a tender mercy in six-minutes (and five shopping carts), and no less...

I have about 15 grocery bags sitting on my kitchen counter and floor competing for my attention but this post simply could not wait. I had to document, to share, my sweet little experience at the store just now.

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I was all done--my cart was overflowing, both with children and food and other products from Target's well-stocked shelves. I had one last item to grab, a rotisserie chicken from the deli. I won't go as far as to say I was angry or that it ruined my day, but I cannot deny I was annoyed that after 75 minutes of shopping with two little boys, I was going to have to wait another SIX MINUTES for the deli's next batch of chicken to be done cooking. SIX MINUTES, which any young mother knows can seem like an eternity! All the items from my list had been found and collected, so there was nothing to do but wait. How bad did I really want this chicken? Hmmm...mentally I weighed my options: wait six minutes for tonight's dinner or save myself six minutes NOW and pay for it by cooking 20 minutes tonight. Mental calculation DONE: waiting it was. Thankfully my boys continued being very well-behaved and I was surprised how quickly the six minutes passed. Yes, I was tired of being there and sooo ready for it to be over, but any annoyance I'd had was now gone as I made my way to the check-out stand.

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Two registers were open: 5 and 6. Pulling into 5 I noticed there was only one customer in front of me, a man who looked to be in his mid-to-late 50's. Now everyone knows having just one customer in front of you is definitely not that bad. However, this man had four (YES, FOUR!) very full carts trailing behind him. Puzzled and assuming not all those carts could belong to him, I asked the Target employee if someone else had left one or two of the carts there while they ran to get something they forgot. The man answered for her saying, "No these are all mine and my wife is coming with a fifth." He gave his most apologetic smile as he contined, "I'm afraid we're going to be a while." Grateful for the warning, but still astonished (and curious!) at the humongous purchase he was making, I headed into Checkout 6, where a woman twice my age and yet three times as skinny in her yoga pants bought a small collection of items - Protein Bars, Protein Shakes, and bottled water. (Yeah...give me my size 16 pajama pants and my Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, I say...)

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Anyway, by the time it was my turn to unload the cart, the wife of Mr. Checkout 5 had come with the fifth cart and they were about half-way through scanning it all. I could hear a Target supervisor calling for employees to assist this couple with their items to the car. I found that I could not take my eyes off them! They were buying everything under the sun, it seemed: canned food, blankets, first-aid items, pantry food, batteries, tupperware, bedsheets, you name it. And then I heard it. The question every person within earshot was dying to have answered. The supervisor asked about this unusual amount of merchandise. Their answer? The wife timidly replied they were shipping everything to Africa, where they were soon to become the mission presidents in the Congo area. She explained it is a brand new mission and they are the ones to get it started. Of course her answer was interesting enough, but the look on her face spoke volumes. In one look she translated several emotions, such as nervousness, humility, and maybe even a little bit of insecurity. But above it all, she was brilliant with the look of FAITH. I mean, you'd have to have faith to do leave everything (everyone) behind and do something like that! I stood there paying for my (one) cart of groceries, in awe of these two servants. Here they are, spending $1692 (yes, I absolutely could not resist peeking at the total on the register screen as I walked by) and basically turning their lives upside down to travel across the world to a vulnerable area to begin the Lord's work. I wondered what their lives had been like since they'd gotten the call--tying up loose ends...either selling their home or finding someone to maintain it, squeezing in as much time with their children and grandchildren as possible, doing research on the internet and making list after list of the necessary preparations.

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My eyes grew hot with tears and it took all I had not to completely succumb to the emotions in the burning of my chest. How grateful I was that I had been there to witness this scene. And had I been to the register 6 minutes earlier? I'm confident there is a high possibility I would have missed it. The Lord knew I needed that today. He knew I needed to see the sweet sacrifices others make to not only live the gospel but to share it with others. I couldn't get home fast enough to journal that moment--I was afraid somehow those feelings would leave me and I'd forget all about it. But as I write, it's apparent that I will keep this tender mercy with me for quite some time. Probably even beyond dinner tonight at 6:00 when we all sit down for our Rotisserie Chicken. And I'm also betting that at 6:00 p.m., somewhere in Davis County, is a middle-aged couple who will still be unloading their Target bags of groceries.

Burdens or Blessings?

