Helping a guy out.
I wrote a while back about finally having our screened enclosure in our back yard fixed from the hurricane damage that it had from the 2004 Florida hurricanes Jeanne and Frances.
The guy that did it for us has been doing this type of work for a lot of years and he does impeccable work. He repaired and rescreened our enclosure and repaired and rehung our home's gutters. But he still had a couple of minor things to do.
This guy is a hard worker, but is a man who has fallen on hard times. He is slowly digging himself out of his troubles.
He called me last night and said he could finish today, but that he needed a ride. I picked him up at 8am this morning.
We came to the house and he got started. I have to eat something with my medicine so I was cooking myself some eggs. I suspected D. hadn't eaten this morning. I just made a bunch of scrambled eggs and had a little bacon and sausage. I made toast. The whole works.
I went out to where he was working, he was almost finished, and asked him if he was hungry. You should have seen the look he gave me. Man, I don't know if I'll ever forget it. Something so simple as food. He spoke loud and clear and said, "Yes, I am!"
I laughed and said, "You like milk?" Him, "Yes, I do!"
I brought our plates outside on the back patio and you could tell he was having to restrain himself from gobbling. He ate a massive plate of eggs, toast, sausage, and bacon. With milk.
Ten minutes later, he was like a different person. You could see that his energy level was better and he was smiling and talking. We had brought his bicycle in my trunk so that he could get around after 'my job' and I went ahead and took him to his next stop, a job he was doing on the other side of town.
He kept thanking me for the rides and talking of how much time it was saving him to get a ride to my house and the next job instead of having to ride the bike.
When I dropped him off, I gave him all the cash I had, enough to buy lunch and maybe supper with. He got tears in his eyes.
And I'm thinkin', it's just so little to me, but it's so much to him. You could look at me and know I've missed no meals and in fact he is really lean but very muscular, but I know he is living close to the edge.
He has several jobs going at once though and he's really optimistic and he leaves you feeling good about life, but it just was like a punch in the gut to me to see how hungry he was.
Every time I even start to get down about problems in my life, God puts something in my path to remind me of how blessed I am.
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