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The Parking Garage
Yesterday I had a bunch of errands to run, one of which included a trip to Evanston to the bank to get some Canadian currency. I’ve only been to Evanston a handful of times but managed to find my way. While in Evanston, I stopped by the post office to mail some stuff. Ordinary stuff, but this particular trip was a comedy of errors. From going the wrong way on a one-way street, to parking my own car in a valet parking lot, to standing in line at the wrong end, it was just a joke — but I wasn’t laughing.
But everything changed when I ran into (not literally) the valet parking man. He had chased me through the parking structure to see where I ended up and to inform me that this was valet parking (free for bank customers)! Initially I was a bit unnerved to find a man standing outside my car window in the belly of the parking structure, but his whole presence was disarming and gentle. He wore what looked like a mechanic’s outfit, with a little grease around the edges, and he had an accent of sorts that made his sketchy English sound poetic. With great kindness he told me the proper parking procedure and when he heard I was there just for a simple banking transaction he shooshed me toward the stairway and said he would take care of my car and have it on the main parking floor (which was full) for me. He could tell I had been flustered from my morning already, and it was as if this was his way of saying “It’s going to be okay.” I felt it in his voice and in his eyes … not something I normally am open to finding in a parking garage with a strange man outside my window!
So after the “simple” banking transaction that ended up taking 45+ minutes because they couldn’t figure out my nun bank account, I headed back to the parking garage and sure enough, there was my chariot right in front. I went to the payment station, something I normally do with ease, but for some reason I couldn’t get to work. A woman at the garage office, came right over and not only explained what to do but showered me with “Baby girl” and “Sweet child” and “Love” as she led me through the steps. It was like balm on a weary soul!
I emerged from that underground parking garage cleansed and refreshed, from the dark and greasy depths to the fresh light of day. But it was in the darkness — with these two unassuming, parking garage attendees — that I experienced such kindness and a bit of healing for my soul.
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{ 13 comments }
God has His ways of soothing our weary souls. He does that to me too whenever i feel overwhelmed or shocked or just plain clueless and confused. thank God for His loving kindness
the clueless state of mind seem to pop up every now and then, so thank God for His patience too 
I’m always amazed at how God has a way of finding us, even in parking garages. Where else have others been “found” by God?
I get whooped upside the heart by God whenever I visit the 4th graders for a Bible lesson. We do Bible “mechanics” on odd number weeks (How many books, what kind of writings, etc.) and on the even numbered weeks we do a scaled-down Lectio Divina. When the children share their prayers with me, I just want to go have a good cry. I am either touched or convicted by their simple, honest words.
Awwwwww!
When someone makes eye contact with you and smiles for no apparent reason…
When a young stranger excitedly takes your hand to pray the Our Father at Mass…
When someone shows love to you though you aren’t sure why…
When you are mad at God for not answering your prayers, and then you found out that God was answering them the whole time. Just not the way you expected….
With my cat. She’s helped me figure out a couple of things about the way I view some people in my life. Nice kitty!
Nun bank accounts ARE terribly confusing.
I have a friend who brings that little bit of God into people’s lives. She is a social worker, almost 30 years in child protection and she retains this phenomenal warmth and faith in people, even when terrible events or struggles are the reason for their meeting. I’ll never forget the day she went to see an overwhelmed mother whose little ones were dirty and crying, the house a mess, mom’s hands full of dishes as she tried to clear space to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. People were so often afraid when we showed up at their doors; they knew we had the power, with some help from the police and the courts, to walk out the door with their kids. I no longer remmeber why our agency was called out to this house, what report had come in that had warranted a home visit. Whatever it was, Margaret’s response that day was one of love and support. When they walked into the kitchen, Margaret picked up a crying child, handed him to the mom and pulled out a chair for them at the kitchen table. She asked if she could help. The mom asked how, afraid of the answer, surely. “Making PB&J”. And so, while mom held her baby and talked to him – which is what both mom and baby had been wanting and why they were all so worn out by their overwhelmed life – Margaret made lunch on paper towels and wiped a few counters. And, over time, over more PB&J lunches made by Margaret while mom played with her babies at her own kitchen table, they figured out a plan to address whatever the concern had been. I love that in Margaret, her willingness to dive right into the darkness of someone else’s day and, from inside, right by their side, to create some light, some warmth. It is definitely the best of social work, but it is moe importantly the best of God’s love shared one human to another and that creates hope.
thanks jean for sharing this to us. your friend margaret is very inspiring.
