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Walking through the Post Office parking lot this morning, I noticed a young woman with a baby on her hip. She was stopping older women walking to their cars with a request if she could speak with them.
I eavesdropped on the beginning of the conversation and learned that the young woman was in need of money. She was pleading her case that she and the baby had been evicted from their apartment and she had been to several churches looking for assistance. The best they would offer, she said, was as day’s worth of diapers for her baby.
I have no idea if her story was legitimate, or if she was running a scam. I didn’t stick around to listen, keeping my head down and pointing myself toward my car. As I drove away, though, I glanced back and thought to myself, “There but for the grace of God, go I.”
In the next second, I wondered what I would have done if she had stopped me. My best answer was that I would have put her in my car and driven her to the grocery store. I would have bought her a week’s supply of whatever her baby needed – knowing full well it would have been at the expense of the food I needed to put on our table – but I couldn’t house her and I couldn’t pay her rent.
So ultimately, I would have not been able to help in any substantive way. She would still be telling her same story to another woman in the parking lot.
It is an odd sensation for me to be unable to help. I always have helped and I’ve never before been in a position not to be able to help. It’s ingrained in my very soul.
These are new waters for me to navigate. They’re making me feel very uncomfortable and tentative. I really need to find my way back, soon.
