Many years ago, my husband told me that on his way home one evening, he caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of an older woman and man in a restaurant parking lot. She was standing, reaching down to him feebly, and he was on his knees, one arm stretched up and tugging futilely on a railing.
Cars zipped past in the dark, and no one seemed to notice the elderly couple in the parking lot. My husband pulled into the restaurant parking lot, went up to them, and asked, “Do you need help?”
The old woman said, “He does,” gesturing at her husband. She explained that he had spotted a dime on the ground, bent down to pick it up, even though she told him it was just a penny (a fact which she reminded them of a few more times), and now he couldn’t get back up.
My husband could tell that the man was very tall, even with him kneeling on the ground, and the woman was much shorter. She was struggling and could not help him stand up. My husband, who is also quite tall, offered to let the man drape an arm around his neck, and then he would stand up and help him to his feet.
The man nodded, but also insisted, “It was a dime.”
“It’s a penny!” his wife told him, shaking her head.
My husband laughed, crouched down for the man to toss an arm around his shoulders, and then said, “You tell me when.”
“I’m ready,” the man told him, and my husband slowly stood up until the old man was straightened up and back on his feet.
Quickly, my husband scrambled through one pocket, felt a dime, and slipped it onto the ground, hoping they hadn’t seen him do it. He bent down, picked up the dime, and held it out to the old man, saying, “Look! It was a dime!”
The old lady laughed and said, “It was a penny!”, but the old man just smiled and took the dime and thanked my husband for helping.
Like I said, that was several years ago. Yesterday, my husband was walking to his truck in a store parking lot when he heard a woman calling, “Oh! You! Sir! In the blue shirt!”
He turned, saw an older woman waving to him from across the parking lot, walking with a younger woman who looked like her daughter. As they approached, the older woman said, “You don’t remember me, do you?”
My husband works with a lot of customers and sees a lot of faces every day. At first he couldn’t place her, and he apologized, but she said, “It’s all right. I remember you! Do you remember helping an old man on the ground in a parking lot?”
Now my husband remembered all of it, and he laughed and said, “Yes! Trying to get a penny — I mean, dime!”
The old woman told him that her husband had passed away last year, and that he had told that story about my husband helping them out in the parking lot to everyone he knew. In every re-telling, he insisted it was a dime on the ground, and she insisted it was a penny, so he dramatically brandished the dime as evidence. Both she and her husband agreed on one thing, though: they believed that God sent my husband there that evening to help them out. She said her husband had always wanted to see him again to give him something.
She pulled out a small coin purse, and from a pocket on the side, she took something out and handed it to my husband: a dime.
My husband pulled the dime out of his pocket as he told me the story, and my eyes instantly filled up. He put the dime on the table, and I said we should put it into an envelope so it didn’t get mixed in with regular change or get lost. That dime is worth so much more than ten cents to him.
The older woman took him by the arm, and the younger woman patted his arm, then they went on their way, and my husband went home.
We were at the dinner table when he told me this story, and my heart swelled with pride at the man he is, the kind heart he has, the way he genuinely cares about other people. I love that he was able to help them and that he stayed in their hearts all that time for the gentle, giving person that he is. I love that the old woman was so excited to run into him again after all these years. I love that the old man saved the dime and wanted to give it back, like it was his way of saying he knew all along that my husband had tossed the dime onto the ground, but he was grateful that he had.
I love that when everyone was speeding past, my husband stopped and helped. I love him for many, many reasons, and his pure heart is most definitely one of them. Best of all, I love when someone else sees the beauty of his heart and cherishes and appreciates it, too.
Sweat & Sparkle 