Bob Tribble/Owner, Houston Publications, Inc.
One day a man saw an older lady who was stranded on the side of the road, and in the dim light of the day, he could see that she needed help. So he pulled up in front of her Mercedes and got out of his old Pontiac.
The lady looked worried as the man approached her with a smile on his face. No one had stopped to help her for almost an hour, and she was wondering if he was going to hurt her. He didn’t look safe, he looked poor and hungry, she thought.
The man knew that the lady was scared standing out on the highway in the cold weather. He knew how she felt because the chill put more fear in you. "I’m here to help you, ma’am. Wait in the car where it’s warm. My name is Bryan Anderson,” he said.
All the lady had was a flat tire, but for an older person, that was bad enough. Bryan crawled under the car to find a place to put the jack. Soon he was able to change the tire, but he had to get dirty to do it.
The lady rolled down the car window as he was tightening the lug nuts and began to talk to him. She told him that she was from St. Louis and was just passing through. She could not thank him enough for stopping to help her.
Bryan just smiled as he closed her car trunk. The lady asked him how much she owed him because any amount would have been all right with her. She had thought about the things that could have happened to her if he had not stopped. Bryan never thought about being paid because this was not a job to him, he was just helping someone in need. The Universe knows that there were plenty of folks who had helped him in the past, and it never occurred to him to charge the lady anything, he thought.
He told the lady that if she really wanted to pay him for what he had done, the next time she saw someone who needed help to assist them, "And think of me,” he said.
After she had started her car and drove off, he got in his old car feeling good about what he had done and headed home.
A few miles down the road, the lady stopped at a small café to get her something to eat before she began the last part of her trip home. It was a dingy looking restaurant with two old gas pumps outside. The waitress came over and brought a towel for her to wipe her wet hair with. She had a sweet smile and appeared to be nearly eight months pregnant. The lady wondered how someone who had so little could be so nice. Then she remembered Bryan.
After she finished her meal, she paid with a $100 bill. While the waitress went to get change the older lady had left the restaurant. The waitress wondered where the lady was then she noticed something written on the napkin.
With tears in her eyes she read what the lady had written: "You don’t owe me a thing. I have been there too. Somebody once helped me out the way I’m helping you. If you really want to pay me back, here is what you do: don’t let this chain of love end with you.” Under the napkin were four more $100 bills.
After the waitress finished her work and got home that night and got in bed, she was thinking about what the lady had written. She wondered how the lady knew how much she and her husband needed the money with the baby due next month.
She knew how worried her husband was so as he lay sleeping next to her she gave him a kiss and whispered, "Everything is going to be all right. I love you, Bryan Anderson.”
There is an old saying that, "What goes around comes around.” As you read this true story pass it along to someone else and remind them that the universe works in strange ways and sometimes puts people in our lives for a reason
November 18, 2023