So I saw this shopping cart lady this morning on my way in to work. It was early and cold, about 50 degrees. I walk about three blocks through downtown Pasadena, but it's about six o'clock, dark and quiet. I thought about stopping to see if she needed something, but she kind of startled me and I just kept walking.
She was bundled up in a down-filled blanket kind of thing, over several coats, but she still looked cold. Sometimes the chill just won't go out of your body. I guess I know that much.
I sat at my desk, but couldn't get her out of my mind, so I decided to go back and offer her a few bucks. I wondered if she would still be there ten minutes later. It was getting light and she was at a bus shelter on a busy street. She was still there, only now she was standing and the down blanket reached from her ears to her ankles. But people walked by and she hid her eyes, as if to make them go away.
After they passed, I walked up to her and asked if she needed some money. To my surprise, she said something like "The demon wants me to have some money," and tucked her face under the blanket again like a turtle.
I asked again; she said, "the demon told you to ask me that."
I said, no an angel told me, God told me.
No, no she insisted, it was the demon.
"You don't need any money?", I asked.
"No, I don't like what the demon do to me when I got the money."
I thought maybe she was talking about the demon rum, as it used to be called, but it was clear I wasn't going to get through to her, so I walked away. I think I said God bless you as I left, but I'm not sure.
I don't know what the problem was. Maybe she was wiser than me. Maybe the money would only tempt her to drink or something.
It left me wondering many things. The power behind alcohol, and how it can ruin minds and lives. The weakness of some minds, people who need to be taken care of, but who somehow survive, on the kindness of God, I guess.
I wondered at my own motives, too. Guilt? Prompting by the Holy Spirit? Guilt?
I prayed for her. What else could I do? What more could I do? As I walked away I thought I saw, in another doorway at the back of a building, another shopping cart person, shivering in the cold.
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