Living Dangerously--Miss Helen

Welcome, Friends and Strangers! Grab a chair and let's chew the fat (a metaphorical, Southern syllabic sequence that does not exclude vegetarians or vegans).

I just spent an hour trying to find possible avenues to travel in attempts to find--well, to be honest--paying gigs. I am an itinerant teacher with 35 years' experience. Wow, just writing that number makes me dizzy. It also makes me cast a wishful eye upon those who have retirement funds fuller than a polar bear in a new pair of Levis.

However, I am remembering my mentor Miss Helen Wright had no retirement fund, only a minuscule Social Security check, but her bank was FULL of daily stories of God's providing for her physical needs, as well as spiritual and emotional.

"Rose," Miss Helen said, "do you know that God can supply whatever we need with His means, by His methods, for His glory?"

Ever being the scared, self-protectionist, recovering Southern Baptist preacher's kid, I succinctly and sagely answered, "I'm not sure I understand the question."

Miss Helen never chided me for spiritual cravenness. Her dancing eyes would search mine for a moment (I found out later she was praying). With her mantle of storyteller wrapped around her thin shoulders, the white-haired breath of God would began to blow into my spiritual lungs like heavenly CPR.

The story: "Well, Rose, you know I look to the Lord as my Husband, so not long ago all the residents here began to get stirred up as a rumor swept through the place about a fifty-dollar increase in rent. Now many of the folks here are rich. Every day they are checking the stock market reports and listening to the news, always worrying about things they can not control about the economy, always afraid of losing what they have. There is no peace in them."

Miss Helen shrugged her shoulders: "Me? I don't have to worry, no matter what happens in the world. I've had to trust the Lord to supply my needs ever since I quit my job at the Conservatory of Music [now Birmingham-Southern University] and started teaching at Southeastern College. I never made enough money to pay my rent, much less food or anything else. "

I have to admit wondering, "How can one live like that, for all these years?! And now that Miss Helen is old, what job could she get, a greeter at Wal-Mart?" My mouth became dry as the desert sand beneath the feet of the prophet Elijah.

My eyes focused again on Miss Helen. "Rose, some of the wealthier women who know I don't have any money came and asked, 'Helen, just what are you going to do to pay this increase?! We know you don't have any money!"' Miss Helen said conspiratorially, "Old women will ask anything!"

My eyes widened as I asked, "What did you say to them?"

The old firewalker's response was riveting, "I just closed my eyes and said, 'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.' Then I went to my room, knelt beside my bed and prayed, 'Lord, they are raising our rent. I trust You as my Husband to take care of me. In Jesus' Name, Amen.' "

If this story were just a fiction of my mind, I couldn't write a more surprising ending. The day the retirement facility placed the increase notice in the residents' mailboxes, Miss Helen received the notice and a letter that read: "Dear Miss Helen, My husband and I have been praying for some time now as to how God wanted us to spend money we had been giving his parents every month. We felt like we were to send it to you. So, every month we will be sending you seventy-five dollars. We hope this helps. We love you.' "

Miss Helen was standing now as she finished this marvelous story. "In one hand I held up the notice of the fifty dollar increase in rent, and in the other I held up the check for seventy-five. I said aloud, 'Fifty dollars and twenty-five besides. Blessed be the Name of the Lord!' "

As I sat in my swivel, '70's green chair, Miss Helen grinned at me in her inimitable way and said something that became the normal closing of hundreds of such stories she would tell me in the years to come:

"Rose, can you beat that!"
"No, ma'am, Miss Helen; no, ma'am, I can't."

In my mind those words ring as familiar as the old George Burns and Gracie Allen ending of their show:

"Say goodnight, Gracie."
"Goodnight, Gracie."

Goodnight, Helen, My Beloved.
Goodnight, God.

Friends of this round Table, I hope you have a Miss Helen day.