Dear Frank,

Remember my good friend, Mary, in El Paso?  No, maybe that was before your time. I thought about her recently- about something that happened and how it came full circle.

Back when I was a young mother, she and I would exercise, run stadium steps (can you believe it?) and buy groceries together while the children were in school. One day, she pulled over on a busy road to move an animal that had been struck and killed by a car. Traffic moved along steadily, people passing by quickly. Nothing required her to intervene. And yet she did. She turned on her flashers and, with a steady, unhurried care, moved the lifeless body to the side of the road.

There was no announcement, no visible emotion, no sense that this was a particularly notable act. She finished and went on, as though this were simply part of how one moved through the world. Mary was like that, and over the years many moments have come to mind that speak to the kind of life she lived.

At the time, I remember thinking it was a far more courageous act than anything I could imagine myself doing. It felt like a step well beyond my own comfort, taken for the sake of a small, unremarked kindness.

Without realizing it at the time, something was taught to me that stayed.

Yesterday, on an ordinary Tuesday morning as I was leaving a church meeting at St John’s, I encountered a moment that called that image back to mind. A small black-and-white cat lay motionless in the road. I felt the familiar hesitation that comes when something asks more of us than we expect to give. It didn’t feel like rising to the occasion so much as being presented with an opportunity to respond. I found myself thinking of what I would want had I been the owner of this pet. My eyes welled with tears as I made a U-turn to go back, still unsure that I had the strength to follow my instinct. I put the car in park and turned on my flashers, upset and gathering myself.   Before I had to decide about this alone, two men pulled over.

One was elderly, the other younger. They understood immediately, without discussion or direction, and got out. The elderly gentleman helped direct traffic, all the while saying, “Don’t you cry now. I got you,” in a voice that felt steady and kind, as if holding the moment in place for all of us. He repeated this. “Don’t cry. I got you.”

Walking towards the middle of the road, I hesitated and looked at him. He nodded, gave me a thumbs-up, as if to say “go ahead” and once again bolstered me with, “I got you.”

Quickly, I moved the cat’s body to the side of the road, doing only what was required, and then stepped back. There was a shared clarity in the moment, an unspoken agreement about how one responds when something small and vulnerable is in danger of being overlooked. It felt less like instruction and more like recognition, as though we were all drawing from a strength we somehow shared. Actually, I know we were.  

I hugged him, knowing that the support I needed had indeed been heaven-sent. It stayed with me long after I drove away. What I remember most now is not only the small act itself, but the way the moment unfolded. I had turned the car around thinking I was facing something difficult I was led to do, but alone. Instead, two people appeared who understood immediately what was needed: an elderly man who stood calmly in the road saying, “Don’t you cry now. I got you.” And a younger man who stepped out without hesitation. The three of us, strangers, suddenly working together in a moment that might easily have been passed by.

It reminded me that the shaping moments of a life rarely arrive with fanfare. They appear unexpectedly, in ordinary hours, and ask only that we respond as best we can, and sometimes, when we do, we discover that we are not alone after all.

Perhaps this is one of the ways God’s goodness travels: through example remembered, through courage borrowed, and through the kindness of strangers who appear at just the right moment to say, “I got you.”

Love,

Jane