I just read the most amazing article online at Light Refreshments Served. It was a reminder to me that each person on this earth is a valued, even treasured, human being. And especially that for those mortal beings who are afflicted with mental disabilities and special needs their physical bodies are not an accurate reflection of who they are inside--their spirits are whole and complete and most likely much more righteous and "magnificent" than the rest of us. This article gave me perspective, reminding me that their presence here on this earth may very well be a sacrifice on their part in an effort to bless our lives. It's not enough for me to simply share the link--I feel a need to share this entire article...so I've copied/pasted it below. Thanks, Emily Watts, for your insight and the courage to share your tender mercy. Now it's become a little bit mine, too.

"DISABLED:

I missed our ward’s sacrament meeting today, as I do approximately every third week because that’s how often our turn comes up to spend the weekend with my husband’s severely disabled sister, who was born with Down Syndrome. She is not one of those high-functioning Down’s kids who can get on a bus and have a little job and participate at least somewhat in real life. She understands a little, talks even less, and basically eats, sleeps, and enjoys car rides and going to the swings. Her mother, sole caregiver, died a year ago February, and my husband’s magnificent sister-in-law stepped in, quitting her job and taking the weekday shift to care for this girl in the mother’s home every single week. The rest of us trade off on weekends. This was to be our temporary solution until a suitable group home could be found, but with funding for such things pretty much dried up in today’s economy, we’re realizing that may never happen. So we do the best we can and carry on.

Because I teach Gospel Doctrine, when it’s our weekend, I take the early morning shift and then my husband rushes over right after sacrament meeting so I can dash out and teach Sunday School. Then I generally attend a later ward’s sacrament meeting long enough to partake of the ordinance.

And that’s how it went today. Except today I got a little verbose in Sunday School and we didn’t get out in time for me to get to the 11:00 ward’s sacrament meeting, so I went back over at 1:00, to a ward I hadn’t attended before. It’s one of those wards in which the youth program is small, and there was only one Aaronic Priesthood kid helping; the rest were elders and high priests. I realized from watching him that he too was suffering from some sort of disability. But not until they said the prayer on the water did I get the severity of it. An older man (I’m assuming it was his dad) knelt beside him and whispered the words in his ear, and he repeated them in that kind of blunt voice that is characteristic of kids with Down’s or other similar problems. I wouldn’t have understood his words, but as he said them I knew that Heavenly Father did.

It was a sweet experience. I thought, “This is a young man who probably didn’t even need to be baptized, much less ordained, but someone recognized the worth of what he could give, limited though it might be, and gave him the chance to give it.” All our lives were blessed by that decision, by what that boy brought to the table with him in a pure and undefiled spirit.

THAT thought took me back about 15 years to the one year I went to girls’ camp as a leader. We had a disabled girl in our group who suffered with both physical and mental challenges, but her mom was coming to camp and they decided she could come too. It was so precious to have her there. No one could be catty or mad at each other; the usual squabbles disappeared in the innocence of her concerned, “Don’t be sad. I love you.” I was especially moved when one of the girls, seeing that we might not be able to take this girl on our “flashlight hike” devotional, hoisted her onto her back and carried her the whole way. Our entire camp was blessed that year because of the girl who might have been seen as a “bother.”

And that brings me full circle to my husband’s sister. Is she a “bother,” or is she the catalyst that has allowed her brothers and sisters to continue to work together, to sacrifice together, to unite in a common goal? She is nearly 40 years old–a long life for one with her condition. Could her lingering here in mortality actually be a sacrifice she was willing to make for us, to help us learn things and gain experiences we could not have gotten any other way? I don’t know how that works, exactly, but I DO know this: Her life counts.

And our responses to her life count. The willingness of her siblings to defer their own inheritance (they will not sell her mother’s house until their sister no longer needs it) and a significant portion of their own lives to see her safely through–it may end up counting more than they know. It’s about as close to doing it “unto the least of these” as it gets, and the Lord is pretty clear on how He feels about that.

I look forward to meeting my little sister-in-law someday on the other side of the veil. I expect her spirit is quite magnificent. I hope I’ll be worthy to look her in the eye, unashamed of how I treated her here, and thank her for what she brought to our family. Her burden was our blessing, I’ll tell her. A sweet young priest reminded me of that today. I hope I’ll remember it always."