There is so much need in the world, and not just in impoverished places.  Some of the need is right here in front of us, but we don’t see it until we get in really close.

            I’m thinking of a few years ago when I drove up to Mendham every Tuesday to take my grandmother grocery shopping.  One day after shopping, Gram asked me to clip her fingernails.  They were long and torn.  It was getting harder for her to do it herself, because of her arthritis.

            Driving back home that afternoon, I got to thinking about her toenails.  Was she able to clip them?  The next Tuesday I inquired about them. 

            “I didn’t feel right asking you to clip those,” she explained.  “Besides, I’m afraid if you see how bad they are, you’ll tell your mother and she’ll make me go back to that awful podiatrist.”

            I insisted that Gram remove her shoes and socks and, sure enough, I was appalled!  How had she been able to walk like that?

            I’ve been clipping Gram’s toenails, whenever I get a chance, ever since – secretly, so that mom doesn’t find out.  (Shhh- don’t tell!)

            Once in awhile Gram and I would pick up groceries at the store for some of the other residents of her senior apartment complex.  That’s how I found out that her friend Marge couldn’t read her prescription bottles, because of her macular degeneration.  She asked me to write the names in large black letters on each bottle one day.

            “So I can keep them straight,” she said.  Such a small thing, and yet it helped her so very much.

            Gram’s friend Mary had a bad leg, and needed a little more help.  One day I brought her a bottle of milk from the store, and noticed that her apartment was cluttered with boxes – so many that she could barely move about.  Her kitchen had just been renovated, along with all of the other kitchens in the complex – every senior’s nightmare because of the moving of dishes that is required.  Well, Mary’s leg was so bad that she hadn’t been able to unpack most of the boxes of kitchen things, even three weeks after the remodel was finished.  Her son had helped her pack, but he lived kind of far from her and hadn’t gotten back yet to help her unpack.  So Mary just lived around the boxes.

            As I handed Mary her milk, I thought for a moment of offering to help her unpack.  But I had already spent more time than I really had to give, taking Gram shopping.  So instead, I said goodbye and left her there with the clutter.

            All the way home I thought about all of the things that were cluttering up my own life, keeping me from having the time to help someone with something as simple as unpacking boxes.