So many beautiful items lined the tables at the craft booth where my husband, Tony, and I were shopping, but my eye went straight to the woman behind the counter. She had long, snow white hair and an air of… I didn’t know how to describe it, but she was the first thing to have gotten my attention all day.
I’d spent the day before in the hospital, visiting a good friend in the mental health ward. The hospitalization wasn’t a surprise. It came after months of worry, late-night phone calls and troubling conversations. Nothing Tony or I had done—listening, helping out with shopping and cooking, making doctor appointments—had helped. Even our prayers haven’t had any effect, I thought as we drifted to a table full of knitwear. Feeling useless was exhausting, and I had to keep hope alive. For my friend’s sake.
Tony looked up from a pair of mittens. “Oh, look!” he said, gesturing toward the counter. A second woman had joined the salesperson there. “I know her. We used to work together.”
We went over to say hello. Tony and his former colleague got caught up while the saleswoman and I stood by. Close-up she was even more striking. Eventually, my mind drifted back to my friend in the hospital. I closed my eyes. God, I need some hope.
Tony wrapped up his conversation. The saleswoman took my hand in one of hers and Tony’s in the other. “You’re so important, both of you,” she said. “You don’t know how much you help, but you do. You really do.”
She knew nothing about us, or our friend. Yet she’d not only named my greatest fear, she’d taken it away. Prayers are never useless. And where there was prayer, there was hope.
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