When everything’s going wrong, sister,” Mama used to advise me, “just stop what you’re doing and scrub the kitchen or turn out a big washing. With that kind of job, you see results. It gets you going again.”
That’s why I’d hastily stripped the beds and gathered up damp towels that warm and gusty morning and headed very early toward the apartment complex laundry room. I hoped I’d see no one. I didn’t feel like engaging in neighborly chitchat.
For days, it seemed, things had gone maddeningly wrong. My work, usually so satisfying, exasperated me. My closest friend seemed almost spoiling for a spat. The apartment needed cleaning, but I had little time. And now my throat felt scratchy.
Worst of all, my prayers seemed to bounce off the ceiling. I’d lost my joy, seemed headed into depression, and didn’t know why. No wonder God doesn’t listen, I thought. My problems are so tacky they bore him. I wouldn’t listen to me either!
My self-pity lifted, however, when I discovered Mrs. Joseph, my downstairs neighbor and one of my favorite people in the world, already stuffing rose-colored tablecloths and flowered napkins into a machine. “Whatever did we do before permanent press!” she exclaimed by way of greeting.
Mrs. Joseph always delighted me. I loved everything about her—her flowered dresses, her exquisite shoes, the music that drifted out of her windows. Her apartment was exactly like mine but much more modern with white carpets, glass tables, and accents of hyacinth blue and chrome yellow. She was seventy-nine and independent and refused to live with any of her four middle-aged daughters.
Of course, she loved to go shopping with “the girls,” take them to Bible study or to an art show. But live with one of them? Nonsense!
“I had twenty-four ladies from my church circle to tea,” Mrs. Joseph explained. “My apartment is too small for that. Since old ladies like to sit down, I set up card tables. Had six tables and put a bud vase with a fresh rose on each one. It looked real pretty!”
“You’re the hostess with the mostest,” I smiled, my spirits rising.
“Honey, there are so many lonely people! You get to my age and everybody you know is widowed—or divorced—and they mope around to beat the band. Keep moving is the secret, keep moving. Every day find something worthwhile to do.” She shook a tea towel vigorously and pitched it into the drier.
“You do get around,” I said. “I hardly ever see you anymore. What are you doing these days, Mrs. Joseph?”
“Mostly I try to help Imogene. You did hear my daughter Imogene went blind last fall?”
“No!” I simply stared at her, horrified. Shock waves hit me, and I couldn’t think of what to say.
“Thank God she’s well taken care of,” Mrs. Joseph answered slowly, her brown eyes filling with tears. “My girls inherited eye problems, you know. Two of them, Imogene and Rosemary, learned nearly three years ago that they might go blind.”
My mind whirled as I considered the tragedy, wondering what I could offer my friend in the way of comfort. At last I asked tentatively, “Mrs. Joseph, do you believe God heals?”
“Honey, I know God heals,” she answered firmly. “I never questioned that. These past three years he has answered our prayers in miraculous ways. The girls got right busy and learned Braille, learned to clean house from memory, studied the Bible, did everything they could in case they lost their sight. He helped them with all of it.
“You should see Imogene get around. She’s a miracle in herself, her faith and cheerfulness. Yes, God heals!” She gazed at me for a moment, seeming to decide something. “When we first got the news,” she confided, “the day we all had to accept that my two girls might go blind, I thought it would kill me.
“I cried most all night, then woke up the next day feeling so bitter. I felt cold, cold like after Mr. Joseph died. It didn’t make a piece of sense to me! I said, ‘Lord, I’ve had a lovely, lovely life, and now I’m old. Why couldn’t it be me, Lord? Why Imogene? Why Rosemary?’
“That day I asked him just to take me on home. I cried real tears all morning, and it seemed like he didn’t answer. Ah, it was a bitter time. I hurt till I thought it would kill me.”
“How did you stand it?” I asked, deeply ashamed of my own paltry grumblings. “However did you stand it?”
She searched my face again, then replied with a question. “Do you believe in angels?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Maybe you won’t believe this, but that morning, so brokenhearted, I said, ‘God, I can’t even pray. You must help me with this.’ You ever get where you just can’t pray?” I nodded. “Well, he sent help. Honey, I heard an angel sing. It was ‘Amazing Grace,’ all the verses, sung over and over. It had to be an angel, ’cause there was nobody there, and it came from all over the apartment—verse after verse.
“When I heard that music, I knew we’d all stand it, no matter what. I knew God would bring us through. Now I’m old, but I’m not crazy. Do you believe I heard an angel?”
I knew exactly what she’d heard, but I couldn’t say a word. I simply cried and hugged her and helped her gather her load of neatly folded linens. At the laundry room door, she paused and called back to me, “Honey, God won’t do those things we can do for ourselves, but when we can’t do another thing, he always sends help. Call on him and he’ll answer you. Read Jeremiah 33:3!”
What was it she had heard? As I folded sheets and towels, I relived that day nearly three years earlier when Mrs. Joseph had anguished alone. I didn’t know her then, of course, for it was the Saturday morning before I was to move into the apartment above hers. I’d been depressed that day too. The empty rooms echoed with loneliness. I’d brought shelf paper and cleaning supplies to busy myself as I waited for the telephone installer, but as the hours lengthened, I ran out of jobs to do. Outside, a misty rain had turned into a chilly drizzle. I sat on the floor of my newly carpeted dining room, fighting off the loneliness and near-despair.
What’s the point of all this? I thought. Why bother about moving, about cleaning this stupid apartment, about anything? Who cares? At last I prayed—an honest, unadorned prayer. “God, I’m so tired of struggling. I’m so lonely. My life lacks meaning; it really doesn’t matter to anyone. Help me. Please speak to me.”
He spoke immediately with force and authority. “Get to your feet. Stand up. Walk through this apartment and claim it for me. Walk through every room and praise me for your health and strength and every good and perfect gift I have given you. Ask a blessing on every person who walks through these doors, who eats here, sleeps here, visits here.” The impression, tremendously strong, could not be disobeyed. I did exactly as I was told. “Now do one more thing. Lift your voice to praise me in song in every room of this house.”
Why not? Feeling bold and a little crazy, yet filled with joy, I walked through one room after another singing verse after verse of my favorite hymn, “Amazing Grace.” Who cared, after all? There was no one else around to hear me. For fifteen or twenty minutes, I sang with all my strength.
Soon after, the phones were installed and I could leave. God had spoken to me in a very real way, and I had responded. Now I could depart in peace. The episode seemed finished.
Now I wondered, Should I have told Mrs. Joseph the truth about the singing? And if so, what is the truth? Surely I’m no angel, and I certainly didn’t sing like one. Or did I? What is the truth, God?
At once Mrs. Joseph’s words returned to my mind. “God always sends help when you need it. Don’t ask him to do what you can do for yourself. Call on him . . . he will answer you.”
The laundry basket, piled high, felt featherlight as I hurried upstairs, eager to walk again through my apartment. In the dining room, just thinking of the kind of God who’d use me as an angel, I laughed out loud.
I wondered if Mrs. Joseph could hear me laugh. I knew God did.