My wife and I were heading out of town for an early anniversary celebration. We were barely four blocks from home when we saw a car stopped in the street…then we saw the elderly lady laying on the sidewalk! The car belonged to another women who jumped out to help the lady who had fallen; she had jumped out so quickly that her engine was still running, music was still blasting and her car door was open. We immediately pulled over, shut our engine off, and went to help. My wife, being more philanthropic than me, didn’t even grab her coat (the temperature was about the freezing mark, but I grabbed both of our coats, remembering the airplane instructions to place the oxygen mask over your own face before assisting others).
The lady who had fallen was quite coherent, although I was doubtful at first, as she said she was on her way to therapy. There was no place to walk to therapy for miles. She was pushing a wheeled walker that also had a seat on it. The lady said she was not hurt, but I feared she broke an ankle or such, that there was no one to help her and that we would spend hours waiting for 911 to arrive, and have to follow her to the hospital.
Although it may not have been wise to try to lift someone who may have had a broken bone, it also seemed not wise to leave her sitting on the cold, snowy sidewalk, waiting for other help to arrive, especially if all she needed was help getting up. I told her I would lift her, put my arms around her as my wife and the good Samaritan woman got ready to help. I lifted her, and the woman could not get her legs under her. I feared something was broken. In the process however, I could not understand why she was not all the way up, nor could I understand why she was so heavy.
Well, it turns out she was quite tall, at least as tall as me ( 5’ 11”). My second effort got her vertical, and she turned and sat on her walker.
Turns out, she did not break anything, and it turns out that she
was on her way to therapy, simply waiting for her cousin to pick her up. We stayed with her and within just a couple minutes her cousin arrived. We helped her get in his vehicle, and then continued on our way.
Back in the car, I told Barb that we were destined to be there at that time. It is not a busy street in our neighborhood, it was late morning when few would have passed, and the kind lady who had already stopped to help could never have lifted her by herself.
Although I originally had a quick flash of selfishness because our departure time was delayed, I quickly got over it, not just because it was the humanitarian thing to do to help her, but I admit that it was because I felt God was challenging me to think of others, even when all I wanted to do was think selfishly about our delayed trip.
As it turned out, our trip was only delayed by a handful of minutes…but the positive feeling of helping this woman remained with me for days. She got the lift she needed from me…and I got the lift I needed from her.
