Do you know how it feels to do something nice for someone without expecting a reward or refusing to accept one? With the all-too-common, "What's in it for me?" attitude of many people these days, it's often easier to look the other way or hold back. But sometimes we are altruistic and we just do the right thing instinctively. Altruism is its own reward.
On a summer afternoon in an Orlando suburb, a violent thunderstorm had darkened the skies and was pelting rain like glass daggers as I tried to make it from my car to the Winn Dixie. (I must have needed something for dinner pretty badly to have been out in this weather.) The parking lot was deserted, but suddenly I saw a lone figure, a barefooted woman, staggering and wobbling through a curtain of rain, trying to get to the grocery store door. She was blonde and thin and absolutely soaking wet. As I helped her up and we stumbled to the door, she tried to speak, telling me she had been struck by lightning in the parking lot but needed to call her husband because their baby was alone in the car on a side street at least a block away! The mother had stalled out in a puddle and the car would not start. She ran through trees and puddles in this wild storm to get to a telephone to call her husband, who was a police officer.
The cashiers helped the woman make the phone call, but her breathing was labored and her heart was pounding. (I worked for a doctor at that time, so I was concerned about her condition.) I think she was so desperate to get back to her baby that she was running on pure adrenalin! I ran back out in the rain, got into my car and picked up the woman at the door. It was still pouring rain but I got her back to her car and the baby was fine! The mother seemed relieved and began to relax enough so that I felt better about leaving her, but not without my objection. She convinced me that her husband was on the way and my own two children were about to get off the school bus, so I needed to get home.
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I think anyone would have done what I did that afternoon, but I felt good that I was able to help this bedraggled woman get back to her baby. I think we are all God’s messengers at times, if we just respond when opportunity knocks! Do you have a story to share? Have you been someone’s Guardian Angel? I would love to hear about it.
