Sometimes good things come out of bad ones.

Love is All Around


Over the weekend I went home for another family visit. On my way back on Sunday evening the car I was driving gave out on the road. I coasted to a stop on the broad shoulder beside a long fence that fronted what was clearly an inhabited house and land. The car refused to start again.

My first thought was to get to a telephone to call for help. My second was the realization that I had come to rest directly in front of the house’s driveway. I would have to move the car to avoid inconveniencing anyone. Fortunately small hatchbacks with standard transmissions are fairly easy to push. Within moments of my moving the car away from the driveway a vehicle pulled in. I could hardly have cut it any closer!

The driver turned out to be the lady of the house. She loaned me a cell phone. I left messages on Dad’s cell phone and landline (It was no use calling Mom’s cell, since she was still in Spain on her overseas study program). I knew that Dad would be at church and would likely not get the message for a while.

The lady’s husband appeared a few minutes later. He helped me to push the car a few yards down the highway off the shoulder and into a secondary driveway on the property. He let me use his cell to call my Sunday school teacher, Sandy, to beg for a ride. Sandy was home with grandchildren. Her husband, Gale, was still at church. She said that she would call him.

The homeowner pulled up his pickup and applied the jumper cables to the car. It started up with no problem. This indicated either a bad battery or a bad alternator. As I knew that the battery was relatively new, the alternator seemed the likely culprit.

Sandy called back to say that Gale and the church pastor would come to get me. I told her where I was, using a nearby mile marker as a handy landmark. It would take them the better part of an hour to arrive.

I settled down by the car to wait. My unexpected host kindly brought me a bottle of chilled water. I sat and drank water and read a book I had had with me. Though hot, the evening was quite beautiful. I had a scenic spot along the road, with the long rail fence just behind me and a long stretch of road over rolling hills out front. It was not such a bad wait.

Brother Robin and Gale arrived in the pastor’s big pickup. We loaded my luggage. I squeezed into the cab between Brother Robin (a very large man) and Gale. On the way home we talked about my breakdown, swapped old breakdown stories, and finished up with a discussion of motorcycles.

When I got home I called and left Dad a message that I had made it safely. Unfortunately I was too late. Dad, after finishing with church and getting supper at the truck stop, had come home and gotten my earlier message. He promptly changed clothes and headed out to get me, fearing that I might have spent hours stranded by myself and growing dehydrated. When he found the car and saw that I and my belongings were gone, he realized that I must have gotten a ride home. He called me then.

At this point it was well after ten. Dad was much closer to my house than to his. I invited him to come spend the night with me. He accepted. I folded out and made up the sofa bed. The state of the house embarrassed me a little. While it is hardly a pig sty, my experiences of the past few months have left me with little inclination and less energy to stay on top of housekeeping. I decided not to let it worry me too much.

The next morning Dad took me out to breakfast. I went in to work early to take care of some necessary business. After the staff arrived I told them what was up, fielded a couple of important telephone calls, and left some instructions. Then Dad and I went to get the car.

We moved the car into some roadside shade and removed the alternator. There was a large town only a few miles away. We discovered that nobody in town had an alternator for that car in stock. This was disappointing, but not too surprising with a car that old. Dad put the alternator back in, took the battery to a repair shop to have it fully charged, and followed me as I drove it home on that charge. He plans to order another alternator through the parts supplier he usually deals with and bring it down in a few days.

The whole business constituted a real inconvenience for me and all of those who helped me. It gave me a useful reminder, though, that sort of makes it all worthwhile.

There can be few things more shocking than learning that the person you love most in the all world does not love you; that the person you have trusted the most has betrayed your trust repeatedly and become your enemy. The experience does something to one’s heart and mind. It brings home just how common, even normal now, hatred and anger and dysfunction are in this world. It makes one wonder sometimes whether our self-centered society has not fallen so low that loving relationships are no longer possible.

But since then I’ve experienced many things that have shown me otherwise. What I saw when I became stranded a few days ago was a great example of this. I saw two people react to the sudden arrival of a total stranger in need on their doorstep by giving freely of their time and resources to help. I saw church members prepared to burn expensive gas and valuable time to bring someone home. I saw a father prepared to make a late-night long-distance drive to take care of his forty-year-old child, and then spend the next day off from work to help get things fixed.

All of these people showed love in what they did—love of fellow human beings they did not know, of fellow Christians, of their own grown children. I’ve found a lot of that love wherever I’ve gone in the last few months. I’m very grateful for it. I want to show it to other people in turn. It is the only way to live.

I married someone who saw far less love and far more hate than I did growing up. It seemed when we married that the love had won out in that life. Now I see that it hasn’t. Some people lose sight of the love that still remains and give in to the hatred and selfishness that are consuming our world. They become selfish and hateful in turn. It is everyone’s loss when that happens, but most of all the individual’s own. Seeing it happen inspires pity more than anger.

Love can still be found in this world. It will survive here and there and around, with God’s help, until God at last puts an end to the hatred and selfishness and makes the world anew. That light will continue shining in a darkening world. It is something to keep one’s eyes on.

Thank you for sharing this, DL. It is not just evidence of the love of friends, neighbor's and strangers, but also of God's love and concern for you that your car would break down in front of a house where people were willing to help as opposed to the middle of nowhere. But no matter what, He is still with you always. Thank you for sharing this story. God bless.

The funny thing is, the way your situation unfolded has happened to me more often than not. Most people really are happy to help when they are given a chance.