The Quiet Cost of Love and the Blessing That Follows

There is a certain kind of caseworker you meet once in a while if you hang around the edges of town long enough. The kind who carries a clipboard like a church usher carries the offering plate. Reverently, with both hands, as if it contains the hopes of people who never got around to writing their hopes down. Stuart was one of those. A tall man who always looked like he was about to apologize for something, even though he had done nothing wrong in his whole life except love his wife too much and sleep too little.

His client, Lionel, appeared each Tuesday at ten in the morning wearing a brown winter coat that had lost its shape years ago. The zipper was broken at the bottom, which prevented him from unclasping it. He slid into and out of the thing like it was a pro-sport sweatshirt. The pockets sagged. The whole coat looked like it remembered better days but would prefer not to talk about them. Lionel wore it with a dignity that made you feel ashamed for noticing the frayed lining.

The two of them had been working together for about a year. Stuart kept a folder as thick as a Lutheran church hymnal filled with Lionel's attempts at life. There were notes from the hospital, forms from the shelter, a promise from a cousin who owed him fifty dollars, and a hand-drawn map to an aunt's apartment where Lionel stayed for exactly three afternoons before the situation soured. People's lives rarely fit all the forms that are made for them. Stuart knew this and filled out the paperwork anyway.

Some days Lionel arrived with a smile. An honest-to-goodness real one. The kind that makes a man look five years younger and almost handsome from your peripheral view. He would sit down and announce that things were really changing this time. Then the next week, he showed up looking like someone had erased that smile with a damp cloth. That was the rhythm of it. Two steps forward, one step lost somewhere behind a dumpster behind the Speedway.

Stuart took it all in with the patience of a man who once spent an entire winter trying to fix his furnace using nothing but prayer and a butter knife. He listened when Lionel's voice quivered, and he nodded when silence did most of the talking. He cared, which is admirable, except caring is heavy, and it does not slide off your shoulders at the end of the day like people often suggest he ought to let happen. When you are a caseworker, you carry people home with you. You set them down only long enough to taste your supper, then your heart reminds you of them again when you sit down with your children.

I suppose there are plenty of jobs in this world where you can set your work aside at four fifty-nine and walk away from it. Office folks who work Downtown slide their papers into neat stacks and turn off the lamp. The dry cleaner down the street from you hangs the last pressed shirt on the rack and flips the sign to Closed. Their work stays put, patient as a good dog, waiting on the desk or the counter for tomorrow. But when you are a caseworker, your work is not paper or shirts. Your work is with people who are stuck in places that do not have easy exits. You spend your days trying to unstick them, which is holy in its way, but it is also the sort of thing that clings to your sleeve. You can lock the office door, but the stories follow you.

Stuart's wife often said she could tell what kind of day he had by the way his keys sounded when he dropped them in the bowl by the door. Loud meant the day had been short and manageable. Soft was worse. Soft meant it had been long and had involved at least one moment where someone had apparently gone off their medication and needed outside help to be called in to help them. Or the day had a desperate, quiet moment when a client stared at the ceiling and whispered, "Lord, help me." And the heaviness of their situation fell on both them and you.

Well, days come and days go just as assuredly as the wind howls and the sun shines, and eventually, Thanksgiving rolled into town with the kind of weather that makes you grateful for socks. The food pantry on Maple Street put out little cardboard boxes on a folding table. Volunteers bustled in and out like kindly ants. Inside each box was a small arrangement of hope. A can of green beans, a box of stuffing, instant potatoes, a tiny pie, and a canned turkey that looked like it had been raised indoors its whole life.

Lionel's name was called, and he stepped forward like a man receiving communion. He held that box with both hands, and his eyes softened in a way you do not forget. He told Stuart it would be enough. Folks who have had little for a long time tend to recognize enough when they see it.

Stuart drove him home through a soft drizzle. Lionel disappeared through the door of his building, and the caseworker sat there for a moment watching the wipers move back and forth like two large sighs. Then he put the car in gear and headed home.

His own Thanksgiving dinner was waiting in pieces on the counter. A small turkey breast that looked humble enough to apologize for its size. Potatoes are waiting politely in a bag. A couple of rolls that puffed up nicely in the oven if you gave them a chance. His children placed forks on the table with great seriousness. His wife hummed as she moved about the kitchen. Nothing about the meal cost much. Everything about it mattered.

When they finally sat down, Stuart looked at his family, and something in him eased. The world had not grown gentler that day. Bills still require paying. Lionel still needed help. The furnace still made a sound that suggested a small animal was trapped inside. Yet here was this table with its small feast and the six people he loved most seated around it.

Across town, Lionel opened his pie and warmed it in the toaster oven with the stubborn door. He sat alone at a little table with a plastic fork. He closed his eyes for a moment before taking the first bite. It was not a lavish holiday. Though the meal was enough.

And that is the truth of Thanksgiving for most folks. Some sit at long tables, some sit at short ones, and some eat from a box given by strangers. Yet somehow, the spirit of the day finds its way through the thin walls and cracked windows of every life. It settles wherever it can. It rests on the weary and the hopeful. It rests on men like Stuart and Lionel, who carry each other in ways they do not always understand.

And it rests on you and me, too, if we let it.

Well, that’s today’s dispatch, from the dusty places, and the far off corners, keep the faith friends, and pass it on!