Sharing Strength

I set out on the walking path as usual this morning.  At the end of the path there is a large commercial property.  Most days I pick up a few extra miles by circling the lot twice before reversing for home.  Lately, I have encountered a maintenance worker there on my first pass around the lot. The maintenance worker is an older gentleman. His build is so slight that his baseball cap alone seems to overwhelm his small frame.  He pushes a cart full of brooms and shovels, sprays and rags while pulling a vacuum cleaner behind him.  This busy man is not much taller than the cart he maneuvers around this giant property.  Most days I greet him with a smile and a simple hello. Some days I compliment him on the way he keeps the property looking so lovely. 

This morning as I came around a bend in the sidewalk I saw the maintenance worker taking a break at a picnic table inside a small pavilion.  He turned to me and said, “There’s my little lady.”

I laughed and said, “I think God intended for us to meet.  I’m Lilli.”

Smiling broadly, he extended his hand to me, “Jesse.”

The encounter was pleasant and brief, but as I walked on I could not ignore the strength that came from his hand. Had we stood side-by-side, no one would have doubted that I was the sturdier one of this pair, and yet the strength there in his hand…

And that feeling of strength remained upon my palm and at the base of my thumb for much of the day.

Ironically, the right hand I offered to Jesse is a hand weakened from radiation following breast cancer treatment.  It started with a fibrosis in my shoulder and the nerve pain inched its way down my arm into my hand. I first noticed the pain and the weakness as I struggled to lift a small pot of boiling water from the stove.  But here, after this brief encounter, I felt a renewed if not unusual strength in my right hand.

I know that it has become cliché to say that people and things are not always what they seem or that looks can be deceiving, but the strength in Jesse’s hand was a needed reminder for me. We make big judgments about people based on a glance, but most people have unseen strengths earned through hardship, work, and even the ordinary demands of daily living. 

I study my weakened hand and feel Jesse’s strength upon it, a strength that was given freely and generously in response to nothing more than a smile and a kind word or two, and I wonder:  can it really be that easy?

Share your strength with someone today.