A slight movement, off in the distance, caught my eye, thank God. A sudden shift of something near the end of my line of sight made me squint and strain for a better look. Is that a child?
It was … a little girl. She looked to be the size of a three- or four-year-old, and she was alone in an empty Gulf gas station parking lot, several hundred yards in front of me. It was a summer evening … lots of people would normally be outside. Surely someone else—an older child or an adult—would appear alongside her at any moment. No one came.
I had driven away from my house just a few minutes earlier, a quick errand to pick up a few things for the next day at the grocery store—bananas, milk, perhaps. As I approached the corner of Laurel Glen Drive and Crooked Hill Road, I gently applied the brake and gradually rolled to a stop (which my husband would have appreciated as he has never liked my habit of hard stops). It had been an ordinary evening, until that moment as I sat at the STOP sign, when I looked up ahead and saw her.
After a few seconds, I released the brake, and slowly drove the short distance to the next intersection, keeping an eye on her the whole time. I still had to get through a traffic light before I would reach her.
As I drove, I prayed. Prayed that this small child would move slowly, that her little legs would keep her from getting very far, or that maybe she would stop moving altogether. I prayed that another car wouldn’t hit her, or that another driver wouldn’t stop and snatch her.
What a relief when I pulled into gas station parking lot, not far from where she was standing. Taking my time, without any sudden movements, and with a smile on my face, I walked up to her, all the while checking in all directions for someone to go along with this young child. I saw no one.
“Hi sweetie, “What’s your name? Is anyone with you?”
I can’t remember her name, or if she even provided one. I just knew that I wasn’t going to leave her there alone, nor was I going to be able to resolve the situation on my own. And just as I was about to tap “9-1-1” into my cell phone, a young teenage boy, walking with frazzled speed, came around a row of tall shrubs which separated the parking lot from one end of a large cluster of homes.
“Oh my God, there you are!” he said.
And with that, there was finally someone—a very relieved older brother—to pair with this little girl who, I soon learned, had wandered off from their home.
Okay, we all know this happens. A parent (I’m one, too), sibling, grandparent, anyone who’s babysitting, looks in the other direction or gets distracted for a second or two and … gone. The child in their care has slipped away. And if you have a child who can cover a lot of ground quickly (like my little friend), it can create a very scary situation. The brother’s fear had just about escalated to the panic stage by the time he reached the parking lot.
I wanted to say something constructive and instructive to him. He seemed genuinely upset by what had happened, so I didn’t want to pile on.
“You can’t let this happen again. You can’t take your eyes off your sister if it’s your responsibility to watch her,” I said in a stern, but motherly, tone.
And then, because I guess I did want to instill just a little bit of fear, I added, “It’s a good thing you got here when you did, because I was just about to call the police.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
The young man took his little sister by the hand, and they walked off toward home. I headed to the grocery store, feeling thankful for a happy ending, and feeling thankful to have been at the right place at the right time. And therein lies the rub: the coincidental, enigmatic timing of the events of that evening.
When you can be any number of places in a given moment, but you end up exactly where you are needed, is it the grace of God’s timing that has put you there?
About the summer’s night I just described:
How many other things could I have chosen to do at that exact time of day? How many distractions could have kept me from leaving my house when I did? How many other cars could have slowed me, how many rabbits, dogs, squirrels, or even other children, could have darted into the street to stop me, how many reasons could I have thought of to not leave the house that night?
So many things could have unfolded in such a way so as to prevent me from being at exactly the right spot, at exactly the right time, to spot that little girl, alone, in an empty parking lot.
Just about any adult who had come upon such a scene would have gone to that little girl. It didn’t have to be me; yet, it was.
Why me? Why then? Why there? And most of all—for what purpose? Because with God there is always a purpose.
I sometimes feel like a broken record.
“Why, God?” … “Why, God?” … “Why, God?”
I can just imagine God wanting to toss a question right back at me: “Does it really matter, Tess?”
