Laura Lowder – One Woman's Thoughts

It’s easy to let the blog slide when I have other things happening.

Two months at the store, and it’s beginning to feel like mine. Not my dearest dream, but high up on my list for a number of years.

It’s nice to be able to help people. I think perhaps the most effective way of helping people is to do it unawares, just as an incidental thing, unself-consciously.

Woman came in last week, and replied to my offer of assistance, “You already have.” Turns out she was in the store one of the two days I was training, last December (when I was supposed to be a fill-in person only) and in the course of conversation I’d mentioned a nursing care facility where my ex-brother-in-law had been. Marie, my sister-in-law, had really loved the place – after a series of visits to other fancier places with reputations and not good service. When she found a good facility, she stuck with it.

The woman remembered what I’d said, and in January, her husband had fallen, issues had been discovered that meant he really needed full-time staff care… and she remembered my remark. She visited the nursing home, found it even more than I had said (a doctor friend of ours is the medical advisor, which I had not known) – and had never even looked at another facility.

I had no conscious memory of why I mentioned this nursing home. It was just a general conversation, seemingly inconsequential. But I ended up giving this dear, lovely woman some concrete assistance at a time of great crisis.

That’s humbling, and very gratifying. Makes me think of St. Paul’s advice to the churches, to let every word that comes out of your mouth be something edifying and uplifting. Quite an ambition, isn’t it.

IN OTHER NEWS: Deliberate Engagement was included in the list of pro-life resources at the Life Conference in our diocese two weeks ago.