I had a similar experience yesterday… coming home from a day at my more frustrating workplace, I had to take a bus over the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey to New York. It’s basically a five minute trip, and the last of several forms of transportation I take throughout the day. But last night, the bus driver was this incredibly warm woman who went out of her way to compliment my hat, then told me and other passengers to just sit down and get our money out later, just relax, and then played music over the bridge, and, as she stopped the bus on the other side, thanked everybody for riding and said God bless you all and have a good night.
I got off smiling.
Nocode – Margaret is an inspiration and a blessing in my life. We became friends the day I started in her office. I was her new “next door neighbor” in our cublicle-village and she brought me a cup of chamomille tea in welcome. When I miss her (we live far apart now), I make myself a cup of chamomille and read Elizabeth Bishop poems (her favorite). Saturday is her birthday, so I am ordering a flat of pansies from our favorite garden store, and her husband will take her to get them as a surprise. Such sunny, happy flowers: they have become “the face” of our friendship, the way we look when we spend time together. On Margaret’s phone at work, on the handset, she has taped the words “be peace” in Latin, a reminder in the midst of hard days of her most important job in the world. And what I love most is that she tells the truth: she has those words there because it is hard, ever so hard, to be peaceful in the world, to be who we desire to be and she is always trying, always humble about the fact she sometimes fails like everyone else, always willing to start again and that is what she carries with her when she meets overwhelmed people: we all fail, we all have crosses, and we can help each other pick them up and carry them and, in that, we can continue to live new lives. She is a beaut.
beautiful, sister julie. and timely. as the church is cloaked in darkness for this brief time in holy week, i recall that most of my best encounters with god have been in the darkness. she finds us even when we think we cannot be found.
this is your best writing yet—take it from a pretty regularly published writer who loves your blog.
Our oldest daughter has Tourette’s Syndrome and OCD. With all the tension from her illness; it is hard to see Jesus in her at times. Jesus showed me He was very much present in her through an unusual chain of events. I was looking for a certain business and couldn’t find it. Jesus had led me to a shopping center to ask directions because He had a certain woman I was to meet. She told me where the business was and as I prepared to leave; Jesus asked me to go back and share my journey with her. We sat in her car and talked for twenty minutes, in which I explained the wonderful ‘dying to self’ road I was on. She told me, “The faith you have is really rare. There has only been two times in my life I have seen this faith; yours and one other young woman. Her friend had told her how a young woman had come up to her a few weeks before and asked if she could pray for her. The young woman seemed to have a gift of prophecy and told her things she had no way of knowing. She asked the lady if she had Cancer and told her; “Jesus wants you to know everything is going to be alright.” Right away, the Holy Spirit showed me, the lady was speaking of my daughter!
The woman phoned her friend and as she described the young woman over the phone; I knew it was my daughter! When I returned home; I told my daughter I needed to ask her something. Suddenly, she said, “Momma, you are going to ask me about Cancer aren’t you?” Imagine how shocked I was, because I hadn’t told her anything yet, about the event. It was Jesus’ way of showing me the Holy Spirit was alive within my daughter and Jesus was using her. I felt Jesus asking me to begin looking at her with spiritual eyes, instead of eyes of the flesh. I was to keep my eyes on the goodness within her and not the ugliness of her illness that Satan wanted me to see. Wow! Such an incredible happening was certainly no coincidence!