teach anyone how to make anything , after all , I am a culinary school drop-out . But the morning came as it is guaranteed to do , I put on my chef pants , grabbed my recipes , my croissant cutter , my courage and headed out the door . It was all going to be just fine ; I was going to be just fine .
Turns out I was just fine , I managed to explain things well enough to those eager girls where they produced the loveliest quiche , cinnamon buns and even their first try at croissants ever , turn out great . It felt good and natural ; it felt good to give some of myself to people who wanted some of my knowledge . I feel like I haven ' t had a chance to practice much kindness lately , not because I have become unkind , I have just settled into my old hermit ways . But on the last day of teaching those classes , I was walking to my car and was approached by a homeless lady , and she was asking me for money .
I had seen this woman before in that same parking lot , sometimes she is alone and sometimes she has a small child with her in a stroller . I had given the last of my cash to another homeless man that very morning and had no money to give her , and I was heartbroken . I told her that I no cash left in my wallet , but I would buy her a sandwich at the coffee shop . She wasn ' t interested in a sandwich . She was staying at a hotel with her little girl , who was not with her that day , and wanted to know if I would pay for her hotel room .
I asked her her name and where her hotel was figuring I would drive by there and just pay for a night or two . When she started to tell me where it was , I realized it was in a pretty sketchy part of town . If you know me at all you know I wear my emotions on my sleeve , and she must have read me in a second and said , " Maybe you can just drive me there " and that is where for the first time , I thought about what I was doing . You see , for a split second , I actually thought about putting her in my car , driving her to the sketchy part of town , paying for her room for a few nights and getting her and her daughter some food .
I ' m so glad that my first thought is always to be kind and to think of unfortunate people first , but I ' m also glad that this day , I stopped and thought for a minute . I remember the one time I was in Paris and got scammed out of $ 70.00 , by being kind . I was angry , shocked and scared . So a second later I had another scenario playing out in my head and this one consisted of me driving her to the hotel , her asking me to see her daughter , her opening the door and some guy grabbing me , my purse being stolen and ended with me being chopping into tiny bits .
I ultimately told her I couldn ' t help her , and I felt just awful . It was the first time someone asked me for money I didn ' t give it to them , and I felt sad . In the end , my intentions were good , but my common sense won this time . Maybe it would have been just fine had her I taken her to the hotel , but there is that chance things wouldn ' t have ended up like my Pollyanna ' s head thought .
That day I had learned how to draw the line between compassion and fear , and as I walked back to my car , I remember a quote from Audrey Hepburn , " As you grow older , you will discover that you have two hands , one for helping yourself , the other for helping others .". That day was one of the " helping yourself " days and acknowledging fear , and I felt OK getting in my car that afternoon .
If there is any word in this world that has lost its place in relationships , it ' s love . The world has substituted love for everything from people , to money , careers , things , sex , feelings , etc . The saddest thing about it , the replacements has crept their way to church . Most