No Questions Asked

Having just returned from a long weekend, I had to make a grocery run. Making a run means that you want 7-11 speed with major grocery store selection. I figured fifteen minutes total from start to finish. What are the odds? As luck would have it, everyone else made their run at the same time. As luck would also have it, I found myself standing in line behind a woman with a basket full of groceries. It’s one of my life’s greatest unsolved mysteries, how I can pick the one line, at the bank or the grocery store, that always moves the slowest.

Sure enough, after the checker finished totaling up her purchase, the woman slid her debit card through the reader and it was rejected. The checker suggested she do it again, which she did, with the same result. She fumbled through her purse looking for cash or whatever. Finally, the checker suggested she take her card to the customer service desk and see if they could use her debit card to get cash. When she moved out of the lane, to my impatient relief, the checker started in on my basket.

Just as the checker finished with my purchase and I was pocketing the receipt, the debit card lady returned to announce that she’d had no luck getting cash. “I guess that deposit I made yesterday just hasn’t posted, yet,” she told the checker who then, very unsympathetically, helped her begin unloading her food. I couldn’t help but wonder how embarrassing all of this had been for the woman, knowing that several people saw and heard the whole ordeal.

By this time, my impatience had turned to pity. I remembered the times my mother, long before debit cards, wrote checks for groceries just hoping to beat the check to the bank the next day. I remembered the times when I was still in Jr. High mowing lawns for spending money that mom would borrow money from me just to buy groceries, making me promise I wouldn’t tell my dad. She always paid me back. It’s not the money that kills families, it’s those family secrets. They really suck, don’t they? Mom and dad both went to their graves without my breaking the private vow.

So, I’m standing behind this lady, about my age. No wedding ring on her finger and a basket full of single-serving meals. She had no credit card when the debit card didn’t work. Not enough cash to pay the balance. Never married? Divorced? Children? Who knows? It wasn’t mine to ask. I was pushing my cart away from the counter when something (or Someone) stopped me cold in my tracks. I looked back at the lady and wondered. I didn’t know her story, whether she was deserving of help or not. Then again, when the Prodigal came home, his Dad just doled out the grace freely, no questions asked.

Walking three steps back I asked the lady if she’d let me buy her groceries that day. You see, I remembered my mom and how sad I still feel for her. I still wonder how many humiliations she encountered at the grocery counter. I also remembered that we’d just gotten back from a weekend in South Texas where people hadn’t asked questions, they’d just doled out grace freely, generously, beyond belief. My heart was so full of unearned grace.

I honestly believe if I hadn’t given something of it to someone else, my soul would have burst from overflow. The lady tried to say “No,” graciously. But, it looked like she knew she needed to say, “Yes.” I didn’t and still don’t know her name, much less her story. She came and stood by me while the checker rang it all up. “I hope this makes you feel as good as it does me,” she said. “It does,” I said squeamishly. I could feel myself blushing; I felt embarrassed for being thanked for something I really needed to do. I didn’t have time to tell her the story of my sadness for mom or the unbelievable grace I had just experienced and how giving to her was both a healing experience for me and a liberating one.

“I’ll let you pay if you’ll give me your name and address,” she said. As I walked away with my basket full and my heart bursting at the seams, I shook her hand and said, “Don’t worry about it.” It wasn’t a loan. It was a gift.

It would be hard to describe how I felt while walking to my car. It was a rush like I haven’t felt in a long, long time. Giving, just for the fun of it! Wow! How do you describe that? I walked away, as though floating on white puffy cumulus clouds carried by the winds of the Spirit, having been reminded that grace isn’t really grace until it’s received and then given away. When we accept grace without giving it, our souls become Dead Seas of sad, dark, lifeless narcissism. We know that the Truth is setting us free when grace completes the circle and we give to others what Someone else gave us, no questions asked.