw them, I said “Hey Stephanie, is this your new friend?” The two of them just stopped and stared at me.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” I asked my sister, still excited about this new friend.
Stephanie’s eyes met mine and they were completely flat. She was getting worse not better. When she spoke, it was like someone had burned the part of her brain away that added any inflection to your voice.
“Alex, this is my brother Mark.”
“Hi Alex,” I said, still hoping my read of Stephanie was wrong and that maybe there was some happiness in this girl she was hanging out with.
“Yea, nice to meet you.” Alex brushed by me and headed out the door without another word.
“That’s your new friend?” I said with the disappointment I felt apparently spread all over my face.
“Nobody but me likes her either, so you’re in good company.”
She turned and headed back upstairs. I stood there stunned. When Dad told me that she had a new friend, he didn’t say anything about Stephanie being more morose than normal and that her new friend was a depressed clone. Before I went back to school, I tried to talk to them, but they insisted it was great that she had a new friend. Turns out my mother was working. She had earned her real estate license and was selling houses. That seemed to make my father very happy. It was okay that his daughter was hanging out with Dracula’s bride as long as the wife was up off the guest bed and living again.
I went back to school and figured there was little I could do. I graduated eight years after my grandmother died, and two months after that I received a call from my mother that Stephanie had tried to kill herself. She was in a psychiatric hospital. They told me not to come, that she was okay and that no visitors were allowed while she was in the hospital anyway. That night I sat in my apartment debating whether to go thinking back to when this all began.
God, how did things get so bad? I pulled a beer out of the fridge and sat down, rubbing my forehead like the people in movies always do after a horrible day. Had the fridge contained a box of moldy cheese and ancient Chinese takeout, the duplication would be complete. I chuckled at my melodrama and realized Grammy would call me on it. “Why you feeling so sorry for yourself, boy? Do something about it.” I could see her sitting in that bed saying those very words.
It had been Grammy dying. That was the tipping point for my family. Whatever Grammy managed to keep at bay just had its way with us after she was gone. I remembered that last conversation I had with her……In an instant her box and, more importantly, my age jumped into my head. I had completely forgotten her precious thing. I had indeed kept it safe, just like she asked. I rushed into my bedroom and picked up the box that always sat square in the middle of my dresser.
I opened the box that night, Mrs. Johnson, and what I read changed me and helped me reenter Stephanie’s life. My grandmother’s precious thing was a receipt for a dinner you bought her at Donny’s Diner. The date was November 25, 1947. You met Grammy on the street that day and whether you know it or not, your kindness made a difference. Along with the receipt was a note from my grandmother. It wasn’t intended for you, but I thought you should see the words. I’ve reprinted them here exactly as she wrote them.
Sunny, I know I’m long dead boy, and it was a tough thing to ask a little boy to hold on to something like this and not open it. Been wondering all these years why I gave it to you haven’t you? Looking at it, you’ve got to be wondering if your Grammy went soft in the head before she passed on. Well maybe so, but that receipt, this note, and a few memories is all I can leave you with from my time here. This kind of gift isn’t for everyone. Most people would look right past it and not realize it was a gift at all. But you’ll see it. You’ll see how special it was and can be in your life. And that’s why I left it to you.
I know what you thought of me when I was alive, Sunny. I know you thought I was a wise old woman who seemed to be able to read your mind. Well, I do have a bit of a gift of being able to read people, but most adults just know it as sensitivity. To a little boy, I bet it seemed downright mysterious. But I didn’t use this talent when I was young, Sunny. Maybe it wasn’t even there before the day I grabbed that receipt. That day was a turning point in my life, and it shouldn’t die with me.
I never talked to you about your great-grandfather. Stephanie asked me about him once, but I just put her off and wouldn’t answer, and never would have for you either had you asked. He was a terrible man. I asked for you to wait until you were 21 before reading this because what he did is not fit for a 13-year-old’s ears, but you need to hear it if you’re going to understand that receipt.
Your great-grandmother died long before it was her time. Everyone thought she had a stroke, but that not’s so. She died from getting one too many beatings. Your great granddaddy hated his life. Hated it. He worked the night shift in the mill in Hazelwood, a town in Pittsburgh. The siren would blow in the morning releasing the night shift, and your great-grandmother and I would race around the house trying to get it right for him before he came home drunk from the bar. Back in those days, the bars stayed open for the night shift when they got off at 7:00. Mom kept up our tradition on her own after I started going to school. We never got it right, because there was no right. He beat us because he hated his life. That’s the best I can figure.
Time went by and the drinking got worse. Many times, he would go to work drunk. On some of those nights, when he was drunk enough and I was old enough, he would take advantage of me before leaving. I was just a little girl then, about the age you were when I gave you this box. That was old enough for him.
It left me so confused and ashamed. A child’s desire to have a parent love and want them should be used to help kids grow up right, but he used it to force me to do the unthinkable. He was supposed to be my father not my abuser. I was ashamed to tell my friends, and even more afraid to tell my mother for fear she would be angry with me. Wanting him to be happy and love me, I simply gave him what he wanted.
