Sweet love stories can inspire
romance even if they aren't necessarily about romantic love. Just reading
something about true love of any kind can make you feel more appreciative of the
love in your life. This is a very beautiful story defining the true beauty
of the heart and the events that sometimes unrepentantly may cause one's heart
to break out of it's self made shell.
The Rented Room
~author unknown~
Our house was directly across the
street from the clinic entrance of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived
downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to outpatients at the clinic.
One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door. I
opened it to see a truly awful looking man. "Why, he's hardly taller than my
eight-year-old," I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled body. But the
appalling thing was his face, lopsided from swelling, red and raw. Yet his voice
was pleasant as he said, "Good evening... I've come to see if you've a room for
just one night. I came for a treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and
there's no bus 'til morning." He told me he'd been hunting for a room since noon
but with no success; no one seemed to have a room. "I guess it's my face. I know
it looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments..."
For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: "I could sleep in
this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning." I told him
we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch. I went inside and finished
getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the old man if he would join us. "No
thank you. I have plenty." And he held up a brown paper bag. When I had finished
the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him a few minutes. It didn't
take a long time to see that this old man had an oversized heart crowded into
that tiny body. He told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, her
five children and her husband, who was hopelessly crippled from a back injury.
He didn't tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was
prefaced with a thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain
accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked
God for giving him the strength to keep going.
At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children's room for him. When I got up in
the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded, and the little man was out on
the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, haltingly,
as if asking a great favor, he said, "Could I please come back and stay the next
time I have a treatment? I won't put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a
chair." He paused a moment and then added, "Your children made me feel at home.
Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don't seem to mind." I told him
he was welcome to come again.
And on his next trip he arrived a little after seven in the morning. As a gift,
he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen. He
said he had shucked them that morning before he left so that they'd be nice and
fresh. I knew his bus left at 4 a.m., and I wondered what time he had to get up
in order to do this for us. In the years he came to stay overnight with us there
was never a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his
garden. Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special
delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale, every
leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail these and
knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious. When I received
these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor
made after he left that first morning. "Did you keep that awful looking man last
night? I turned him away! You can lose roomers by putting up such people!"
Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice. But, oh! If only they could have known
him, perhaps their illness' would have been easier to bear. I know our family
always will be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it was to
accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude to God.
Recently I was visiting a friend who has a greenhouse. As she showed me her
flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum,
bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was growing in an old dented,
rusty bucket. I thought to myself, "If this were my plant, I'd put it in the
loveliest container I had!" My friend changed my mind. "I ran short of pots,"
she explained, "and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it
wouldn't mind starting out in this old pail. It's just for a little while, till
I can put it out in the garden."
She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining just
such a scene in heaven. "Here's an especially beautiful one," God might have
said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. "He won't mind
starting in this small body."
All this happened long ago -- and now, in God's garden, how tall this lovely
soul must stand. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at.
Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."
(1 Samuel 16:7b)
Friends are very special. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed. They
lend an ear and they share a word of praise. Show your friends how much you
care. Pass this on, and brighten someone's day. Nothing will happen if you do
not decide to pass it along. The only thing that will happen if you do pass it
on is that someone might smile--because of you
