Pray for Jody Middleton

As so often is the case, an extraordinary turn of events began with something utterly mundane: I was out of Prilosec.

This morning, we managed to get everyone dressed and fed and in the car for church a little bit earlier than usual, so Ben took the prettier route through the valley. On the way, I realized that my stomach was starting to hurt. Faced with the prospect of sitting through service with severe heartburn, I asked Ben if we could stop along the way and get me some Tums.

I assumed he’d stop at a gas station, but instead he pulled into a very disreputable looking convenience store. His thinking, he told me later, was that this way he wouldn’t have to get across a difficult intersection (if you’re from Akron, you’ll know the one– where there’s the sculpture of the Indian carrying his canoe) and back. He could just pull in. I thought, “Really? Here?” But since we were in a hurry, I stepped out of the car.

The place was plastered all over with beer and lottery signs, especially ugly in the bright clear sunshine. It was a few minutes after 9:00 a.m., and when I first walked in it seemed completely deserted. There was no one behind the counter. I wandered briefly among the aisles of liquor. The walls were lined with glass coolers of liquor. Behind the counter was the cigarette department. They had a wide selection of condoms. The only non-liquor/cigarette/condom area had a few gestures towards toilet paper and dish soap. I couldn’t see anything approaching Tums. “Hello?” I said. No reply. Then behind the counter I spied a small child, sitting at a computer with her back to me. She was a little Indian girl, with silky black bobbed hair. She was dressed in hot pink leggings and a matching t-shirt, and had a red dot in the center of her forehead. I said, “Is your mom or dad here?” She said nothing but got up and ran away.

In a few minutes a lovely Indian woman bustled in carrying an armload of paper towel rolls. “Hi,” I said. “Do you have any Tums?” She smiled and said yes and led me to them. I picked up a couple rolls and paid for them. Then turned to leave. As I turned, a very large black woman came into the store. She had a smooth round face and coils of multi-colored hair, red, gold, and black, pulled into a thick pony tail. I was trying to get around her to leave, but she stopped me. “Are you on your way to church?” she asked. Clearly she could tell by my clothes. Immediately my guard went up. I was in the wrong place, her place not mine. I did not belong here. She was going to ask me for something. It was going to be some situation. She was out of gas and needed money. I braced myself for trouble and answered, “Yes.”

“You have to wait,” she said urgently. “I need to get change. I need to give you some money.” This startled me. She had to give me money? I waited a couple minutes while she got change from the cashier. I expected maybe that she was changing a five and would give me a couple bucks, but she turned around and pressed two twenties into my hand. “Oh!” I exclaimed.

“Listen,” she said. “I need you to take this money, and give it to your church. I need your church to pray for me.”

“Oh!” I said again.

She took a deep breath. “My daughter was killed in a car accident.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said. Immediately I wanted to hug her, mother to mother.

“And my husband, who is only 48, just had a major stroke.”

“Oh, oh no…” I said.

“I need you to take this money, and give it to your church for me, and ask them to pray. I’m Jody Middleton. Jody Middleton and my husband is Reginald. Ask them to pray for us.”

“I will,” I said. “I will do that for you.” I said this and took the money rolled up in my palm and stepped back out into the sunlight.

When I got in the car, I told Ben and the boys all about it. Ben said, “You have to tell Polly. Maybe we’ll be early enough.” Polly is our Deacon, and she says the prayers for individuals in the middle of the service. As soon as we pulled up, the boys, normally resistant to church, both leapt out of the car on an urgent mission to find Polly. I was slightly behind them and they came running back, “We’re in time! Polly is still here!” Polly, and sweet grandmotherly woman, was waiting in her long white robes with the choir and people carrying crosses and candles, waiting to proceed into the church. We had just a moment before service would begin. I went up to her and told her what had happened. “I’ll do it,” she said. “Just write her name down for me.”

I started to doubt whether the husband’s name was Reginald or not, and just wrote “Jody Middleton and the Middleton Family.”

As we sat in the pew, I couldn’t concentrate on the service at all. I just kept thinking of Jody Middleton and how she stopped me. I kept thinking about what it meant, and why she reached out to me. I felt humbled that she chose me, and that she trusted me with her vulnerability, her need, and her $40. I felt inadequate to the task. She didn’t know that I really don’t believe in God, per se, and I only go to church to be a team-player in the family. I go to church so my kids will have something to respond to, so that they will have a certain cultural literacy that comes from knowing the stories in the Bible. I go to church because Ben and I have a deal– he has to eat organic food and recycle; I have to go to Episcopal services. But she thought that I was going to church because it meant something. She thought I was in contact with God and could get him a message for her. She didn’t care what church I went to– she didn’t ask. She just saw me and thought I could provide her with a thread or a lifeline of some kind in her time of need, and in a wild grand gesture, she asked for help.