To which I’d reply: “Yes, Lord! Yes … it really does matter to me!”
In His patient, loving way, perhaps God would then say, “Just trust me,” knowing the whole time how difficult that is for me, (I suppose for many of us). God’s awareness of my trust issue doesn’t let me off the hook. He understands my shortcomings, just as, I imagine, He understands my need to know “why.” But still … God wants us to trust Him. It’s one of the hardest thing He asks of us.
God, cars, unusual sights, and me are apparently a thing, because it happened again, late one afternoon in September 2010. While out on another quick errand, this time to AAA to wrap up final preparations for a twenty-fifth anniversary trip for my husband, Rick, and me to Jamaica, I came upon a sight that was even more unusual than the first. This time it was a long-, dark-haired woman, roughly my age (late forties at the time), shoulders slumped, and clumsily walking down the center of the road between two lanes of opposing traffic, blankly staring ahead the whole time, as if in a trance.
I spotted her within seconds of turning left out of our development, and onto Linglestown Road, which, because of urban sprawl, has become busy and congested and lined with shopping centers, office buildings, banks, dry cleaners, drug stores, and gas stations. Walking along the side of Linglestown Road is a bad idea; walking down the center of it is a death wish. Could that have been what the dark-haired woman had in mind?
As if the sight of this woman wasn’t strange enough, what I noticed next shocked me: Although traffic had slowed, not one car had stopped … not one person had gone over to help her.
To be honest, I really didn’t want that good Samaritan to be me, either. I wanted to keep driving like everyone else so that I could take care of my business at AAA. I just wanted to get my “stuff” done and head back home.
My conscience, however, would have no part in driving right past this dazed-looking woman. I tried, but with each second I drove past her, the voice inside of me grew louder. “What the heck are you doing, Tess? How can you not stop? You’ll be filled with regret if you don’t. Just turn around and go back.” And I did. At the first opportunity, I turned around. I knew that my conscience was right. It’s always right, isn’t it?
It would be wasted time anyway, I told myself. Surely, by the time I had completed my turn-around maneuver and drove back to whatever point the woman had reached by then, someone else would have stopped. I was wrong. She was still walking—undisturbed, still staring ahead, and, miraculously, without having been struck.
I was relieved that she was still walking and not lying injured on the ground. But I also had this, “Crap, I’m really going to have to this,” feeling inside. And then I thought back to my sighting of the little girl and thought, Lord, if there’s a point you’re trying to make with me, could we please take it off-road next time?
I pulled into the gas station parking lot (yes, the very same gas station parking lot mentioned above), quickly parked, and then carefully waded into traffic. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go far; by then the woman had just about reached the gas station.
As I approached this obviously troubled individual, a driver who had slowed to almost a stop, put down his window and felt it necessary to share. “That lady shouldn’t be out here in the middle of the road,” he said. A real genius.
I should have been a smartass and hit him with, “You don’t say. And you feel so strongly about that that you’re driving right by.” Instead, I brushed him with a benign “I know … that’s why I stopped.”
The long-haired woman let me come to her. She didn’t seem alarmed. She didn’t seem much of anything, with a flat affect and slightly-stooped posture as she walked. When I said, “We have to get off the road,” she allowed me to place a hand on her shoulder and guide her into the parking lot, toward my car. It was a hot day, so I opened the back door, and, with arm and hand extended, offered her a seat.
“It’s hot, and you must be exhausted. Why don’t you sit down in my car.”
She accepted without a word.
I handed money to a teenage boy who was standing nearby, taking it all in.
“Would you please go buy two bottles of water?”
After a moment’s hesitation, he headed for the convenience store located on the other side of the gas pumps.
A police car arrived; someone had at least notified them. Two officers came up to my car and one politely addressed me.
“Hello, ma’am. Do you know this woman?”
“No. I just saw her walking down the middle of the road.”
