Thanks for giving me the opportunity to help someone in need yesterday and for reminding me that first impressions are often wrong.
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You see, here I was at the train station in Industry waiting for my mom to pick me up when this older black man pulled up in his mechanical wheelchair. At first I thought, "Oh no. Not a creeper..." but he turned out to be just fine.
He had just missed the train (it left the station as soon as he pulled up) and he now had to take the Foothill bus and a subway back to LA. He was picking up mail from his sister and because of an errand or two that she had to run he was late. He wasn't bitter though. He instead quoted the apostle Paul and referred to the story of Job, saying he was not going to be discouraged or curse God because things didn't turn out exactly as he had planned. As luck would have it as soon as he was about to leave to find the bus stop his sister pulled up.
He had mentioned before that his sister was willing to drive him back. Only problem: How to make his scooter fit in her car. That's where I came in.
With a little patience, a couple hiccups, and some heavy lifting the 3 of us were able to put his chair in the back of her mini-SUV. There was a security guard across the way but instead of driving up and offering to help he just sat in his air-conditioned car and watched as we struggled. What's worse? As soon as we had figured it out and gotten his chair into the car he drove right past us and nodded.
Whatever dude.
Things happen for a reason and if I had just gotten picked up from school or asked my dad rather than my mom to pick me up from the station, I would have missed out on helping these sweet people because God knows the security guard wasn't going to do ish. The feeling I got from it was pure bliss and reminded me how nice it is to do things for others, especially complete strangers.
You really work in mysterious ways.
