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Opportunities I Didn’t Look For

by Paulette Curran

By October 8, 2018November 23rd, 2023No Comments

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Do you want to “do” mission? Opportunities to do so in the simple one-to-one way Madonna House does it arise all the time for everybody. Much of the time, we don’t need to look for them. We simply need to be alert to the people God puts in front of us and respond.

Two memories come to mind from my time in Maryhouse.

***

When I was there, Maryhouse ran a hostel, a place to stay for people in need of one. It was mainly but not exclusively, for men coming North looking for work and for First Nations people from the villages coming to the hospital in Whitehorse, the capital of the province where we were located.

One day, one of the men staying with us looked really down, and I asked him what was the matter.

“It’s my birthday,” he said, “and no one knows it. No one will do anything for it. I won’t even be wished a happy birthday.”

Amazing! It was my birthday, too. And, I can’t remember how I discovered it, but it was also the birthday of a little native girl, age four or five, whose family was also staying with us.

One of the staff was baking a cake for my birthday, and we were planning to have it at a simple party for me in the evening.

I went to the director and asked if the cake could be bigger and could we have it at supper at the hostel instead and make it a triple celebration. And so we did.

We still got together in the house that evening for just my birthday, but it was the joy of that man and that little girl at the celebration at the hostel that made this one of the best birthdays I ever had.

***

One beautiful summer day shortly after I arrived, I was weeding the flowers by our front door which opened right on the sidewalk. (Yes, you can garden in the Yukon, though it has its challenges.)

A small blond boy of about six came by and stood watching me. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said and showed him what to do. We spent the next while companionably pulling weeds together. He was a lovely child.

The next day as I worked inside, one of the other staff, one obviously older than me, came to me and said, “There’s a little boy outside who knocked at the door and asked me if you can come out and play with him.”

I probably wasn’t able to spend time with him that day, but I was able to some at other times.

One day, not long after I met him, Billy came over and said to me, “I want you to meet Mrs. Miller.”

I said, “all right,” and he took me by the hand and led me over to his house across the street.

“Mrs. Miller,” he called through the door, “I’m bringing my friend over.”

A voice came from the house, “How many times have I told you to play with your little friends outside?”

A woman came to the door, saw me with surprise, and apologized. She invited me in, and Billy (not his really name) went outside to play by himself.

As we chatted over coffee, she told me about Billy. His mother had died a few months before, and his father was a long-distance trucker who was away much of the time. Mrs. Miller wasn’t a relative; she’d been hired to take care of Billy and do the housework.

I could sense her love for Billy, thanks be to God. She tried to do the best she could for him, she said, but, well, she wouldn’t be working there forever. She was concerned about what would happen to Billy.

When you are friendly to someone or do a little act of kindness, be it to a child or an adult—or fail to do it—how often it is that you have no idea how much in need that person is!

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