To this point, I had not heard one word from her. She had walked and stared ahead and that was it. One of the officers tried to get a name.
“Ma’am,” he said to her, “can you tell us your name?”
Nothing. He tried again.
“Ma’am, what’s your name? Can you tell us your name?”
Finally, a speck of engagement with the world outside of her world.
“Teresa,” she said. Her voice was barely audible.
Wait … what’s her name? Did she say …”
“Your name is Teresa? Where do you live, Teresa?” asked one of the officers.
No reply. Her engagement with the world lasted three syllables.
By then, word had been relayed to the officers that a woman matching Teresa’s description had recently been observed in another part of town.
“Mrs. Enterline” (the police had also, apparently, run my license plate through their system), “we appreciate your help. We’ll take care things here.”
It felt wrong to leave the long-haired woman, to abandon her like that. But, there was nothing more I could do, and, certainly, nothing more I was being asked to do except, in a polite way, to leave.
And I was relieved by that. It had all become a bit much.
The officers helped Teresa into the back seat of their cruiser, and I sat down in the driver’s seat of my car. I got back onto Linglestown Road, drove ten minutes to the AAA office, and took care of business, just as I had set out to do half an hour before. Emotionally, though, I hadn’t moved an inch away from the long-haired woman, Teresa. Emotionally, I was still hanging in that moment’s pause after she had said her name.
I carried on with the things I had to do—dinner, clean-up, nighttime routine—and made my way into the next day. But my thoughts kept going back—to this day my thoughts still drift back—to my encounter with the long-haired woman.
I had stopped to help her, and, even though her name could have been any one of thousands of names, it was the same as mine. Maybe I’d be better off if I could take a situation like that and say, “So what.” Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), I’m a “need to know why” kind of person.
So once again, my questions: Why, God? What does it all mean? For what purpose?
I so wanted answers, just like after I had spotted the little girl. But just like then, I knew there would be none. It would be yet another divine moment of, “What the heck just happened, Lord?”
It’s a mystery, I tell myself, in the hope that it will quiet my wild speculation and my desire to understand what it all means. If only “it’s a mystery” could ever be a satisfying answer. But it’s never enough to truly assuage my need to know why. Which makes we wonder, what answer would satisfy me? What do I want to hear?
What answer do I so want to hear from God that I can almost taste the vanity-coated words I allow myself to imagine?
I’m ashamed to say it.
I want to hear God say, “Teresa, you are special.”
I want God to tell me that yes, He could have chosen any number of people to pause at the STOP sign and see the little girl, or turn onto Linglestown Road and come upon the long-haired woman. But, God would go on to say in my imagined conversation, He specifically chose me in both cases, because He knew that I would listen to my conscience and do something.
In that last assumption—that I would listen to my conscience—God would be correct. The fear of regret and self-recrimination probably drives at least half of the actions I take in life.
It is the other declaration—that I am special—that I cannot lay claim to.
I cannot allow myself to believe such a lofty thing. My conscience shoots down the notion every time it dares to enter my mind, because there have been too many times when I have failed to heed God’s call to love, feed, clothe, forgive, comfort, pray, share, be slow to anger, put myself out, pull someone close, or risk something for Him. I wish I could be more of all that is good … be more of all that I’m called to be.
On so many occasions, though, I fall short. I fail. I show you the imperfect me. It is my humanness that makes perfection impossible.
It is my humanness that will, at times, make being more special than someone else, more important to me than being special to God, which requires nothing of me except to exist in this human condition.
I am special to God … no more, no less than anyone else. That is enough. That is a gift.
I am loved by God simply because I exist … because I am here, with all of my imperfections.
That God could so love me … that I am special to Him, despite my many infidelities … that is a mystery, and a grace God gives to each of us.
And what if I hadn’t helped the little girl or the long-haired woman—would God love me any less, would I be any less special to him? No, and no. But I know the regret of it would be with me to this day.
(Photo Credit: Aleyna Rentz on Unsplash)