A Time to Give and a Time to Receive

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Sunday morning we followed an elderly neighbor whizzing along the sidewalk in her motorized wheelchair enjoying the sunshine and headed for church. As she came around the corner, she was stymied by an unexpected stretch of ground where the cement had been entirely removed and all that was left were orange warning barricades at each end of the walkway with excavated earth in between. She slowed and danced the chair in a complete circle, looking for an alternative route but obviously decided the incline to the street was too steep for taking a chance in her less-than-heavy-duty conveyance. I wondered if for a moment she thought about simply reversing direction and going home.  But by then I had stopped the car. My husband was already heading across the street to help. Immediately behind us, a widow down the block slowed her car and parked to joined him.

In my neighbor’s attempt to circumvent the obstacle, the wheelchair was now stuck in the soggy mud. As my husband and the widow worked to lift it up and out of the muck, at least three other cars passed. One at a time each one slowed with an offer to help. By their combined efforts, they lifted the heavy chair and its occupant onto the asphalt and helped the neighbor reroute to safety. Then they stood guard as she crossed a major street to the chapel.

When we all were finally settled with the congregation and the organ prelude began, I saw my neighbor in her chair parked next to a pew several rows in front of me. She lifted a song book out its pocket behind the bench, thumbing through the pages looking for the opening hymn. And she was smiling.

I knew exactly how she felt. Forty years before I recalled standing in the crowded foyer of a different chapel. We lived in a brand-new neighborhood which was growing exponentially (10 families a week!). Our church building housed four wards, which meant trying to get to a Sunday School class after sacrament meeting was a logistical nightmare because another huge ward was leaving the classrooms simultaneous with us trying to enter them. The width of the halls was not built for that kind of population press. I was pregnant again—not a surprise when we end up with a houseful of kids, but I was also seriously morning sick. (I’d been fine with the five boys before, so I was optimistic that it was a sign of another girl.) My stomach began to roll, and I plunged into the sea of people around me hoping to get to the ladies’ room before I lost the breakfast I hadn’t had time to eat.

 Unexpectedly, I felt someone wrap her hand around my elbow and began guiding me through the crowded hall. “You’re looking a little green,” she whispered in my ear. I was surprised. It was a fairly new neighbor whom I didn’t know well. And I certainly hadn’t told anyone I was pregnant. (Even in an LDS ward where children were welcome, I generally avoided announcing a new baby until it was obvious because I already had a large enough family that people looked at me askance as if my pro-creation button needed adjustment.)

“Make way,” my new friend ordered as she forged a pathway down the hall. When we made it to the rest room, she held the door open for me. “I’ll be here if you need me,” she said.

It was several minutes before I was able to wash out my mouth and exit. True to her word, she was just outside. “I’ll be bringing dinner about five,” she told. “Just go home and rest while you can.” I think I started to cry; I’m not sure. Though we often had families in the ward for Sunday dinner, almost no one invited us back. Who could afford to feed their own family and one with six children in addition?

Promptly at five o’clock that afternoon, my new friend knocked. She and her two children carried steaming plates of food that smelled wonderful to every family member not pregnant. My husband, whose major interest in life has always been eating, hustled them in and called the children to dinner. I was too sick to join them, but I’ll never forget the relief which lifted from my shoulders when I heard her voice at the door. I had been lying on my bed with my eyes closed trying to push back the nausea for most of the day. But now I was smiling.

 I remember thinking about an old, familiar scripture from the New Testament which I had learned as a child in Sunday School. It had always hung heavily upon my conscience because I knew that I sometimes intentionally ignored the burdens of people around me: Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Until that day—so sick I could barely lift my head—I had never considered that some days all of us have occasion to be the givers; but other days there is no question that we are the receivers in need. A lesson worth learning no matter how complex attendance on Sunday morning turns out to be.