“But for the Grace of God Go I…”

This is not the post I was going to write today.

This is actually a re-vamped re-run from last year. But Wait!!! I promise you there is nothing I could have written that would be any better or more pure, than this true story during this season of gratitude.

A year ago when I published the original post, I had just 3 family members and 4 friends who actually read my blog.

Let me say right here that I am grateful for all of you – because of your reading, your likes, and sharing – this blog has been catapulted into the stratosphere! I thank each one of you so very much.

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This is the true story that taught me the gift of empathy.

I grew up hearing this phrase …

“But for the grace of God go I.”

Those words had a tremendous impact on molding the person I would become.

Perhaps we listen more carefully to words that are muttered, and not spoken directly to us.

Words that are not meant for our ears – but just an utterance seem to capture our attention.

My grandma was driving down the old dirt road instinctively swerving to dodge the familiar mud holes.

On the radio, Marty Robbins was crooning “Out in a West Texas town of El Paso”, while we sang along, chomping our juicy fruit gum to the rhythm, when her singing suddenly stopped – and I heard her solemnly whisper these words to herself,

“But for the grace of God go I”.

Craning my neck to look out the windows of her pink & black Rambler in an attempt to see what she was talking about. Just one glimpse and I knew exactly what my grandma meant by that phrase.

From an early age, I spent a great deal of time with my grandparents on their little farm in one of the poorest rural communities in our state.

Our closest neighbors lived in a little tin shack, right across the road from our dilapidated barn.

Every Saturday in every season, from the time I turned six, I would make the weekly trek from grandma’s cozy kitchen through our pasture and out our farm gates, up to this tin shack.

I will never forget my first visit, the eerie sounds of the corrugated metal creaking and flapping in the north wind resonating in the cold crystal air. It was a patchwork of mismatched pieces of tin in various stages of rust.

The door bounced back against my mitten-covered fist as I knocked.

A pale weather-beaten mom and her 3 little children, 2 toddler girls and a baby boy lived inside. I handed her the basket my grandma had prepared for them. As she unloaded the basket onto her single shelf, I stood quietly soaking in this family and their lives.

No bigger than a bedroom, there were no interior walls, no windows, no plumbing or electricity and no furniture. Just a pile of blankets in the corner where they all slept. There was a wood stove chugging warmth into their tiny space. I could see the same scrambled rusty pieces of metal on the inside of the walls that were on the outside. The only shelter from the cold north wind was this thin raw metal.

Their floor was dirt. My six-year-old mind was impressed to find the dirt floor had such a glossy sheen – glossy from the damp earth being hard packed by tiny bare feet.

In the winter all three kids would be huddled under a heaping pile of blankets in an effort to find warmth in each other. There was a man, but in all my visits, I never saw him inside the shack. He was always outside, chopping wood in winter, tending their mule or working the garden in the warmer months.

When she had emptied the contents of the basket onto her shelf, she expressed her sincere gratitude and sent me on my way back to my grandparent’s house.

Sometimes, when my grandma and I would drive past the tin shack and cross the creek – her singing would stop – I would look out my passenger window and see the weather-beaten mom doing laundry in the creek while her little ones bathed. I can still hear my grandma’s voice muttering…

“But for the grace of God go I”.

When hearing this phrase, your mind takes you to that place of those who are afflicted, broken or less fortunate.

I would continue to visit this family in their little tin shack each week for the next 3 years. Their lives are seared into my memory. After all these years, I still think of them often.

This Thanksgiving holiday – Take a moment to be grateful for all you have and remember those less fortunate.

Special thanks to my grandma for giving me the gift of empathy

and the meaning of