"I need some help"

I ran into a woman the other day as I was walking in the West End amidst the snow squalls.  She was heavy and shapeless with pale brown skin and the large, black freckles that mark the union of African and Celtic blood.
"I need some help, can you help me?"
"Maybe, what do you need?"
"I need twenny dollahs for a cab to take my things to the shelter - the man I'm living with - he's abusin' me and I gots to get out.  Can you help me?"  She pushed a tattered copy of a flier for a woman's shelter towards me - clearly she hadn't gotten it that day.  Or that week.
I gestured towards my car: " I don't give money but I'll take you where you need to go and help you move"
"Oh I wouldn't want you to do that, he's awful mean.  He does drugs and beats me and he would get angry if he saw you".
"Well I have lots of friends who can help"
"Oh he'd hurt them too"
"I'll take that risk"

It may sound strange, but as I've gotten older and lost my 'shine', I've become a little less concerned about personal safety and a little (a very little) more concerned about doing what's right - after all I've spent so much time in this life doing the wrong thing.  Sometimes it leads me to take what in the past I would have called 'bad risks'.  But not this time, because I had figured out her angle, her 'get'.
"Well maybe you could jus give me three dollahs for bus fare?" - she figured that maybe I'd buy her off for that.  The snow was beginning to fall heavily now, filling her frizzy hair with glistening flakes.
"No, you don't need a bus ride in this snow, you need someone to help you move, I'm willing to do the whole thing - here's my car"

I could see the gears turning in her mind:  "All I wanted was some money and here I have a damn fool who wants to 'help' me.  Why do I get all of the idiots?"

That's the way it is with us mortals.  I am constantly plotting about how I'm going to get money 'if old so and so would just hire me to do this gig' and so on.  But God tells me that what I really need is to rely on His grace and on the love of His saints, my brothers and sisters.  Only then can I truly get what I need, including money.  But we - the freckled woman and I - don't want real help, real love, we want the money that allows us to flee other people, to be 'self sufficient', to be alone.  And it was evident on that snowy day that God wasn't going to let either of us do that.

Finally with a sigh of disgusted resignation she waved me off and trudged on in the snow.
"I'm sorry", I called out after her.

For helping.