Groceries and Grace

 

The stooped old woman shuffled up to the cash register to pay for the two items her gnarled arthritic hands could barely grasp. Her thin frame trembled a bit as she took each tentative step towards her goal. The only nod to the once-strong woman she’d been was the steely iron in her thin gray hair, and the resolve with which she moved forward to the task at hand. At last, she placed her purchases on the moving but utterly lifeless conveyor belt and leaned gratefully against the edge of the counter trying to regain her balance. When it was her turn to pay, she became confused and began fumbling through her worn leather wallet for some meager coins. The fragile elderly woman seemed oblivious to the barely concealed impatience of the matronly store clerk.

Suddenly a second customer lurched forward with unceremonious clamor. One of the two large bottles of alcoholic spirits she precariously carried fell with a loud “thunk” onto the still-moving and still-uncaring conveyor belt and the young thirtyish-something woman almost completely dropped the second bottle on the floor. The new and obviously very inebriated shopper managed to juggle it and the case of beer she was also clutching for dear life. Her stale breath reeked of a hard night of drinking and the cruel early afternoon light exposed the lines put on her once beautiful face by years of hard living. Dark eyes were made blacker by far too much mascara and eyeliner, all of which was smeared and ghastly-looking in contrast to the pallor of her sallow skin. She, too, seemed completely unaware of the glances of the few others in the store; some of derision but most of blatant disgust.

It was a moment frozen in time. Two rejected, forgotten outcasts “happened” to be on the same stage of a local drugstore with a few other customers playing the part of an unwitting and callously disinterested audience for the scene unfolding before them.

Suddenly, the young woman looked up from her own drunken misery and noticed the elderly woman ahead of her in line. The elderly woman seemed to awaken from her own stupor at about the same time, happening to glance backward at the tragic figure behind her. Their eyes met. The younger reached, though not with great aim, for the older, asking for a hug. Through tears running down her already smeared face, the young lady sobbed that her grandmother had just died, and that she missed her dreadfully. Obligingly, the older woman held the brokenhearted younger one. No one was sure if the almost deaf one’s hearing aids worked well enough to understand the slurred and garbled speech of the one weeping in her arms, wailing something about how beautiful the older woman was, and how worthy of love. And it is doubtful the younger woman heard the older woman’s soothing words of consolation through her own loud wailing. It didn’t matter; human comfort doesn’t need words.

But the bystanders heard. Perfect strangers glanced at each other shyly with soft smiles on their faces. Understanding eyes locked with suddenly sympathetic others’, communicating silently what all suddenly understood: Goodness was present; God was near.

The elderly woman was my mother, and I was standing in line between her and the other woman. That afternoon, I witnessed God using two human beings, each considered unlovely and unwanted by most of society, to show each other compassion. A hug between two strangers communicated the value and worth given by their Creator, and the lover of their souls. Heaven touched earth that day, and Kindness and Compassion changed everything, including my own heart.