Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance
of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and
rented the upstairs rooms to out patients at the clinic.
One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at
the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man. "Why,
he's hardly taller than my eight-year-old," I thought as I stared
at the stooped, shriveled body. But the appalling thing was his
face-lopsided from swelling, red and raw.
Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, "Good evening. I've come
to see if you've a room for just one night. I came for a
treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and there's no
bus 'til morning."
He told me he'd been hunting for a room since noon but with no
success, no one seemed to have a room. "I guess it's my face...I
know it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more
treatments..."
For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: "I
could sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves
early in the morning."
I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch. I
went inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I
asked the old man if he would join us. "No thank you. I have
plenty." And he held up a brown paper bag.
When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk
with him a few minutes. It didn't take long time to see that this
old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He
told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, her five
children, and her husband, who was hopelessly crippled from a
back injury.
He didn't tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other
sentence was preface with a thanks to God for a blessing. He
was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease, which was
apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him
the strength to keep going. At bedtime, we put a camp cot in
the children's room for him. When I got up in the morning, the
bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was out on the
porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his
bus, haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said,
"Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a
treatment? I won't put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a
chair." He paused a moment and then added, "Your children
made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but
children don't seem to mind." I told him he was welcome to come
again. And on his next trip he arrived a little after seven in
the morning. As a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the
largest oysters I had ever seen. He said he had shucked them
that morning before he left so that they'd be nice and fresh.
I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered what time he
had to get up in order to do this for us.
In the years he came to stay overnight with us there was never a
time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from
his garden. Other times we received packages in the mail, always
by special delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh
young spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed. Knowing
that he must walk three miles to mail these, and knowing how
little money he had made the gifts doubly precious. When I received
these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our
next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning. "Did
you keep that awful looking man last night? I turned him away!
You can lose roomers by putting up such people!"
Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice. But oh! If only they could have
known him, perhaps their illness' would have been easier to bear.
I know our family always will be grateful to have known him;
from him we learned what it was to accept the bad without
complaint and the good with gratitude to God.
Recently I was visiting a friend who has a greenhouse, As she
showed me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all,
a golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to my great
surprise, it was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket. I
thought to myself, "If this were my plant, I'd put it in the
loveliest container I had!"
My friend changed my mind. "I ran short of pots," she explained,
"and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it
wouldn't mind starting out in this old pail. It's just for a
little while, till I can put it out in the garden."
She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was
imagining just such a scene in heaven. "Here's an especially
beautiful one," God might have said when he came to the soul of
the sweet old fisherman. "He won't mind starting in this small
body."
All this happened long ago-and now, in God's garden,
how tall this lovely soul must stand.
I received this from Heartwarming
