Coreen Johnson has graciously provided this personal story of Mormon Life, which I loved and thought would be a great addition here. Coreen is a stay-at-home mother of 4 who now lives in New Mexico. Enjoy!<\/p>\n
by Coreen Johnson, FMHer<\/p>\n
\u201cHey lady! Do you have a dollar?\u00a0 Just a dollar!\u00a0 Please lady! Just a dollar! Please, ma\u2019am!\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cSorry, sir!\u201d I look down at my 4-year-old and 7-year-old sons, and we\u2019re rushing to catch a subway home to Cambridge, MA from a long day in downtown Boston.\u00a0 We find seats together \u2013 what joy! I sigh, exhausted from the day.\u00a0 My 4 year old, Elliot, reaches into my purse, I think to grab a piece of gum.\u00a0 Instead, he pulls out a crumpled dollar. He looks at me with crushed, disappointed eyes. \u201cYou told that man you didn\u2019t have a dollar.\u201d I rub my forehead, trying to figure out how to explain.\u00a0 \u201cHoney, we pay our tithing to take care of people like that man.\u00a0 The Church has it all set up.\u201d\u00a0 Disgusted, he puts the dollar back in my purse, zips it up and peers at the other sad souls in the train car.\u00a0 I, however, keep explaining.\u00a0 \u201cWe had to catch our train or we would have been late getting home\u2026\u201d My voice trails off, weak, and sounding as hollow as the subway tunnel we\u2019re chugging through.<\/p>\n
Years ago, as my husband was getting though his grueling seven-year M.I.T. PhD, I knew we had to scrimp and save.\u00a0 It\u2019s the only way we could make it.\u00a0 We had these two sons and a new baby daughter at the time.\u00a0 We felt it was in everybody\u2019s best interest if we held onto every little penny, except for the exact ten percent we absolutely had to give, except for the exact amount of fast offering we weren\u2019t eating once a month.\u00a0 Oh, it pains me to think of how selfish I was, so self-involved!\u00a0 I was sure I would \u2018get philanthropic\u2019 the minute when we had some room to breathe.\u00a0\u00a0 I obsessed about every line on our budget, even every line of our grocery bill. \u00a0A couple of months after the subway incident, I couldn\u2019t understand why our \u2018granola bar budget\u2019 had skyrocketed.\u00a0 I soon figured out why.<\/p>\n
I kept a box of granola bars in the backseat, in case anyone got hungry on the rides to or from school. \u00a0On the way to my 4 year old\u2019s pre-school commute, we would inevitably get held up in traffic, on the corner of Memorial Drive and JFK St, right near Harvard University.\u00a0 I would usually distract myself with the radio to avoid road rage, but for some reason that day I looked in the rear view mirror.\u00a0 My little blonde haired, blue-eyed precious boy had rolled down his window just wide enough to hand out granola bars to the vagrants holding up signs in the street that said things like \u201cHomeless Veteran: Will Work 4 Food.\u201d\u00a0 At first, I cried, \u201cElliot!\u201d and started rolling up his window, in fear of all things moms worry about.\u00a0 But then I took in the scene. He looked at me compassionately with those eyes that pleaded, Mom, don\u2019t take this away, too.\u00a0 I realized he was in complete control of the situation.\u00a0 There was a little crowd around the window, like they\u2019d been waiting for him all morning.\u00a0 They nodded in gratitude and backed away after he handed them their food.\u00a0 It almost looked like they were receiving blessings, as if he was their little Christ child, handing them communion.\u00a0 My tears started flowing.\u00a0 It felt like I was beholding the scene in Luke 2 \u2013 Jesus as a boy, sitting at the temple, preaching to the people who ought to know better. And I, like Jesus\u2019 parents, was \u201castonished at his understanding and answers.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 When I had to drive away because the traffic had cleared, I realized an honest-to-God miracle had just taken place.\u00a0 And I had no idea how many times it had taken place prior to this day, because I had been busy jamming to WBMX-FM in the driver\u2019s seat.<\/p>\n
My little boy changed me that day.\u00a0 He taught me that no matter how little I think I have, there\u2019s someone with less.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been less tight with my fists since that day.\u00a0 I\u2019ve realized that while I tithe, maybe my dollars don\u2019t go straight to the starving like I\u2019d hoped.\u00a0 Instead of disappointing my children, I\u2019m going to take their example and hand my free crumpled up dollars to the ones who need it.\u00a0 We returned to that corner every school day after that, and Elliot\u2019s vagrants were always waiting for us.\u00a0 And he always had granola bars for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Coreen Johnson has graciously provided this personal story of Mormon Life, which I loved and thought would be a great addition here. Coreen is a stay-at-home mother of 4 who now lives in New Mexico. Enjoy! Elliot’s Vagrants by Coreen Johnson, FMHer \u201cHey lady! Do you have a dollar?\u00a0 Just a dollar!\u00a0 Please lady! Just a dollar! Please, ma\u2019am!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mormon-life","category-parenting"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22105"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22110,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22105\/revisions\/22110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}