A few years ago, my husband and I started volunteering for Meals on Wheels. He chauffeurs me along the route and completes the minimally required paperwork while I pop in and out of the car, giving away meals that I didn’t have to cook to people in need. I enjoy talking with the clients and petting random cats that loiter around doorsteps. It’s an easy breezy way to serve.
Recently, our route changed and I had new people to deliver to. While my husband waited in the car, I made my way through the maze of residences at a retirement home and hesitantly knocked on the first client’s door. I was exuberantly welcomed by an elderly lady who invited me inside. Almost instantly, she told me she loved me. I figured maybe she was confused and thought I was someone else. But she insisted she loved me.
I saw a picture of a cat on her wall and commented on it. Seeing how much I liked cats, she introduced me to hers with a grandmotherly warmth. We talked for a few minutes about how she was feeling. She asked me for a hug, and I left. Afterwards, I ran back to the car and excitedly told my husband how she loved me. “She was just like Jesus,” I said. “I didn’t even have to do anything. She just loved me.”
What struck me most about this wasn’t how rare it is to meet someone who exudes such love. Nor was it the reminder that invariably, when we help others, we get back more than we give. It wasn’t even that she’s a kindred cat lover, validating my theories that cat (and dog) people are the nicest people. While all of those things were in and of themselves significant, it was how much her kindness underscored the simplicity of our purpose — to love others as we wished to be loved, that most struck me.
The day before I met her, I was feeling angsty and existential about life. I questioned what I should be doing and lamented all I had not done. I longed for significance, thinking it would come from some new endeavor or challenge. Yet this elderly woman showed me the impact that we can have on others through the generosity of love. And, while intellectually I already knew this, it’s a different thing altogether to encounter it. She made me feel closer to God by reminding me of his extravagant and unconditional love. I went to offer physical sustenance to someone in need and was fed spiritually by the experience. God uses all of us to comfort, console, and share his compassion if we let him. She reminded me how much these mercies can transform lives – not necessarily because our circumstances change but because love changes us.
Thank you for the support you all have given me with the launch of Simple Mercies. I absolutely love being able to share it with the world and everyone has been so generous to help spread the word. Two dear friends opened up their homes so I could speak about the book and I so enjoyed meeting new people whose compassionate hearts make our community a better place. If you are interested in me speaking at your home, church, or organization, please don’t hesitate to reach out at 
Nancy Sebastian has spent much of her life working to keep children safe. This is how Nancy does mercy:
Latasha and I attended Bishop Kenny High School together. I didn’t really know her well. This wasn’t because she’s black and I’m white. It’s because she was smart and athletic and in different classes and social circles than me. She was the girl who ran towards the ball and I was the one who ran away from it. As the Captain of the 1990 Girls’ Basketball State Championship Team, Latasha did plenty of running towards the ball.
As a Floridian, I’m used to the rush and rumble of hurricane season. Being quarantined feels like a similar drill: gathering supplies, overconsumption of snacks, board games, and boredom. There is also the obsession with news updates, the what-ifs that cyclone through conversation, fear of the unknown, and the prayers that calm the storm of anxieties within.
During my senior year in high school, I had a small part in the school play, H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. My role was of the scandalous secretary who was presumably having an affair with her boss. I wore a tiny off the shoulder black dress and slung my waist-length hair around with a flick of my wrist while hinting to the more dutiful office employee about my clandestine relations. That was almost 30 years ago and the only flicking of the wrists I do now is after washing my hands in the kitchen sink when I’m too hurried to use a dishtowel.
I remember exactly where I was when a plane crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It was a profoundly sad day. It changed lives and an entire nation. I will never forget the unthinkable, unimaginable horror as I huddled around the television watching the ash of innocence unite a country in anguished grief. As the morning went on, the plane crashes went from one to four, each one an almost unrecoverable blow of terror, multiplying devastation into exponential heartache.
I know songs have been written about the ease of Sunday morning, but I wish someone would write one about the angst of a Sunday evening. That’s the twitchiest night of the week for me as I transition from the charms of the weekend to the schisms of the work week. I feel like the amiable comic book character, Pig Pen, created by Charles Shultz, traveling in my own dust storm with all the to-do’s swirling around me making a filthy mess of what was once a peaceful mind. The more I do, the more I realize how far behind I really am and the dirt cakes on — further muddying my panic.