Then the sermon broke into my thoughts for a moment. Amjad (our wonderful priest from Pakistan) was talking about the Wednesday night meetings. He was saying, “No matter your income… the color of your skin… your educational level or your sophistication level….” I looked around the church at a lot of sophisticated, well-educated, mostly white, mostly affluent people. Would Jody Middleton ever feel comfortable here? Or would she feel as out of place as I did in that convenience store? But at that very moment, he was specifically saying she was welcome. She should come and join us. …. and I suddenly saw myself as part of that “us.”

Then I had a sinking feeling, something I know from a childhood on public assistance, that tomorrow is the first of the month, that she just got her check, and that this was a huge expenditure for her. That by the end of the month the $40 would seem impossibly extravagant. That she would be searching under her couch cushions for cigarette money. I kept thinking, “She doesn’t even know what church it is.”  I felt a strange urgency to make sure she got her money’s worth.

Right now the Flower Guild is selling calendars to raise money. Last week I got frowned at for not buying one, and said I’d do it this week. I didn’t really want the calendar, though. The flowers in church are always beautiful, but the photos in the calendar does not do them justice. While I sat there mulling over Jody Middleton during the service it occurred to me that I could buy the calendar and give it to her. Then she would get something tangible for her money, and I could help the Flower Guild without having to actually own the calendar. Also, this would tell her what church her message went to. But how to get it to her? I wondered whether I could find her in the online white pages, or whether I could get a message to her at the convenience store. Should I put a sign up saying, “Jody Middleton, see cashier for package”? But then everyone would claim to be Jody Middleton… ? Was she just passing through, or did she go there all the time? I turned this problem over in my mind while also writing a note on the back of the donation envelope. “From Jody Middleton, who gave me this money and asked for prayers.”

Ben told me after the service that I should go and see the Intercessory Prayer people, who gather to pray for specific things. I found them, and began to tell them my story. Then something strange happened: I started to cry. I just began telling them about Jody Middleton, and her daughter’s death and her husband’s stroke, and how she had given me the money, and I found that tears were just rolling down my cheeks. They listened to this, and took my hands. We formed a circle of four people and began to pray. “Dear Lord,” this woman to my right began. “Please help Jody Middleton cope with the loss of her beloved daughter, and help her father [sic] regain his health….” We stood there holding hands in silence for a while. The next woman began, “Dear Lord, thank you for helping Jody find Catherine in the store this morning, and seeing a light in her, and trusting her to take this message to you. Please send her light and love in her time of need.” Tears were pouring down my cheeks, and even snot running down, over my lips by this time. But since people were holding both of my hands I just had to ignore it. I couldn’t understand exactly why I was so moved. But I felt like the four of us were holding hands around a column of light.

When it was done everyone handed me Kleenex. They asked more details about which exact store it was, and what it was like there, and what Jody was like, and all about the little Indian girl alone behind the counter. I told them my plan for the calendar, and they thought it was a good idea. Then I went to find Ben, who had taken the kids up to Sunday school, and couldn’t find him, and went out to sit on a bench and collect myself.

I worried about where I would get an envelope for the calendar, and whether I should write a note, and what I should say. Finally I found a little card with the church’s address on it, and just wrote, “The people of St. Paul’s Episcopal in Akron prayed for you and your family today.” I hesitated about whether to sign my name or not. Finally I just added, “Catherine.”

When Ben turned up, having bought the calendar and obtained an envelope for it, it seemed like great luck.

We decided to just try bringing it back to the convenience store. I figured the Indian lady would still be there, and she would know what to do. And this proved to be true. When I went into the store, I asked, “You know that lady who gave me money to say prayers for her?” She said yes. “Can I leave something for her? Does she come here often?”

“Yes, she is coming here each day morning,” she replied in her beautiful accent.

“Well, give her this for me tomorrow, then, will you?” I asked. She smiled and said yes. I could tell she liked this story, and liked being a part of this odd intersection in her little store.

I have been thinking about this all day. I have been thinking that since Jody Middleton saw me as a possible connection to God, I had to see myself that way in order to fulfill the task she entrusted to me. Because she felt that church, any church, would help her with her trouble, I had to see church as more than just a community recreation center/choral concert hall/book club obsessed with one book. I had to imbue it with actual meaning.

I feel like this story is not over. I wonder what will happen next. Will she like the calendar? Will she show up at church one day and recognize me? Will we become great friends? Will this intersection of our lives become something long-lasting and important? Will we fondly recall this sunny Sunday morning when I stepped into her world looking for Tums? Has this experience begun some sort of important spiritual awakening for me? Will she keep her calendar on her wall and take comfort from it? Will this renew her faith in the world?

So, pray for Jody Middleton. She needs prayers. And who knows how praying for her may change you.

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