Then one day, he got out of the shift early, came home and let’s just say it wasn’t good. It was November 25, 1947. I was cold and shocked. You can’t imagine what goes through a little kid’s head. You just can’t know unless you’ve been through it.
I walked the streets all day into the night. I thought I can’t go home again and keep living like this, but what was I going to do. There was no answer, and so I just walked. I had walked from the mill in Hazelwood all the way to Liberty Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh when I ran into Patty Johnson. She was coming out of a nightclub with her husband. I looked horrible and her husband told her to just walk on by, but she didn’t. She could read people just as good as your old Grammy. She took me by the arm and told her husband to get on home. She’d be home a little later. She loaded me into a cab and took me to Donny’s Diner. Now I have no idea why she picked that diner, but it was perfect. Maybe she didn’t want me to feel out of place at some fancy joint, because she clearly could have afforded it looking at the clothes on her back.
Patty Johnson sat me down in a booth and ordered dinner. Then she looked me straight in the eyes and said “What happened to you child? Don’t hold anything back, now is not the time to keep it to yourself.”
I melted like butter in the kindness this woman gave. I told her everything. I told her how my father beat my mother and abused me, how my mother was so scared and what had happened to me early in the morning of that day. Tears rolled down Patty’s face. She couldn’t contain herself. When you’re a kid, Sunny, you just assume this is how it is. It doesn’t occur to you that there are other adults in the world who would think what was happening was wrong. Patty thought it was wrong, and it brought her great sadness.
She spent three hours with me that evening. Slowly she moved me off the topic of my father and mother and got me talking about myself. She wanted to know what I liked at school, what I wanted to be and about my friends. Although the cloud of depression that hangs over someone when they are being abused can’t be eased by a single act of kindness, for a few moments that night, I found myself forgetting the home where I eventually had to go. Patty finished the dinner by asking if I wanted to have just one night and morning without having to worry about my father.
I was leery. Eating dinner with somebody in a public place was one thing, going home with them was another. I had enough bad in my life without some new person adding to it. She saw my caution and said I couldn’t come home with her. She would put me up in a hotel and call my mother from there. Go figure a kid’s mind. Somehow that seemed less threatening to me, and I went with her. As we left, I grabbed the receipt you’re holding right now.
Patty Johnson did indeed put me up in a hotel that night. She checked in, took me to the room and left me with the key. Before she left, she called my mother and told her what had transpired that morning. She said that for one night and morning, I was going to be safe. I could hear my mother frantically arguing with her on the phone. Even from across the room, I could hear my mother screaming that I was her daughter, who the hell do you think you are, and such.
Patty told her exactly who she was and where she lived. Then she invited my mother or my father or both to come to their house and talk about this in the company of the police. There was a moment of silence. Your great grandmother knew if the police got involved there would be hell to pay when they left. She tried another approach and demanded to know what hotel I was in.
Patty refused to tell her. “He’ll just beat it out of you and this child will get the thrashing of her life instead of a night of peace. No, I’m not telling you where she is. Futhermore, I am going to leave Ethel with the telephone number of a group of women who help battered people. She can decide whether to call them or you in the morning.”
She hung up on my mother and turned to me. “Here is the number I mentioned to your mother, Sweetie,.” she said. “In the morning you decide what to do. You can call those women, and they will do their best to protect you and your mother, or you can call your mother to come get you. Checkout time is 11:00. Make up your mind by then or the hotel people will ask you to leave. God bless you child whatever you decide.”
Patty Johnson closed the door, and I never saw her again. I called my mother and told her I was going to call the women at that number and that she could come with me. The next thing she did surprised me, Sunny. She said I should call that number. Her voice got certain and she spoke with authority. “I’ll deal with your father.”
Older now and looking back on it, I know what she was thinking. If we were both gone, he would never give up looking for his possessions. If she stayed, she could keep him from me with her own blood, something she could never do if I was there.
I couldn’t do it, Sunny. I couldn’t leave her there alone. I told her to come get me. She called my uncle and he brought me home. That night while my father was at work, we set about getting the place ready as always. My father returned on schedule, but there was no beating that day. Maybe even his cold heart had been chilled by what happened the day before.
My Father never came to see me at night again or came home early. I don’t know what my mother said to him to convince him to leave me alone, but it worked. She paid a terrible price though, Sunny. The beatings grew far worse. The ambulance came to the house three times while I was living there and took her away. Nobody asked about the unusual nature of the injuries and each time she was sent home. He would be sorry for a couple of days and then some little nothing would set him off again and she would pay for keeping him away from me.
I lied to myself and believed it would get better once I left, but it didn’t. She had a stroke at 45 and passed away, and I am convinced it was at his hand. I don’t know what happened to my father. After her funeral, I never spoke with him again. I got married and moved to South Carolina, and now you and Patty are the only people who know this story.
So what’s the point of all this? There’s two points, my boy, and I want you to remember them both. Otherwise, this receipt and my note will mean nothing. I pray it will not be so, but there may be times down the road for you when it will seem there is no one in the world that cares about you. That’s where I was when Patty Johnson took me to that diner and showed me that a complete stranger can care deeply for someone else. Her simple action and the courage I didn’t know my mother had until that night saved me. I hope your life doesn’t take that kind of turn. But if it does, hold the receipt in your hand and remember. There is someone out there who will care. It might be someone you love, a friend, or a complete stranger. But there is somebody whose purpose on this earth includes helping you.
That’s not the most important point though, Sunny, and it’s not the difficult one. My life changed on November 25, 1947 because one woman who happened to be at one place in Pittsburgh chose to stop when she saw me. The receipt I kept all these years reminded me that when I saw the opportunity, I too needed to stop. You don’t know this, son, but that’s why I came to live with your family.
After you were born, it didn’t take long for me to realize that your father was too focused on work for your Momma’s emotional state. I told your father that he needed to let me help and he agreed. I held your Momma together for as long as I could, but I suspect she, and maybe the rest of you, have struggled some since my passing. Yet coming to live with you was the best decision I ever made. The way the world is, sometimes when you give, you get. I got to know all of you better than any grandmother normally does, and I learned that I had a special grandson with whom I could leave a very special inheritance.
But it is not always that way, Mark. Look at Patty. She has no idea that her act of kindness rippled all the way down to you. That’s really the beauty of what Patty taught me. It doesn’t matter if you see the results of being there for someone. What matters is that you choose to help.
There is somebody in this world, Mark, maybe many people, that you were put here to help. You can choose to walk away and ignore the very sensitivity God gave you to perceive, or you can stop like Patty did. It may be that your old Grammy is reading more into that receipt than I should. But I came to the conclusion that all of us on this earth are connected and that we have a role to play with each other. I don’t pretend to know why, but I’m convinced God made it that way. I hope you will keep the receipt and treasure it as much as I did, and when your heart tells you that someone has been placed into your life for a reason, you will act on it.
Goodbye Sunny. Don’t let this note make you all sad, you hear boy. Take care of that receipt and live your life remembering it.
Much Love,
Grammy
I am betting you would never have guessed what you did for my grandmother and our family back in 1947. Until you read this, how could you? I wrote because I wanted you to know. I wanted you to have the same joy that Grammy had when she decided to help my mother.
I accepted my inheritance Mrs. Johnson. As soon as I put her letter down, I knew what I needed to do. I had grown apart from my sister, but because of a single act of kindness you performed so many years ago, we are connecting again. She’s coming along. It’s a slow go, but who knows, maybe if I had not returned to her life, things would not be going as well.
Mrs. Johnson, thank you for reading this, but more importantly, thank you for November 25, 1947. Your act of kindness had remarkable ramifications don’t you think?
Sincerely,
Mark Holmes
10 Northbridge Dr.
Charleston, SC 25282
Author’s note:
In the first chapter of this fiction series (A Story of Purpose Lost) the pain of living without purpose is a central theme. If living without purpose is corrosive, is living with purpose fulfilling? If so, what do we define as purpose? This post tries to explore these questions.
In today’s story Mark Holmes is living with purpose. He just graduated from college and is pursuing his dreams. Yet his life and wise grandmother dropped a bombshell into his lap letting him know purpose is much more than having something to do. Purpose, the real purpose that fulfills and satisfies, comes from caring about other people and looking for opportunities to help them. This can be done whether you are a Porta John service man, CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or retired and not working at all.
Jesus said: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 23:37-40)
When you look for opportunities to love people, purpose enters your life. I have a friend who like me was a teacher. At times, the two of us reminisce about our past. Invariably, the stories to which we migrate are those where it seemed we made a real difference in a student’s life. These stories are poignant to us because we truly loved the students we taught. Loved them enough to want to make a difference in their lives. Sometimes the students would return to tell us about the difference we made, and these are the best memories of all because our purpose was fulfilled.
If you are feeling dissatisfied, remember Grammy’s advice. “But I came to the conclusion that all of us on this earth are connected and that we have a role to play with each other. I don’t pretend to know why, but I’m convinced God made it that way.” If this is true, then purpose is found in the smallest action we take that reminds someone else they are loved.
My friend the teacher now makes the most beautiful pens, pulls and wooden knickknacks I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t sell them or go to craft fairs. Instead, he gives them to people out of the blue. Each receiver knows they were loved because he poured a bit himself into something for them. He gives them to charities as well to sell so they can raise money and help other people. Doing this is a high point in his days I would argue because he is serving God’s purpose by loving people.
Mark Holmes invested himself in his sister. My friend invests himself in making others happy with his gifts. If you are feeling despondent, look for ways to love another and then act. That is our purpose. Thanks for reading and may God bless you this and every day in your faith journey.
Dave
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